Is your wellness routine making it harder to relax?
Sleep scores, step counts and meditation streaks can help us understand our habits. But when looking after yourself becomes another thing to get right, it may be time to change your relationship with the numbers.
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Words: Faye James Pics: Getty Images
You wake up feeling reasonably refreshed, until your watch tells you otherwise. Your sleep score is disappointing, your recovery is below par and, suddenly, you’re wondering how you’ll manage the day.
Later, you squeeze in a walk to reach your step target, despite wanting an early night. Before bed, you open your meditation app because you can’t bear to lose the streak.
Each habit began with a sensible intention. Yet somewhere along the way, caring for yourself has started to feel like meeting another set of expectations.
Positive psychology practitioner Tess Brouwer sees this tension in her work with people who are accustomed to achieving.
“Many of the tools designed to help us recover have become one more thing to perform,” she tells Psychologies.
When information becomes instruction
Tracking can offer useful insights, perhaps you notice that drinking alcohol affects your sleep, or that a particular exercise routine leaves you feeling energised. The information gives you something to consider and adjust.
The difficulty, Brouwer explains, begins when a number takes precedence over your own experience. “When the data stops informing you and starts instructing you,” she says.
You might feel well until you see a low score, then begin interpreting the morning through that result. Equally, an encouraging recovery reading might persuade you to push through when you feel exhausted. “The tipping point usually comes when the number arrives before the feeling.”
This doesn’t mean every disappointing score is harmful, or that tracking has no value. What matters is the authority you give it. Can you consider the information without allowing it to determine your mood, plans or sense of achievement?
When rest becomes something to achieve
For someone who enjoys completing goals, a wellness dashboard can be particularly compelling. There is always another target to reach, another streak to extend or a slightly better result to pursue.
Brouwer experienced this herself after committing to daily meditation, when illness interrupted her routine for three days, the app offered to restore her streak. The offer prompted her to question what she was protecting.”I realised I’d started meditating for the tick.”
A practice intended to create space had acquired its own pressure. Keeping the record intact was beginning to matter more than the experience.
The same question is worth asking about other habits. Are you taking an evening walk because it feels good, or because an unfinished target makes you uncomfortable? Can you miss a session without feeling you have failed?
Notice how checking makes you feel
Brouwer describes the internal expectations many of us carry as a “should manual”. Tracking can give those expectations a visible scorecard.
“For perfectionists, tracking becomes an endless report card.” Pay attention to your response when a device runs out of battery, or a workout goes unrecorded. Does it feel as though the effort no longer counts? When someone asks how you are, do you describe your experience or reach for your statistics?
Sleep researchers have used the term orthosomnia to describe a preoccupation with perfecting sleep-tracker data. The original report was a small case series, rather than proof that tracking causes sleep difficulties for everyone, but it illustrates how pursuing better numbers can complicate efforts to rest. “If tracking is feeding real anxiety, please reach out for proper clinical support rather than another app,” says Brouwer.
Give your tools a different job
Rather than automatically abandoning everything, consider what each tool contributes. Brouwer suggests asking: “Does it make me more curious or more critical?” and “Do I feel better or worse after I check it?”
A useful tracker might help you recognise a pattern and make a manageable change. A less useful one may leave you repeatedly checking information without knowing what to do with it. “Use it as a short-term teacher rather than a lifelong supervisor,” she advises.
You could turn off reminders, review trends less frequently or remove the phone from your bedroom. If you want to experiment with a break, focus on optional wellness tracking, while continuing any monitoring recommended by your clinician.
Check in with yourself first
Tomorrow morning, pause before opening the app. Notice whether you feel rested, tense, hungry or ready to move. Then look at the data, if you choose, and consider it alongside that experience. “Lead with feeling and follow with data,” says Brouwer.
A flexible routine leaves room for an interrupted night, illness, family demands and the days when you simply need less to do.
You may still enjoy recording a run or following a meditation programme. But you can also choose a gentle stretch, accept an unfinished target and let a missed session remain missed. The purpose of the habit is to support your life, give yourself room to notice whether it does.
