#Mood Tracker Apps for 2023

[the---hermit]

19|01|2023

My months of rest and relaxation // day 72

Today was super chill, I listened to the witcher audiobook a lot while doing other things like crocheting and chopping veggies. The narration in the fourth novel is slow af so I am really thankful to the audiobook or I would be stuck forever.

Productivity:

practiced Irish on duolingo

finished my crochet sweatervest and I am so happy with how it turned out!! The size fits perfectly and now I am left with figuring out what my next project will be

updated my reading journal

worked on some posts

sterted to reorganize my pinterest a little bit because it was a mess

looked for hair inspo cause I absolutely need to get my haircut fixed cause it has no sense anymore

chopped a bunch of veggies for dinner

Self care:

read first thing in the morning

started using a mood tracking app since I have no been using trackers on my bujo in a while. I have no idea if this will work out for me cause digital stuff is not my thing but I am trying

took a relaxing bath

📖: The Tower Of Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski

[molkolsdal]

btwn 2020 and 2023 I gained 60 pounds and I was the heaviest I've ever been in my life. I used to work out regularly and eat well before that (literally my abs were showing up and my bum was so nice and lifted 😩) so I thought "OK no need to panic, I already know what I need to get healthy" but my life is totally different than it was pre-2020 so it was hard to get back into it without those same conditions. I was trying to get healthy last year but I was so inconsistent and gave up more times than I'd like to admit. But after realizing how much money I was wasting (on new clothes cuz I was too big for my old ones, takeout, gym memberships I wasn't using, weed) I was like what the fuck am I doing???

We bought a new digital scale that you can connect to an app and I was able to see things more clearly like my percentage of visceral fat etc etc and I also spoke to some of my work friends about where they work out (like orange theory and f45) and how it's expensive but worth it cuz it keeps you accountable. So I finally quit my cheap, overpacked gym that I hated going to, signed up for orange theory, started taking my step tracker and My Fitness Pal more seriously, and have broken my long term goal down into smaller checkpoints so that i can keep track of my progress more easily rather than just having this dream I'm trying to reach in the distant future. Now I've lost 8 pounds in 2 months, don't crave weed or sugar anymore (and I still let myself enjoy stuff on Friday and Saturday if the mood does strike), and actually enjoy (look forward to!) my workouts.

I don't know why I initially started making this post but I'm just really happy with where I am now cuz for the longest time it seemed impossible to be healthy again, and now it's finally happening.

[daramdarararam]

YEAR 2023: REBYU

In terms of money: halos maubos. last year was a lot better, Lampas half ung naipon ko sa goal ko last year eh, ngayon, wala. Halos umiyak nalang ako. Hindi din okay ung naging overall health ko this year kasi, muntik muntikan na naman ako dalhin sa ER, and andaming nagkasakit sa buong angkan. Pero salamat nalang mapepera sila, kung walang pera, baka sobrang lungkot ng taong ito.

This year, ni-monitor ko daily mood ko. Apakakonti ng wonderful days hayp. Yung iba ata pinasang awa ko para magmukhang okay, pero tiningnan ko ngayon, fckkkk. Tiningnan ko din notes sa bawat araw, haha di ako natuwa. andaming nangyare.

JABOL REBYU

Tapos hoooy!! Anlala! WAHAHAHA may manual tracker ako. naka-557 paputok ako this year🙈🤣👀 Sobrang dami pala talaga if bibilangin/irerecord mo talaga. Daming time no wahah. The manual record was from January-September 2023. Simula Oct, gumamit na ako ng app. 557+108 is equal to 665! Yan ung estimate jakol count this year tanginaaaa whahahahaha! Now, im currently in my 3 days streak. Paputok ba ako mamaya? HAHA🙈🤣👀

Fascinated lang ako tumingin ng data/numbers kaya natutuwa ako magtrack haha. Gusto ko sana palitan ung mood tracker app ko for 2024? Baka may maiirecommend kayo. And, gusto ko din i-track ung pasok at labas ng pera ko hahahaha tingnan ko next year haha! The jaks tracker helped me manage my urge to jabol this year, kung wala yan, baka nag 1k+ yan HAHAHAHA. Kung karat, wala, zero this year. I hope 2024 will be better chz bwahahha. meron pala isa. HAHA

I barely met new friends online/IRL, may ilan naman. lol nakakatamad magsocialize, nagstick ako sa same friends ung ilan andito, ung isa fave ko dito hahaha i know you know, and I'm thankful na kahit papano, I can message u anytime, kaya lang sana hindi ako burden kasi I know youre going through something na hindi din naman madali. I just wish, us both happiness kahit andaming nangyayare, and I'll be here, palagi man akong nawawala sa radar, makokontak at makokontak mo pa din ako wahahaha, para kang DLTB na bus, wherever you are, we are there! WHAHAHAHA

So ayon, not a great year. Andaming hearbreaks. Lalo tong mga mercury retrogade na yan. tangina. Maraming beses na umiiyak ako somewhere, buti nalang I managed to get through the year pa rin naman ng buo and fearless. waw. Thank your tumblr friends.

Ang biggest takeaway ko pa din this year ay, *Bawal magmadali.* Ilang beses ako sinampal nyan this year and also last year. Hindi talaga natututo, naiiapply ko naman sa ibang parte ng buhay kaso kailangan ko talaga gawing integrated lahat... One at a time. What's meant for you will find and make its way to you!

