At the start of the year, I thought it was going to be easy. I even increased my daily move goal in February to give myself more of a challenge thinking I’d be able to be out exercising with friends, or at the gym every day. 😬 Of course, 2020 had other plans, and I nearly failed a few times during the various lockdowns. The thought of completing my little personal challenge did help to get me out of the door on days when the temptation was to stay home.

The specific numbers on my move goal aren’t that important as everyone burns calories at different rates, but I started the year at 500 active calories per day and upped it to 700 per day in February. I left the exercise and standing goals at their defaults. My move goal, combined with the requirement for 30 exercise minutes per day means that I can’t close all rings without doing some intentional exercise, even if it’s only a brisk walk.

So, a successful 2020 for health and fitness then, right?

Unfortunately not. I wrote about struggling with my weight again back in February, and things have trended consistently in the wrong direction throughout 2020. I’m terribly overweight again and feel awful about it. I’m so disappointed in myself.

The truth is that despite this little challenge, the latter half of 2020 has gone really wrong in terms of health and fitness. Yes, I got out of the house and exercised for at least 30 minutes a day, but I also ate too much. Way too much. I could blame it on several things, 2020 has given us all plenty of excuses to choose from, but the truth is I knew I was eating too much and didn’t stop myself. Every few weeks I’d say “Right, that’s it, back on a strict diet” and then a few days later there’d be a loaf of bread in my shopping basket again, and my bread consumption is always a great indicator of whether I’m paying attention to what I’m eating.

I’m not going to try and do this challenge again in 2021. I completed my 2020 challenge, and I’m happy about that, but exercise is a firm and sustained habit at this point and it’s not where I need to concentrate my attention. What I need to focus on in 2021 is my eating. I feel the weight on me with every step I take, and I dearly wish I could get back to where I was back in 2018.

One day in 2017, I met a man in full running gear at the top. It was a lovely summer’s day, and we chatted for a couple of minutes while we took in the view. He said that he ran up the hill a couple of times a week, and I remember thinking to myself that that was always going to be out of reach for me. 😅

Today, I ran up Helsby Hill. 🚀

I set out for a run thinking I’d do my usual route, which is mainly flat. You can even see it in the background of the photo, next to the wind turbines (here’s a picture of the hill from down there). As I set out, with the sunshine on my back, I thought back to that chap I met. I wondered if I could run up it these days, and decided to find out.

I haven’t managed to lose all of the weight I put back on recently, but being able to run up that hill is another substantial mental milestone for me. Now, I wonder if I can do it a couple of times a week!

I’ll get straight to the point. In 2019 my weight went up, not down. I’m not feeling like I want to publish exactly how much I weigh right now, but it’s a significant increase over where I was. I’m nowhere near as heavy as I was when I first started losing weight in 2017, but it’s still not good. I know I’m not a special little snowflake to lose weight, only to gain some of it back again. But after I lost so much, and kept it off for more than a year, I hoped that wouldn’t be me this time.

The feeling of dropping clothing sizes during my initial weight loss was incredible, to the point where I’d find myself smiling like an idiot in dressing rooms. 😂 The feeling when putting on a pair of trousers that you once shrunk out of is… not.

Why did it happen? Overeating. It’s that simple, but oof that’s a hard word to write! It’d be easy to blame this setback on my broken hand from last summer, and that certainly didn’t help, but that’s not the real cause. It’s overeating. It’s embarrassing and depressing, but simple.

While my hand healed, I was doing less exercise, but not that much less, and my level of fitness is still quite high. I ran a half-marathon in September, and as soon as I was able to after my hand healed, I was back at the gym every day. I haven’t lost the love of exercise that I found, and the gym is the most positive part of my life. Weight gain has set me back though, my running pace is much slower than it was, and everything harder than it used to be.

