"I've always been secretly proud of the Nixon watch I bought at Hot Topic in 2005. It tells time. That's it. Not even digital. It's got a real clock face. It was a secret badge of honour that I resisted the allure of a smartwatch. I'd inwardly roll my eyes every time I was having a conversation with someone, and they'd look down at their wrist every 30 seconds because they got an alert..."
"Then, last November, I was at a neuropsychology conference, and two of the first three presenters talked about this thing called Heart Rate Variability. I hadn't really heard of it. So, sitting in my hotel room that night with nothing to do but watch bad hotel TV or squint with my 40-year-old eyes at my phone to watch Netflix, I Googled it."
"Turns out this one biomarker can tell you some pretty amazing things, not just about your health but about your brain's peak performance. And all you need to track yours is a smartwatch. I wasn't ready to spend $469 on an Apple Watch, so I bought the cheapest HRV monitor I could find on Amazon and purposefully turned off all notifications. Then I spent a week doing my own mini experiment that completely flipped how I plan my days."
"This hidden metric helped me optimize my workweek: What actually is HRV? To put it simply, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measures the variation in time between heartbeats. When you put your hand on your chest, it may feel like your heart beat is like a metronome. It does keep a fairly regular beat. But there are micro variations between those beats, and those tiny variations are a pretty powerful proxy for how well your nervous system is functioning."
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a sensitive biomarker that predicts cognitive peak performance and reflects autonomic nervous system flexibility. Daily brain performance follows an internal rhythm that often conflicts with common schedules. Tracking HRV with a simple wearable and silencing notifications allows identification of personal performance peaks. Aligning cognitively demanding tasks with HRV peaks reduces time spent, lowers overwhelm, and reignites momentum. A brief self-experiment with an inexpensive HRV monitor can reveal peak periods and reshape how days are planned for greater efficiency and clarity.
Read at Psychology Today
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