To mas makalat pero mapera, magulo't traumatic, pero matagumpay na Bagong Taon! Happy New Year! *im sure tinangina nyoko on that part, pero ineembrace ko na ang realidad ng buhay tahahaha*

[vent-channel]

Going through my photos on my broken ass iPhone because it has no storage anymore 😒 to delete things. I scroll back even last year and I am such a different person.

My earliest photos on that phone are from 2019. I have bad few memories of anything before last year and especially bad memories of 2023 (I had a terrible period of crisis for most of the year)

Looking through my old photos is like looking through a shop of diamonds to me. I am so much of a different person now. The people around me are so much of different people now. I don’t even talk to a lot of them anymore but I could NEVER bring myself to delete their photos, they are the only memories I have of events, they help me keep my thoughts in order.

There are a lot of things I look on in my gallery and cringe at a bit (like the watt pad stories I photo’d to read later that were.. questionable) but these are now a part of my history. The very very small part I still have left of before my identity crisis and before gender dysphoria and before depression and before burnout. I have nothing of my childhood self because I was so angry I killed my internal perception of her. She’s gone now. I’m alone in my head now.

I have memories of before I moved house. Moving house killed me. I lived in that house for so long and I think a part of my soul is still there. I can’t even look at it if I ever go by it again because the new owners changed so many of the things I loved about it. There were tall bushes and flowers around the front and they’re all gone now. I wonder if they got rid of the big patch of plants we had in the garden or the lavender or the pear tree the age of my little brother that I loved so much. I think it would kill me if they did. I don’t have pictures of them. I wish I did. I want to see it again. Our garden was so beautiful and big.

I have old memes from group chats nobody uses anymore. I have memories of my now old school (some may say that it was bad so why would I want to remember, but I miss the life I had so badly). I have time stamps of every holiday I’ve been on so I can remember it. I have pictures of me with my long hair that I can now look back on with fondness rather than disgust. I have pictures of me with Disney princesses.

I have old photos of my friends, and photos of old friends. Photos of people I haven’t talked to in years.

On other parts of my phone I have group chats full of my primary school friends and all sorts of things. I have notes in my notes app from years ago. The few good memories I put down in my mood tracker diary. My webtoon and watt pad apps that have been offloaded for ages. I can’t delete them even for storage because I will forget I will forget.

To all the big tech companies all of the photos are just data. But for me (and I’m sure others with memory problems) the storage of a phone is worth more than a lot of very expensive things. The most beautiful thing in the world is a memory. The pictures are like my snow globes that I keep from my holidays and the memory box in my wardrobe and my baby memory box my parents have of me. Every day I pray for the resurfacing of more memories. There are so many small things that seem insignificant to others that are symbols of my childhood that I remember. I have lists of things to help my memories.

[wutlaikalikes]

2023 Art Summary and Mood Tracker (app: Daylio)

just rambling: I probably would stop posting my drawings here, I do have a Tumblr account for my drawings, Instagram and deviantArt. feel free to add me there.

[techguys]

The 5 Best Smartwatch for Android Phones of 2023

Traditional watches are timeless but when it comes to their functionality - they only tell you time & date. But their smart cousins aka the smartwatches come loaded with so many interesting features that make them a versatile partner. Apart from telling time & date, you can count on them to give you real time weather forecasts, tell you your heart rate, blood oxygen saturation levels, give insights on your sleeping pattern, allow you to control your phone’s camera or music and so on. The point is that smartwatches are capable of doing much more that makes our lives easier and more fun.

Now if you think that in order to enjoy these wonderful features, you need to invest in an apple watch only, then you are highly mistaken. There are many android best smartwatches available online that you can choose from and enjoy the best of features.

Here is a list of such smartwatches for boys and girls. They are trendy and support many interesting features that will make you forget about the apple watches.

Take a look:

Storm Call

Impressive & intelligent - this smart watch is a great hit among the masses. It is designed to make your lives easier and of course smarter. It features a 1.69” HD display that ensures that you see everything clear and bright. The immersive touch experience makes navigation easy and fun. It weighs only 45 grams, meaning that you can wear it comfortably throughout the day. You can also count on this smartwatch for men & women to keep a check on your regular well being. It comes loaded with multiple health & fitness related features like heart rate tracker, spO2 monitor, calories tracker and sleep monitor. You can also guide yourself to mindfulness with breath awareness and help lower your heart rate to normal. De-stress yourself and keep your mind at peace effortlessly. This smartwatch for girls and boys features a responsive dial pad that allows you to make seamless calls with bluetooth. You can also save up to 10 contacts and experience loud and clear calls with in-built mic & speaker. This smartwatch with calling features is a perfect match for people who are always on the go.