So, even though my weight had been slowly sneaking up in the first part of the year, things started going properly wrong in September. I was feeling depressed about the rate at which my hand was recovering, and the way that it has healed means that I’m no longer able to do some kinds of exercise that I enjoyed. I lost some motivation because of that, my mental state suffered, and my overeating got worse. It’s a predictable spiral. Every time I ruined a day with food, I pushed back my plan to make a fresh start. Maybe I’d have a good couple of days, but then I’d fail again. Failure leads to feeling bad about yourself, and in my case, that led to more overeating. Just as losing weight can cause a virtuous circle, gaining it back causes a vicious one.

It’s shocking how quickly things went downhill in the last quarter of the year too. I stopped stepping on the scales, and it’s like my body saw an opportunity to grow. I’m back in the habit of weighing myself every day again now. In reality, not stepping on the scales gave me the excuse and opportunity to make more bad decisions.

So the last few months have been tough. Feeling depressed about what was happening made me withdraw, and I’ve ended up stressed, irritable and unhappy. I’ve also had massive amounts of self-doubt caused by my failure and self-doubt leaks into everything, including work, and personal relationships. I’ve occasionally spoken to people about my weight gain, but mostly avoid the real conversation as I’m embarrassed about it. I’ve also been finding social media hard, which is challenging because some of it is necessary for me to be able to do my job. The reasons for this are longer and more complicated than I can get into here, but low self-esteem rarely affects just one area of your life.

Even worse, the fact I had lost so much weight, and how obvious it was caused it to become quite a public thing. I embraced it too! I talked openly about it, wrote about it, and even spoke at a couple of conferences on the subject. Let me tell you… it doesn’t feel great to take a step backwards after that.

Before you think that everything is doom and gloom in this post, there is a little good news. My diabetes is still in remission. I had a blood test just a couple of weeks ago, and my HbA1c was still down at 32m/m (5.1%). I’m very happy with that number, but I’m also under no illusions that if I remain the weight I am now, it’ll rise again, and I can’t let that happen.

It’s tempting to keep quiet about this, but I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. Everything I’ve learned about weight loss has taught me that honesty with myself is critical, and this is part of that. But I also hope that talking publicly about this setback might help someone else. I remember reading about success stories before I lost weight and it’s tempting to see those stories as complete pictures. Mine wasn’t (even though I hoped it would be) and I know there are thousands of other situations exactly like this. It’s just not that simple, and I think it’s probably a good thing if people occasionally read something that doesn’t feel like it could be a script for an infomercial. 😂

The other good news and the thing that’s given me the strength to write these words is that I do feel like I’ve turned a corner since Christmas. I’m down ~5kg from where I was, and I feel like I might be back on track.

I did it before, and I can do it again. Wish me luck.

This is my honest review of the new 16” MacBook Pro after around two days of use.

Context

• I bought the 16”, 2.4Ghz i9 with 32Gb and 2Tb.
• I upgraded from a 2015 15”, 2.8Ghz i7 with 16Gb and 1Tb.

Performance

• It’s noticeably faster in day to day use and feels like a great upgrade in real-world capability.
• That said, the fans spin up a lot. Way more than they did on my 2015. They’re also distractingly loud. Dropbox is the primary culprit, even though it has completed syncing. I wish I could replace Dropbox.

Keyboard

• Even though my primary laptop was a 2015 until two days ago, I do have experience of the butterfly keyboard. I used a client-owned 2016 MacBook Pro for about a year and I’ve never used a less accurate and less reliable keyboard. I hated it.
• The Touch Bar was fine on the 2016 MacBook Pro, and it’s fine here. The physical escape key is a nice upgrade though.
• I’m incredibly happy that the arrow keys are inverted-T style.
• The keyboard feel is fine, I guess. It’s nowhere near as nice as the 2015 MacBook Pro keyboard, or the external Magic Keyboard but my typing is quick and accurate on it. It’s fine.
• 1Password and Touch ID are a match made in heaven.
• I obviously can’t comment on keyboard reliability after only two days with it, but I’ll be watching this like a hawk.

Screen

• The screen is stunning. It feels spacious and bright. I can’t fault it.

Speakers and Microphone

• They’re great, but I rarely use them!
• I work either sitting next to a HomePod, or in a public space where I would wear headphones.
• I’ve done two Zoom calls over the last two days with the new microphone. Both calls were fine, but audio quality was also fine on calls on the 2015 MacBook Pro. If I’m a guest on a podcast, I’ll still use an external microphone.

