When I sit down and really reflect on my sleep habits, a sense of inadequacy, guilt, and a bit of anxiety creeps in. Most evenings, I spend an untold amount of time awake at 2 a.m. with what I would call “night thoughts.” You know the stuff — replays of work missteps, relationship blunders, personal insecurities, and a counting of the espressos and nutritional choices I made that lead to this sleeplessness. It gets worse: More evenings than I care to admit, I allow my son to crawl into bed where he spins, kicks, and wreaks havoc with the blankets. With some frequency I sneak in some weekday television, early bedtime be damned. And yet, a week into tracking sleep with the Samsung Galaxy Ring ($400), the Samsung Health app offers up my sleep animal: A lion.
“As a lion sleeper, you have a healthy sleep pattern,” the app tells me. I would remain in disbelief if it weren’t for the data to back that up. I sleep just a hair under 8 hours on the regular, usually near the same time. My night-time interruptions are apparently short and possibly more in my head than in the reality of my bed. My sleep isn’t as bad as I thought. But with all this data, could I actually sleep better? Can sleep trackers help us to get more zzzs? The answer isn’t all that straightforward.