Wave Flex Connect

Are you someone who is always on the go and are looking for something stylish and comfortable that sits on your wrist and makes your life easier then we have the perfect match for you! This

smartwatch for men and women is not only good looking but comes loaded with so many features that will make you want it right away. The premium metal design on this smartwatch with calling adds finesse to the overall look. It supports a 1.83” HD display that provides crystal clear visuals and supports capacitive touch. This makes navigation around the apps in the smartwatch much easier and efficient. With this on your wrist, you are guaranteed to stay connected to the outside world 24X7. Not only it informs you about incoming calls or texts but with this, you can also make/take phone calls! All thanks to the inbuilt speaker & mic. You can even dial & save up to 10 contacts. This is one of the coolest smartwatches for women and men) who love to talk to their friends or family, no matter where they are or what they are doing. The watch is IP68 water, splash and dust resistance - this makes it a great companion for your adventures.

Hammer Ace 3.0,

Large display, great visuals, interesting features - this smartwatch has it all. The 1.85” IPS large display offers visual clarity and the strong metallic build offers sturdy look and durability. You can take advantage of the 60 sports modes and track your physical fitness journey like a pro. This smartwatch also offers clear and seamless calling feature and also brings smart notifications to your wrist. The 100+ watch faces give you the freedom to match your watch’s vibe with your mood or OOTD. This smartwatch also features an IP67 water resistance rating.

Boult Ridge,

A made in India smartwatch that supports a large 1.8” HD display. It supports bluetooth calling that makes your life easier by giving you freedom to make/take calls when your hands cannot reach your phone. You can check your heart rate, spO2 levels in real time and the menstrual tracker helps women stay on top of their menstrual health. The 100+ sports modes come in handy when you are trying to achieve your fitness goals.

Zebronics ZEB-FIT4220CH

This smartwatch supports a round dial and full touch TFT color display.  You can count on it to make seamless calls from your wrist and even control your music. The 100+ customisable watch faces help you match your watch with your OOTD. It only supports 7 sports modes which might not be enough for people who have an active lifestyle. The watch comes with an IP67 water resistant rating. Hope you enjoyed reading through the list of best smartwatches for android phones!

[the-daily-scrommit]

January 14, 2023

Jan 14, 2023 - Tenth entry

1:32pm

I didn't write an entry last night because of how content I was. Yesterday ended up being an emotional day, but not for bad reason. I got out of my house more than I have any other day the last couple of weeks, going with my family to the store, and then going with my gym buddy for a workout, followed by a late dinner and hours-long chats with one of my closest friends. There wasn't much reaching out that happened yesterday, because I didn't need it; I wasn't in crisis. I talked casually with my dating app friends on and off throughout the day and generally had a pleasant time. I didn't do anything more or less than I wanted to, no texting my ex-partner beyond sending them posts on social media, and certainly no calls.

I also was able to talk about the hope I have with my friends, which is something I've been actively fighting for most of the last week, if not longer. The physical, unexplainable sensation of hope that I hold still has an impact on my conscious, no matter how much I try to fight it off and burn it to the ground, hoping that lacking all relationship-adjacent hope will help me move on and cope even faster and better than I feel like I am currently. This doesn't feel genuinely true, and only one person has pushed intensely for me to drop my hope; the others in my life have reassured me that hope is good. This hope can carry me through the difficulties I find within myself in this point in time, even if what I'm hopeful for- consciously or not- comes around in the future in the way I expect it to.

Talking about this hope again in the context of its existence in my waking mind has lifted another weight from my shoulders. This hope deserves to be acknowledged. After all, I'm determined to not let it get the best of me or hold me back from the better things I may have coming my way. This hope for the potential resurgence of this romantic relationship exists alongside my adventure to find other good things for myself in my life. I'm not planning on letting one thing hold me back from another if anything surfaces or resurfaces down the line.

That may have been more of a ramble than I usually write here, but that's okay. Those were most of my thoughts from yesterday, anyways. Yesterday was very hope oriented, which I think is a change I needed from the cycle the last couple weeks have been.

I'm planning on updating again tonight, though I thankfully have another busy one ahead of me.

-1:53pm

Jan 15, 12:18pm

I didn't continue writing last night because I got home around 1:30am and wanted to spend that time sleeping before my shift six hours later. While I didn't get much sleep, or even very good sleep, it was still enough to get me through my work day. With the addition of a bit of caffeine and nutrients, I made it through just fine.

Yesterday ended up being the first "good" day that I listed for my 2023 mood tracker that will eventually be materialized into a blanket reflecting my year in moods. The performance I went to last night left me with so much new or rediscovered passion for art projects of all sorts. This is an excitement I haven't felt for art as a whole in seemingly years. It'll take quite a bit of time, but I'm going to be getting back into all sorts of art from here on.

I feel very content with how yesterday ended up for me, so I don't feel much more need to continue writing for now.

Until next time, take care. I am sending you love <3

[vagaryvibes]

The Future of Digital Health: From Smartphones to Helping Us Live Longer

Future of Digital Health is an emerging field that uses technology to improve health and healthcare. There are many different types of digital health technologies, including health apps.

Health apps are mobile applications that allow users to track their health, set goals, and connect with other users. They can be used to track fitness, diet, and sleep; manage chronic conditions; and more.

Digital health technologies have the potential to transform healthcare by making it more patient-centered, accessible, and efficient. However, challenges such as data privacy and interoperability must be addressed before they can truly revolutionize healthcare.

The past: fitness trackers, health monitoring

Future of Digital Health is an umbrella term for the use of technology to improve health and healthcare. This can include everything from patient portals to fitness trackers to clinical decision support tools.