Conclusion

• This review may seem negative but actually, I already love this machine.
• It’s fast, quick and accurate to type on, and it feels like a great upgrade for me.

UPDATE: The SwiftPM Library is now the Swift Package Index! Here’s some information on what that means!

I said before WWDC this year that my biggest hope for the conference was that Apple would announce first class support for the Swift Package Manager. I got my wish, and I was very happy to see my hopes turned into reality during the opening keynotes on Monday.

Widespread adoption of a single package manager tool for Swift can only be a good thing. Given that the Swift Package Manager is decentralised, an important piece of that adoption will be to have a really great way to find packages.

That’s what I’ve been working on for the last few weeks. It’s far from perfect but it’s ready enough that I’d love to start getting your feedback on it.

Introducing, the SwiftPM Library! It’s a Swift Package Manager search engine. There’s more information here but it should be fairly obvious what it does and how to use it.

Picking the right dependencies to add to your project is hard, and that’s what the SwiftPM Library aims to help with. There’s much more to do on that side of things, but I’m already analysing the Package.swift file, any relevant Xcode project files inside the library and the git history for each package to make sure that the search results recommend the best quality libraries first. I want to make it easy for you to make great decisions about what dependencies to use.

What about the GitHub Package Registry?

Yes, I know it’s coming, and it’ll probably kill this little project of mine dead. 😬 That said, I still went ahead and built this.

Even when it launches, I’m hopeful that my site can provide great, Swift specific analysis of all the available packages. We don’t know exactly what the GitHub and Apple offering will consist of, but given that the GitHub Package Registry is catering for Ruby and JavaScript as well as Swift, it may not go into as much Swift specific detail as I am able to.

CocoaPods Quality Index

The idea for the SwiftPM Library was very much inspired by the CocoaPods Quality Index and the old quality based search that used to power their home page. Unfortunately this metadata is no longer being updated or reported by CocoaPods, but the idea behind my site can be directly traced back to that idea.

I want to publicly thank everyone who was, and continues to be involved with CocoaPods for everything they have done for the community. 🙏

What can this become?

Right now, the site is quite basic. Package search results are being ordered by a “package quality” type score, but it’s fairly rudimentary so far. This aspect of the site is where I see a huge potential for expansion. There are so many possibilities for building an incredible set of metrics to identify mature and reliable dependencies.

What I have right now is a really solid foundation though. I’m cloning repositories, extracting metadata, finding the right Xcode project file if it exists, inspecting git history and running other checks past it. Adding more metadata and scoring parameters from there is the easy bit, and that’s what comes next.

So please add your packages, and play with it. Let me know what you think, and if you have any feature requests (I’m sure you do!) then here’s the best place for them!

Thank you

Thanks for reading this far! Also, thank you so much if you gave me feedback or encouragement on the idea, and whether to build it. Or if you helped test the site in the last week or so while I’ve been ironing out a few problems.

I’d also love to thank Toby Herbert and Chris Tucker Mear for their help in bringing my Rails skills back from the brink of extinction! 😂

No matter what becomes popular or not, I’ve had a ton of fun building it so far, and that’s mainly what matters. 🎉

My experience over the last day or so with the current version of iCloud Drive really isn’t filling me with confidence though. Right now, I use iCloud for all the normal things like device backups, iCloud Photo Library, Notes, and other minor sync and storage features of various third party iOS apps. I don’t explicitly use it for file sync. iCloud Drive is switched on but my “Desktop & Documents Folders” are not synced with it and my working directory for everything outside of source code is my Dropbox folder directly. I also don’t have the “Optimise Mac Storage” option enabled on my Mac.

As a result of this minor usage of iCloud Drive, I’m still getting by with the iCloud 50Gb plan. My photo library is ~35Gb and I still have about 5Gb free after everything else is counted. It’s enough for now, just. At the rate I use it, it’ll probably last me for another year, or even more.

