Tech promised better rest. So, why are we still wide awake?
And here's tech again, coming for our sleep. The battle for eight hours of proper shut-eye has a leaderboard of its own. Smart rings are tracking REM cycles. There are AI-enabled mattresses and pillows that adjust themselves for perfect alignment. Spotify has playlists for white noise, whale sounds and music that gets more downtempo with every track, to lull you into stupor.
At that Japanese home-goods shop in the mall, everyone's putting their hands into the hole to test if the bedsheet fabric really lowers the temperature by one degree. Melatonin melts are big business. Health nerds on Insta are convinced that eating two kiwis before bed will put them to sleep. And yet, we're no closer to sleeping better than before. Could sleepmaxxing be the thing that's coming in the way of rest?
Gayathri Subramanian works at the cognitive neuroscience lab at Northwestern University, USA. She knows that sleep is more than a rest-and-reboot period for the body. 'It plays a crucial role in helping us learn new things, and it directly impacts memory consolidation and storage that acquire over the day,' she says. Subramanian is not surprised that there's so much interest in sleep now. We're sleeping later and less. And every tracking device is convinced that the problem can be managed with data. 'There's even a name for the phenomenon in which one is so obsessed with sleep data that it affects their rest: Orthosomnia,' she says.
Put the devices away. We're probably expecting too much benefit from too little sleep. (SHUTTERSTOCK)
Here's what sleep trackers won't tell you: Good rest isn't about the numbers. Even the eight-hour mandate is a myth, says Dr Ragavendar B, a Chennai-based consultant neurologist. For much of human history, we slept in two short spells over a 24-hour period, rather than one long one. It helped our ancestors migrate and fend off predators. We, meanwhile, aim for one eight-hour stretch, and we trust data more than how we feel in the morning. 'Sleep devices aren't change makers; they are awareness tools,' he says. They're problem finders, not problem solvers.
We're probably expecting too much benefit from too little sleep. 'The data that these devices collect is only 85% accurate,' says Subramanian. Besides, they only illustrate the what, not the why, of troubled sleep. 'There could be underlying reasons, such as obesity, psychiatric issues, or sleep apnoea,' says Dr. Ragavendar. Those aren't things that a ring, cooling bedsheet or a whale-sound playlist can address.
We'll probably make a bad sleep decision this weekend. We might stay awake longer, and hope to make up the resting time later. Don't push the deficit back by more than 48 hours, warns Dr. Ragavendar. 'It will increase stress hormones such as cortisol, which again leads to poor sleep quality, pushing you into a cycle.' The formula for good sleep is crushingly dull: Sleeping and waking at the same times, dimming the lights as bedtime approaches, putting the phone away, eating an hour before sleeping, getting warm and comfy. We knew that already.
It's why no device, hack or trend has been able to actually deliver better sleep. Rest isn't something to win at; it's something to surrender to. The real flex isn't a high score on the Oura ring or checking the pillow app in the morning. It's actually being enough of a loser to call it a day, over and over, so you wake up a winner.
From HT Brunch, Aug 16, 2025
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