The use of the future of digital health technologies is growing rapidly. In 2018, there were an estimated 18 million active digital health app users in the United States alone. This number is expected to grow to 53 million by 2023.

There are many potential benefits of digital health technologies. For example, they can help patients better manage their own health and make informed decisions about their care. They can also help providers deliver more efficient and effective care.

However, there are also some challenges associated with digital health technologies. For instance, ensuring data privacy and security is a major concern. Additionally, it can be difficult to get patients to actually use these devices and apps as intended.

Fitness trackers are one type of digital health tool that has become increasingly popular in recent years. These devices can track a person’s steps, heart rate, and other physical activity data. Some fitness trackers also have features that allow them to monitor sleep quality and provide guidance on how to improve sleep habits.

Health monitoring devices are another type of digital health tool that is used to collect data about a person’s health. These devices can measure things like blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar levels. Some devices can also be used to monitor mental health by tracking mood and stress levels.

Future of Digital Health is an importance term for the use of tech. This includes fitness trackers and health monitoring apps on smartphones. It also encompasses more sophisticated devices that are used in hospitals and clinics.

Fitness trackers have been around for a few years now. They were one of the first examples of digital health technology. These devices track your steps, heart rate, and sleep patterns. Some also track your calorie intake and provide you with coaching to help you meet your fitness goals.

Health monitoring apps are another type of digital health technology. These apps can help you track your blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol levels. They can also remind you to take your medications or schedule doctors’ appointments.

More sophisticated devices are being used in hospitals and clinics to monitor patients’ vital signs and collect data about their condition.

The present: personalized medicine, remote patient care

The future of digital health is Personalized Medicine and Remote Patient Care. With the advent of new technologies, medical treatments can now be tailored to an individual’s unique genetic makeup. This personalized approach to medicine is more effective and efficient and leads to better health outcomes. In addition, remote patient care is becoming increasingly popular as it allows patients to receive care from the comfort of their own homes. This type of care is convenient, cost-effective, and leads to improved patient satisfaction.

Personalized medicine is the future of digital health. With personalized medicine, remote patient care will be more accessible and convenient than ever before. Digital health has revolutionized the way we manage our health. By harnessing the power of data, we can now customize treatments to each individual’s unique needs. This is the promise of personalized medicine.

With personalized medicine, we can move away from one-size-fits-all treatments and toward therapies that are tailored to each individual’s genetic makeup. This approach is already yielding results: cancer patients who receive personalized treatment plans have better outcomes than those who receive standard care. In addition to being more effective, personalized medicine will also make remote patient care more feasible. With digital health tools, patients will be able to consult with their doctors from anywhere in the world.

Digital health has the potential to change how we manage our health and prevent disease. By harnessing the power of data, digital health can provide insights that enable us to make more informed decisions about our health.

There are a number of exciting developments in digital health that have the potential to transform healthcare. One area that is particularly promising is personalized medicine.

Personalized medicine is an approach to healthcare that takes into account an individual’s unique genetic makeup. This information can then be used to tailor treatments and prevention strategies specifically for them.

Remote patient care is another area where digital health is having a major impact. By using technology, providers can now offer care to patients who are not physically present in the same location. This has the potential to improve access to care for many people, especially those who live in rural areas or who have difficulty travelling.

The Future of Digital Health: AI in healthcare, digital therapeutics

Digital therapeutics is the use of technology in the treatment of disease. It is a growing field that is using data to personalize and improve patient care. Digital therapeutics are already being used to treat a variety of conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and mental health disorders. The potential for digital therapeutics to transform healthcare is enormous.

There are many advantages to using digital therapeutics in healthcare. Digital therapeutics can be used to precisely target a condition and deliver personalized treatment. They can also be used to monitor a patient's progress and adjust treatment accordingly. Digital therapeutics have the potential to improve outcomes for patients and reduce costs for healthcare systems. In the future, digital therapeutics will become an essential part of healthcare delivery.

Future of Digital health has the potential to revolutionize the way we manage our health and wellbeing. By harnessing the power of technology, digital health can help us to better understand our bodies, make informed decisions about our health, and ultimately improve our quality of life. There are a number of factors that are driving the growth of digital health.

Firstly, there is an increasing demand for convenient and accessible healthcare solutions that can be tailored to individual needs. Secondly, advances in technology are making it possible to collect and analyze vast amounts of data more effectively than ever before.

Finally, there is a growing awareness of the importance of taking a proactive approach to healthcare, rather than simply reacting to illness or disease. The future of Digital health has the potential to transform every aspect of healthcare, from diagnosis and treatment to prevention and management.

[davidpoal]

12 Profitable Ecommerce Business Ideas Online 2022

Did you know, why eCommerce business ideas are the most demanding topic across the search engine because of their expeditious growing stats. Global retail eCommerce sales are projected to reach about $7.4 trillion by 2025 which is an enormous number.

Most Popular Online eCommerce Business Ideas

There is no limit to eCommerce business ideas but the biggest question mark is which one is to choose. This article will help you to capitalize on well-liked trends and industry growth ideas.

Online Grocery and Foods

The profitability of the business like online grocery and foods niche specialty relies on merchant relations and tireless drive for expanding the customer base. However, given the wide number of items and the equally huge target market, this specialty will keep on being an extraordinary online eCommerce business startup in upcoming years. you can expand the business to make it the most beneficial eCommerce business for yourself because the Grocery market share will experience an increase of $35.6 billion by 2023.