This all worked fine until yesterday when I got an error message in an app I was using on my Mac (I forget which) that iCloud was out of storage and I needed to upgrade. Sure enough, I opened up Finder and see “iCloud storage is full” confidently stated at the top of every folder being managed by iCloud. I also see an exclamation mark overlaid on the iCloud icon in the Finder sidebar.

But hold on, what’s at the bottom of that window? That number matches with the space I see available in the iCloud preferences that you see above.

What’s even stranger is that right now, some things work and some don’t. This is my current situation:

• If I take a photo with my iPhone, it syncs to iCloud and I can see it on my Mac and iPad.
• If I add a reminder in Apple Reminders, or edit a note in Apple Notes, it does sync to my other devices.
• If I upload a large file (my test file was ~1Gb) to iCloud Drive on my Mac, it gives me no errors and the file is visible on my Mac. I see Finder show a dotted outline of a cloud icon next to the file, which changes to be a solid outline of the same cloud icon, before disappearing (which I believe is expected). I also see a circular progress meter in the Finder sidebar as it uploads the file. Everything seems to work, and it shows me no errors. However, I do not see this file in the Files app on my iPhone or iPad even after several refreshes. The free space in iCloud Drive also doesn’t decrease.
• If I delete a file from a different folder in iCloud Drive, the amount of free space shown to me in Finder, or System Preferences does not increase.

I’d be much, much happier with the weird situation where one part of the system says it’s full, while another says there is 5Gb free if I was constantly being shown error messages. In that case, it’d just be a bug with the amount of space being shown in some places, I’d know I was really out of space and I’d upgrade.

No, it’s the silent failure and the fact that a file that seems to be synced with no errors, but actually isn’t that is so troubling. Unless something really major changes, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust iCloud Drive with my critical files.

This is a problem that Apple have had for a while, and I think it comes down to their desire not to bombard users with complex and cryptic error messages. That’s a good fundamental design principle, but I think they take it too far. It’s a good thing to tell your users when something is failing, especially if it could lead to potential data loss. I wish they weren’t quite so afraid of showing errors to users.

If anyone from Apple who’s on a team that might care about this is reading, my machine is currently in this state and I haven’t yet upgraded my iCloud storage. I haven’t filed a bug as that feels like a waste of time for this issue, but I’d be happy to help gather some troubleshooting information if it would be helpful. My Twitter DMs are open, if you want to get in touch.

Update 29th July

Since writing this post, a couple of things have changed, but the bug is still very much alive and well.

• A few days after the original post, Finder stopped showing the “iCloud storage is full” message. At this point the amount of space reported by Finder and by System Preferences matched perfectly, briefly.
• As of right now, every device disagrees on the amount of space available again. The space shown in the footer of the Files app on my iPhone and iPad now shows ~5Gb available, but on my Mac it has gone back to saying “iCloud storage is full” in the top bar of Finder and 1.5Gb available on the status bar. Both the iOS devices and macOS both agree that there is about 1.5Gb available in Settings and System Preferences. I believe the 1.5Gb figure most as it is shown in multiple places across different devices.
• I tried again to upload a large (ish) file to iCloud Drive (~300Mb this time). Unfortunately, the symptoms were the same. The file appeared to upload correctly, the progress meter span for an appropriate amount of time, there were no error messages, but the file never became visible in iCloud Drive on my iOS devices. Available space reported in iCloud drive did not decrease in any of the places mentioned above.
• Photos and other iCloud data continues to sync, and my devices continue to back up successfully, or at least it’s saying they do!
• I have filed a feedback (FB6848301) and supplied a sysdisgnose to Apple.

Along with that push notification come some words though, and it’s those words that I want to talk about today. Here’s two of the messages that I receive from the app I use. I’ve deliberately not highlighted the name of the app as I’m about to (gently) criticise it.

I don’t really like the wording of either of these notifications.

The first problem I have is with the second notification. That’s the message that arrives when today’s reading is higher than yesterday’s. I believe that honesty with yourself is a critical part of losing weight, so I’m disappointed every time I see it avoid the fact that some days I am heavier than I was yesterday. The scales that I was staring down at just a few seconds ago told me I had gained weight, so why does the notification hide it?

My second problem applies to both notifications. It actually doesn’t matter much at all if today’s reading is higher, or lower than yesterday’s. What matters is the trend of my weight over a longer period of time. I may be heavier today, but that could be a completely normal weight fluctuation as part of a downward (or upward!) trend. That’s what I really need to know.

So I took a crack at rewriting them…

I deliberately tried to keep the wording in my rewrites very neutral and emotionless. It’s tricky to tell people they’re gaining weight, and we’re taught it has no place in polite conversation. We’re allowed to suggest people may have lost weight, but never that they may have gained it. I can imagine those thoughts going through the mind of the person writing the original notifications. The thing is that these notifications aren’t being spoken out loud to humans in polite conversation, they’ve been requested by me and I’m very probably the only person who’s going to see them. I want honesty and data.

I’d be much happier if my rewritten versions greeted me every morning. They give me something more than the scale just gave me, and they’re honest. That helps me be honest with myself, and that helps me lose weight.

The really interesting thing is, even though I was trying to keep those messages as clinical and emotionless as possible, my bias towards losing weight snuck in. It’s that word “But” in the rightmost notification that let me down.

It’s OK to put a bit of emotion into the copy your app uses. Humans respond well to it, and as long as it’s appropriate (which is the tricky bit!) it can yield great results. So I leant into it with these rewrites.

But now my bias towards losing weight is really out of the bag… Just think how bad these notifications would feel if you were trying to gain weight, rather than lose it. Erk…

The thing with most weight tracking apps is that they usually ask you what your goal weight is, or how tall you are so they can calculate a goal weight for you. The apps know if you’re trying to lose, or gain. So that could absolutely be part of the logic that creates notifications that would be welcomed by people trying to gain weight.

It’s really important to remember that if you’re going to use emotion in your in-app copy, that you need to be really careful to think about how it night be read by all the different types of people that use your app.

I think there’s just one more improvement I’d make to these notifications. If we know the rate of change, and the goal, then we can predict when the goal might be met! So what about incorporating that into the notification? Here are my final attempts.

Does any of this actually matter? I’d say it really does. This notification is probably the primary way that I interact with this app. I open it once a week or so to look at the graph, but I see the notifications every single day.

When was the last time you looked carefully at what your app’s notifications really said?

You may even have seen tweets with people posing with the banner, but without me. 😂

But my favourite tweets were the ones from people who were taking pictures with the banner, without even being sure why they were doing it. It was at this point I realised I may have become a meme. 🤩

I’m still not exactly sure why #PicsWithDave is a thing, but I’m totally down. 😆

If you saw the banner, either for real in the foyer at AltConf or virtually via Twitter, then you may have been wondering what on earth was going on.

It’s time for me to explain.

The birth of a hashtag

As with so many things that end up embarrasing me, Kevin Hoctor is responsible for this.

It all started after a day at WWDC in June 2014. There’s a bar called The Chieftain next to Moscone West and I was there one night after the conference with a small group of people, including Kevin. At some point during the evening a group at the table next to where we were standing started getting ready to leave, so I asked if we could take their table. The person I asked said “Sure!” followed by “Hey, are you the guy who does the newsletter?” I had started putting my photo in iOS Dev Weekly earlier that year and it had led to a few people saying Hello during the conference. I was always a little embarrassed when this happened, but it was also lovely to hear the nice things they had to say about what I did.

I replied, a little awkwardly, that I was indeed the Dave from the newsletter. We had a brief conversation and it ended with him asking if he could take a photo with me. It was a very genuine and lovely interaction, but it was embarrasing just because it’s strange to be recognised by someone who you don’t know. As we stood taking the picture, I happened to look across at Kevin and he had the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on his face. He could see the whole experience was uncomfortable for me, and like I said before, there’s nothing that makes him happier. 😂

By the end of that evening in the Chieftain, Kevin was asking every random person in the bar “Have you had your picture taken with Dave yet?” and encouraging people to tweet it with a #picswithdave hashtag … it was excruciating. 🙈

When the evening ended, I figured that would be the last I heard of it. But, thanks to Kevin and a few other people it has started back up in the weeks before WWDC every year since then.