Online Clothing Business Ideas

You can begin your own online-based eCommerce store for selling clothes. This is the clearest choice and has generally been embraced by all shapes and sizes of businesses. You can begin a multi-merchant site like Myntra, Flipkart, Amazon, and eBay to offer readymade clothing as they are never out of interest. Some of the clothing eCommerce store ideas are custom clothing, marketplace, online wholesale business, buying and selling old clothes.

Smart Home Products and Accessories

The internet of things( IoT) has become so popular people love connecting to their home appliances and they want that they can talk to them and complete their needs. for example, your garage door informs your air conditioner to turn on. At the same, it indicates you, the speaker, to play some relaxing music for you. The stress level can get ascertained from the mood tracker app on your phone. Knowing the importance of IoT in your life you can choose this as one of the best eCommerce business ideas.

Online eLearning Platform

Yes we know there are already so many online education portals running but the reason is the ongoing heavy demand for online classes perpetually. An online learning portal has become necessary after this pandemic happened. There is a numerous number of students looking to get information from different platforms and resources. According to Global Industry Analysts, the private learning and tutoring market is expected to grow as a $227.2 billion industry in upcoming years. If you are still confused regarding how to start this business, approach WDP Technologies best education portal development company.

Beauty and Health Products

The beauty and health product selling online businesses are the absolute greatest eCommerce business ideas in today’s scenario. Indeed, even today, with this large number of online business thoughts accessible, it actually remains very beneficial. This thought is particularly really great for youngsters with extraordinary online business showcasing abilities. However, as long as you can impart the significance of the items you’re selling in individuals’ lives, your odds of coming out on top are high.

Selling Second Hand Products

People wouldn’t fret involving recycled items for however long they are quality items and are looking great. You should simply begin gathering those recycled things, like clothes, adornments, furniture, and posting them on your online e-commerce business site. Additionally need to ensure that you are offering them at sensible costs. Simply begin by testing how well this thought does locally prior to extending your scope.

Online music streaming platform

No one downloads songs to listen to them and stores them in the phone memory. Everyone is listing songs online so the market for music streaming apps is huge. you can develop a music streaming app to provide your customer a great platform with unique features like selecting favorite songs, creating playlists, offline music streaming, etc at a very reasonable cost. With a good sense of marketing, you can definitely touch the peak of these eCommerce business ideas.

Gadget and electronics

The gadget and electronics industry is certainly quite possibly of the most flourishing industry out there. Furthermore, it ought not to be a shock, as, lately, the world of gadgets has definitely evolved. The smart home system, smartwatches, cell phones, tablets, and numerous other creative devices have totally assumed control over the entire world. you have many ways you can take towards building the electronics e-commerce store of your dreams. The most important thing is simply that you just get started.

Pet Foods — Business Idea

The pet care industry grew to $103.6 billion in 2022. Consequently, since you are searching for strong and profitable eCommerce business ideas, there is a great deal of chance to take advantage of a pet goods niche and sell related items. You can benefit from selling cautiously chosen treats, comfortable beds, and toys, and that’s just the beginning. You can source solid toys for extreme chewers, strong beds, joint enhancements for canines, preparing circles for your pet’s wellness, and designed coats to keep pets warm.

Online Fitness Coaching

Quite possibly everything thing, you can manage right currently is to offer online-based wellness training classes. It’s a magnificent online business thought! Because nowadays people are so much dependable on the internet and had a very busy schedule, this is an optimal time for you to gain by this open door, Develop online fitness app and begin offering fitness instructing classes.

Customized Gift Store

The customized gifts business is evolving because more people are choosing to look for presents that are excellent or selective. Customized gift stores stock different things. There are a couple of specialty considerations open for this industry for individuals expecting to stand out. Ranging from individual ideas, such as photo frames and key-chains, to group gifts, such as commemorative gifts, personalized gifts can provide a viable business option for those with creativity and tenacity.

Digital Services

Digital Services are in remarkable demand and more and more people are looking for these services in this sector. If you have skills related to web development, design, SEO, or anything that lies within the IT domain, you can start using them right away. It’s a tremendous way to make more money on the side, and you can also eventually gain some long-term clients.

Turn Your eCommerce Business Ideas into Reality

WDP Technologies can help you with speeding up your online business with our eCommerce website development service. We do not simply help the organization in building online business stores that give them a solid foundation yet likewise ensure that they run consistently through their development.

At WDP Technologies Pvt. Ltd., we render unrivaled eCommerce development services by creating cutting-edge online storefronts with our proficiency in the latest technologies. We build eCommerce sites that are user-friendly and engaging for different business segments over the globe.

Wrapping Up

If you are inspired and ambitious about starting your own eCommerce business, you first need to contenders a profitable eCommerce business idea. The 12 profitable eCommerce business ideas above will help you in deciding what you want to sell. Though, research and planning are key to making any business idea work.