What changed this year?

This year was different though. It started in largely the same way it has in previous years with friends asking for their annual #picswithdave, and other people encouraging it to happen. I figured the experience would be about the same as it had been in previous years.

Just to be clear, over the years I’ve become much more comfortable with people asking for pictures with me. It’s also an incredible privilege to be able to be magically introduced to hundreds of people every WWDC, and hear all about where they are from and what they do. I’m grateful that it happened, no matter how it came to be!

So, back to what happened this year. I was out on Monday night with a few people after the keynote. During the evening, the topic of #picswithdave came up and someone took the photo that ended up on that banner you saw in the photos above. By Tuesday lunch time, that picture had been photoshopped by Oisín, printed by Rob and Sally, and was positioned prominently in the AltConf foyer. 🙈 I had no idea any of this had happened before I noticed people tagging me in pictures of themselves with it. 😱

I have since been supplied with some fantastic pictures of that process, which you all also deserve to see. 😀

Just look how happy they are with themselves… 😂

What happened next was that my week was taken over by #picswithdave! It felt like I couldn’t walk twenty paces without being stopped and I met so many wonderful people because of it. It was an incredible experience. It didn’t really matter whether I was inside AltConf (and therefore close to the banner), inside the McEnery Convention centre, or just out on the streets of San Jose. I must have posed for more than 200 photos during the week.

Why did I write this? Well, many people asked me what the whole thing was about as they were taking their selfie. I also know that many more of you didn’t know the story behind it, but also didn’t ask. Finally, I really wanted everyone to know that I didn’t make a banner of myself just so people could take a picture with it! My ego is alive and well, but it’s not that big! 😂

Will #picswithdave be back next year? Well, given that the life-sized banner of me with the hashtag printed on it still exists and that I don’t know where it is right now, I suspect it may be. 🎢

Until then, I’ll occasionally look back at all of the pictures from this year and smile. 👍

I really hope what I’ve made will be truly useful for both iOS developers, and for companies who are looking to hire. There’s already more than 20 positions open on the board, so please go and check them out. Also, don’t forget to sign up for the mailing list as that’s going to be the best way to stay aware of new opportunities on a weekly basis.

Say Hello to iOS Dev Jobs!

Since taking a more active interest in my health, I’ve read plenty about how bad for you a lack of sleep is. For example, from the NHS web site:

Regular poor sleep puts you at risk of serious medical conditions, including obesity, heart disease and diabetes – and it shortens your life expectancy.

I’ve been working my way through that list. Obesity, YEP! Diabetes, YEP! Heart disease… Thankfully no, but there’s no doubt I was heading towards it. I wouldn’t put a lack of sleep at the top of a list of causes for the first two, eating way too much, eating the wrong things, and never exercising took care of them just fine. But now I have those more under control, I figured it was time to work on secondary causes.

I’ve been an early riser for a very long time and usually wake up naturally between 6am and 7am. I’m not usually that late to bed, but between 11pm and 12pm is normal. Given that all the advice says that we need at least 8 hours of sleep, those numbers don’t really add up. How much sleep was I actually getting, and what was the quality of it? I ordered the ring to find out.

The hardware

So how is it? Basically it’s great! It’s certainly bigger than some regular rings, but it’s not so big that it’s uncomfortable or unsightly. People don’t notice that I’m wearing a gadget on my finger, and when I occasionally take it off to show friends they’re surprised it’s not just a normal ring until they look closely. It’s not ugly either, I actually quite like it. The bumps on the inside of the ring are noticeable while wearing it, but they’re not uncomfortable at all. The only slight annoyance is due to the inside of the ring being plastic which can sometimes cause it to stick slightly to my skin, but it’s not a big deal.

It did take a little while to get used to wearing a ring though. I’ve never worn jewellery regularly before and just like when I first started to wear the watch, my body was acutely aware of it for the first week or so. I was able to forget about it reasonably quickly though.