[itsfinancethings]

New story in Business from Time: Why We Buy In to the Big Business of Sleep

In a small room without windows, I am instructed to breathe in sync with a colorful bar on a screen in front of me. Six counts in. Six counts out. Electrodes tie me to a machine whirring on the table. My hands and feet are bare, wiped clean and placed atop silver boards. My finger is pinched by an oximeter, my left arm squeezed by a blood-pressure cuff. Across from me, a woman with a high ponytail, scrublike attire and soft eyes smiles encouragingly. She is not a doctor, and this is not a lab. The air smells like lavender and another fruity scent I later learn is cassis. My chair is made of woven reeds, topped with a thick cushion and a pillow for lumbar support. The windowless room feels more cozy than claustrophobic; this is not torture but a luxury. I am, in fact, in a five-star resort with a 2,000-sq-m spa and an indoor heated pool. This process, I have been promised, will help me sleep better.

For years, I had been waking up exhausted. My primary care doctor ran my blood work three separate times to try to suss out an underlying problem, and each time it came back fine. I had no problem falling asleep, or even really staying asleep. The problem was that no matter how many hours of sleep I got, I had to haul myself out of bed in the morning, grumpy and lethargic.

So, in December, before COVID-19 ravaged the world and made travel unsafe, I journeyed to a beautiful valley in Portugal’s Port wine region to take part in the €220-per-night Six Senses Sleep Retreat to try to learn to sleep better. Six Senses has long made wellness and sustainability two of its main pillars of business. They have yoga retreats and infrared spas. They’re aiming to be plastic-free by 2022—all plastic, not just single-use. But for the past two years, the luxury resort brand has bet big on sleep. In 2017, they launched a sleep program with a sleep coach, sleep monitoring, a wellness screening, bedtime tea service and a goody bag of sleep-health supplies. The idea was that, with three nights of analysis and behavioral adjustments, I might finally train my body to get a good night’s sleep. It’s a vacation with a purpose, and it’s one with big appeal: Six Senses offers the program at 10 of its resorts and is requiring all new resorts (including New York City in 2021) to include the program.

Luxury hotels have been pushing health as a selling point for travel since well before events made the two oxymoronic. The global wellness-tourism market was valued at $683.3 billion in 2018 by Grand View Research, and according to the Global Wellness Institute’s 2018 report, 830 million wellness trips were taken by travelers in 2017. That was up nearly 17% from 2015. In 2018, American Airlines partnered with the meditation app Calm to help their passengers sleep. Headspace has partnerships with seven different airlines to do the same thing, all over the past few years. A survey from the National Institutes of Health shows that the number of U.S. adults who reported meditating while traveling tripled from 2012 through 2017. And all this travel wellness has one common goal: to get people to sleep better, because we know that—generally���people aren’t sleeping well.

In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published findings claiming that one-third of adults are not getting enough sleep and that sleep deprivation is costing the country some $400 billion each year in productivity. It is also important to note that many studies have found a large disparity in sleep quality based on race, ethnicity and socio-economic status. In comparisons of white and Black populations, studies have found that white women have the best sleep duration and Black men the worst. Those disparities do not go away when studies adjust for socio-economic level. The Sleep Foundation writes that a factor may be higher levels of stress because of discrimination in daily life.

Although consumers have opened their wallets in pursuit of better sleep since the debut of memory foam in 1966, the past five years have been a boom for the sleep-wellness industry. The global sleeping-products market brought in $69.5 billion in revenue in 2017, and, according to the most recent report published in May 2018 by P&S Market Research, the industry is on track to hit $101.9 billion in 2023. The consulting group McKinsey put out a seven-page guide to investing in sleep health in 2017. And anyone who has tried to buy a mattress online recently has noticed just how many new mattress brands there are: Casper, Tuft & Needle, Purple, Leesa, Allswell, SleepChoices, Bear. The U.S. mattress industry has doubled in value since 2015, from $8 billion to $16 billion.

In my desperate quest for good sleep, I’ve bought into all of this. When I sat down to calculate it all, I was stunned to find that over the past three years, I have spent more than $1,000 on sleep. I bought a Fitbit, a Sonos speaker with a built-in alarm, a new pillow, a new mattress, a fluffier comforter, a weighted blanket, cold eye masks, a humidifier, pajamas made of bamboo, pajamas made of 100% cotton, pajamas made of satin and an alarm clock that mimics a sunrise. The sleep retreat, I hoped, would do something all the other purchases had not.

I don’t sleep well on the plane. After four hours of fitful slumber interrupted by turbulence, dinner service and my seat neighbor bumping into me on the red-eye from New York City to Lisbon, I groggily deplane and replane for the short flight to Porto, down another espresso and drive the one and a half hours to the Douro Valley. By the time I arrive at the hotel, the sun is beginning to set and my bed looks very inviting. It is only 5 p.m.

I’m led to my room by a woman named Vera who introduces my supplies: an eye mask, bamboo pajamas, earplugs, lavender spray for my bed and a worry journal where I can write down anything bothering me before I sleep. I flop down on the €2,500 mattress and hope that whatever I learn here will be easily transferable to the $200 mattress I bought off Amazon and my sad cotton-blend sheets. By the bed is a small box made by ResMed, which will track my movements while I sleep and present me with colorful graphs of data each morning.

I follow the given instructions: eat dinner leisurely, have only one glass of wine, take a bath in the deep tub, drink chamomile tea, put on the new pajamas, write in the journal and go to bed around 10 p.m. When I wake up, the ResMed app shows a series of colorful bars—my “sleep architecture” progression through deep, REM and light sleep—and a score of 97. “I had nothing to say about that sleep,” shrugs Javier Suarez, the director of the spa and wellness programs at Douro Valley, at my first consultation. He studied physiotherapy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and he knows this is abnormally good. “What we [often] see here is the first night, [guests] sleep bad because they come jet-lagged or they’re anxious,” he says. I’d slept a hard, uninterrupted eight hours. I feel proud of the prep I did before I came, adjusting my bedtime to try to prevent jet lag.

There are many scientific reasons to desire good sleep. Poor sleep quality is associated with a whole host of unhealthy side effects. Getting bad sleep puts people at a higher risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, impaired memory, problem-solving issues, fatigue, anxiety, mood disturbances and poor performance at work. There’s a market, then, to help people sleep better, not just because it makes money, but also because it is generally good for people. “There’s no wellness without good sleep. Forget about it,” Suarez tells me. “If you don’t make sleep your priority, then you will not be healthy.”

The Global Wellness Institute attributes the growing wellness industry to four things: an aging population, increased global rates of chronic disease and stress, the negative health impacts of environmental degradation and the frequent failures of modern Western medicine. In the case of insomniacs, the ever popular sleep drugs Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata and others received black-box warnings from the FDA—the agency’s most serious caution—in May 2019. Those turned off by the foreboding -packaging may turn to more holistic sleep-wellness methods. Sleep scientists have also been working to better publicize their research on the benefits of sleep hygiene. In 2013, the CDC and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine launched the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project, which aimed to raise public knowledge of sleep disorders and the ways sleep affects health.

Obsession is the inevitable peak of any trend. While I’m at the resort, Suarez recommends several other ways I can optimize my health, including Wellness FX, a company that will run a full blood panel, and Viome, a company you can mail your poop to in order to learn about your gut -micro-biome. We have the ability now to analyze absolutely -everything about ourselves sans doctor oversight: our blood pressure, our pH, our urine, our poop, our genes. Sleep is just part of the cultural movement toward health obsession. A 2017 study done by Rebecca Robbins at New York University found that a full 28.2% of people in the U.S. track their sleep—with an app, a wearable sleep tracker, or both—and Robbins, now a postdoctoral fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, says she thinks that number has likely increased since the study.

All this data is what runs the sleep-wellness industry. Every major sleep-wellness company tracking sleep is collecting data—cumulative data. Eight Sleep, for example, says it has 40 million hours of sleep traffic logged. Alexandra Zatarain, a co-founder and vice president of brand and marketing for the company, says the medical establishment has “never had access to people’s actual sleep [outside of] clinical settings.” Six Senses, on the other hand, has complete data about how people sleep when they’re on vacation, thanks to their sleep programs. Companies theoretically use all this data to make their products better for the consumer, but they also use it for targeted marketing (perhaps to sell you a new pillow or blanket) or sell it outright. Some sleep-wellness companies more benevolently share their data with academic institutions to learn more about what it could mean. Eight Sleep is working on studies with Mount Sinai, UCSF and Stanford. Matt Mundt, who founded a company called Hatch Sleep, which makes a blanket cocoon sleep pod for adults, says he plans to announce a partnership with a major medical system to bring the product into clinical trials.

The sleep-wellness industry is made up of three categories of products: treatments (prescription sleep aids, homeopathic remedies, and doctor interventions like surgeries or sleep-apnea-treatment devices), routine disrupters (sleep trackers, meditation apps, dietary changes and sleep programs) and nesting (mattresses, pillows, curtains, humidifiers). Treatments are mainly performed and monetized by the medical industry and the hospitality industry (like this sleep retreat). Most of the buzzy sleep-wellness companies like Eight Sleep, Oura, Casper and OMI are creating products that fit into the routine disrupter and nesting categories. Eight Sleep, for example, sells a mattress that regulates its own temperature (nesting) and tracks your sleep to provide personalized coaching (treatment). The brand has raised $70 million over the past three years, with $40 million of that raised in November. Zatarain says the company plays to the public desire to self-analyze and self-optimize. “We want people to be asking themselves, ‘Am I sleep-fit, or not?’” she says.

Courtesy Six Senses Douro ValleyAn outdoor resting spot at the Six Senses Douro Valley in Portugal

After my first night of delicious, wonderful 97-score sleep, I’m feeling a little cocky. I—I’ve convinced myself already—am sleep-fit. Suarez is not so sure. “I bet you tonight you’re going to do worse,” he says on day two. “You’ll get an 87 or something.” The data, he says, does not care about my confidence.

I spend much of my second day at the retreat thinking about my sleep score. The keys to good sleep, I’m told, are simple: exercise; eating well; not drinking too much; a dark, quiet space; creating a wind-down routine; no screens two hours before bed; and a comfortable bed. The greatest enemy of sleep is stress. The main value of the sleep score—and sleep tracking in general—is not to affect your sleep, but to tell you when you need to change your waking habits.