Battery life is also great. It doesn’t quite have the week long charge claimed by the web site, but it definitely goes 4-5 days before it sends me a notification to charge it. That’s easily good enough.

The app

The app is also pretty good, it’s reliable and it presents the sleep data in a sensible way. I’d love to see a few extra metrics though that don’t just focus on night by night sleep, but on trends and averages. For example, I’d like to know:

• How many times in the last 7/30/60 days did I hit my sleep goal of 8 hours?
• What is the average amount of sleep I got? Is it different on weekends/weekdays? Are there patterns?
• How may times a night do I wake up on average, is that number increasing or decreasing? How long do I spend awake when I wake up?

I’d also love it if the app could guide me a little more on how my sleep compares to a person who is getting enough. Is it normal to wake up in the night so regularly? I have no idea.

The results

After wearing the ring for 2 months, the main thing I know is that I definitely do not get enough sleep. I get an average of about 6 hours of interrupted sleep each night. I think I’ve only recorded more than 8 hours a few times. That’s not good.

What’s also interesting is my sleep pattern. First of all I’m surprised to see it’s way more predictable than I would have thought. This is last night’s sleep data for me, and it’s a very typical night:

I always, always, always wake up for about 10-15 minutes, 2 or 3 hours after going to sleep. I don’t ever remember this, and I had no idea it was happening, but the data is really consistent.

What use is this data though? Well, it’s interesting for sure but the ring is ultimately only worth buying if it causes me to do something about it.

Acting on the data

I think blackout blinds would help, the curtains I have in the bedroom let a reasonable amount of natural light through and that almost certainly causes me to wake up early. The problem with this is that I’m a firm believer that waking up gently with natural light is good for you. So given that, the best thing I can do is to force myself to go to bed earlier. If I’m in bed by 10pm instead of 11 or 12, I can certainly sleep more and it does work. I still don’t get 8 hours but it’s definitely closer to 7.

I’ve also noticed something else though. Since I naturally wake up early, I never set an alarm unless I have something really important first thing. But when I do set an alarm, I’m much more likely to sleep up until it goes off. Is my body subconsciously aware that I don’t have an alarm set and is therefore choosing to keep me in lighter sleep towards the end of the night, which then allows the light to wake me up? I need to experiment more with this.

I’ve also experimented with going back to sleep once I have woken up in the morning. I used to believe that once I was awake, that I was awake for the day but it’s not true. Since getting the ring I have definitely woken up, quickly checked how much sleep I got and then successfully gone back to sleep. It doesn’t always work, but I should do this more often. I should also stop charging my phone next to my bed as when I wake up and use the phone for more than 30 seconds, it’s game over.

What about the Apple Watch?

There’s one more thing I wanted to address. Instead of buying the ring, why didn’t I use one of the many sleep tracking apps for the watch?

I love my watch and wear it every day, so my first instinct was to use the that device, if possible. I tried wearing it all night for a while with various apps (AutoSleep, Sleep++, and Pillow). They all work well and the watch can track sleep just fine.

I think the reason it didn’t stick for me was that it takes a level of preparation and thought that the ring does not. The watch can easily make it through a whole day, I do usually charge it overnight, every night. So if I’m wearing it all night, I have a choice to make. Do I top up the charge before I go to bed, or in the morning before leaving the house? What if I have an early meeting or gym class? Then I have to do it the night before, but what if I forget? Do I stay up later to charge it? Of course not, but that admittedly very first world problem meant I didn’t track my sleep every night, and eventually it just fell out of being a habit. What I know is that now I have a device that I just don’t need to think at all about for sleep tracking, it’s better than doing it with the watch. Also, a device with zero user interface is unable to be distracting. The watch does more than that, am I thinking of getting hours towards my stand goal while I’m trying to sleep? Probably not, but the pure purpose of the ring is only to track sleep, so it’s better as a device to wear in bed. Is it expensive? Absolutely, but if price is not an issue then I’d say the benefits are there.

That’s it! Well done for getting this far, if you did.

Oh and in case its not obvious, I paid for the ring with my own money and this post is not sponsored in any way.