“The biggest win [of sleep tracking] is in the behavior change,” says Els van der Helm, the co-founder and CEO of Shleep, which designs customized sleep programs. Through her company, van der Helm works to convince companies that employees’ sleep should be prioritized not only because it is good for them, but also because it will make the company more profitable. (Shleep itself raised $1.4 million in venture capital in August 2019.) At her presentations, van der Helm sees the same behavior again and again. As she describes easy things employees can do to improve their sleep, she suggests a wake-up light alarm. Immediately, everyone grabs their phones and orders one online. “That’s great, but can they be as passionate about exercise, or creating a wind-down routine?” she says. “The issue is that people love throwing money at the problem and just buy something and think they’re good. ”

The problems with our sleep—for those who are otherwise healthy—are often problems we can fix ourselves. “You don’t need any of that stuff,” Suarez tells me when I run through the list of products I’ve tried. “People say, ‘How can I sleep better?’ And my answer is, ‘How can you have a better life?’”

Making sleep improvement all about what we can purchase to help us also creates an untrue narrative around what that data means. In her study on sleep-tracking habits, Robbins also found a disparity in who tracks their sleep: the higher a person’s income, the more likely they were to track their sleep. “A very concerning aspect of the conversation around sleep is the message that sleep is a luxury,” Robbins says. “We need to remove the notion that sleep is a luxury and replace it with the truth, which is that sleep is something we all deserve and that unifies us.”

So on my second day at the sleep retreat—yes, a massive luxury—I do everything right. I think about my sleep score and forgo a second glass of wine, even though I’m on vacation. I think about my sleep score and go to yoga. My body and I deserve it.

That night, I feel terrible getting into bed. I’m stressed about the amount of work I have to do, and I keep thinking about how that stress will disrupt my sleep. Suarez is either a sleep witch who intentionally cursed me, or someone who knows what he’s talking about. My money is on the latter. I close my eyes and open them again only a few hours later, thinking about my sleep score. Eventually, I get back to sleep and wake in the morning to a markedly worse 85.

Suarez had warned me that some Type A people slept worse on their second night simply because they knew they were being tracked, but when Vera reviews my Night 2 results, she says she can tell what the problem was. The ResMed shows two scores for each night’s sleep, both calculated based on your movement in bed: one for your mental sleep and one for your physical. On the second night, my mental sleep was fine. It was my body sleep that was a disaster. I needed, Suarez says, to wear myself out.

On the third day, I sign up for a cardio class in the gym after a nice long walk. By the time I begin my wind-down routine in the evening, I’m already sore. In the morning, I wake up feeling refreshed. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way first thing in the morning. I roll over and check my score: 94. Success. The charts show that I had not only slept well, but I also got plenty of deep sleep. “I’m not giving you a perfect solution for sleep,” Suarez says before I leave the resort, “I’m just showing you what happens when you do things right.”

When I return from the sleep program, I feel better physically than I have in a long time. I find myself making decisions based not on my health, but on how they will affect my sleep quality. I don’t have coffee late even though it’s a struggle to stay awake back on the East Coast. I do my wind-down routine and spray my lavender spray and sleep hard through the night. The biggest change, though, is how often I think about my sleep, which is constantly. I join a gym, something I had been meaning to do for a year, simply because I know it will help me sleep. And it does work—for a while.

My perfect sleep routine begins to devolve even before the pandemic hits. At home, I fall asleep with the TV on watching Monday Night Football. I don’t have time to exercise every day. Unsurprisingly, I’m much, much more stressed than I had been at the luxury hotel with every amenity in the world and no job to do. I need motivation—inspiration—so I turn to Instagram, and I find @followthenap.

Alex Shannon is a “sleep influencer” who spends most of his time running the account, crafting cozy-looking images of heavenly sleepscapes. He started the account a year and a half ago and says he has noticed a substantial growth in the focus on sleep health in the time since. The boom in products has been good for him too. Every new supplement or sunrise alarm clock or mattress is another potential sponsorship. He’s one of only a few influencers focused solely on sleep, but plenty of general wellness influencers also dabble in sleep, and the content is there. More than 26.8 million posts on Instagram have been tagged #sleep and almost 4 million have been tagged #nap. Even now, when he’s not traveling because of COVID-19 concerns—he was often sent to expensive sleep retreats gratis, in exchange for posts—Shannon has pivoted his sleep content to his own home. And he says he’s had a lot of interest from foreign travel boards making plans for when the travel restrictions are lifted. “I feel like as recently as a few years ago, making rest and relaxation a priority was seen as selfish somehow,” Shannon says, “but with the rise of ‘self-care,’ it’s become much more acceptable to slow down and take care of ourselves.”

Part of that impulse to slow down has been engineered by sleep companies themselves. If wellness can look good on Instagram, it can make money. Just take the boom in Casper sales. Casper was hardly the first mattress startup to market, and it wasn’t even the first to roll its mattresses. But in 2014, the company encouraged customers to post videos unboxing their Casper mattresses and watching them unfurl. The influx of mesmerizing videos, all featuring Casper’s logo, helped the company become the leading brand in mattress startups. James Newell, a vice president at an investment firm that backed Casper, said in an interview with Freakonomics that Casper “would tell you they’re not a mattress company, they’re a digital-first brand around sleep.” It helps that Casper is estimated to have an $80 million marketing budget.

“Our brand ambassadors”—a common synonym for influencers paid to promote a product—“are providing their honest feedback and review of our products, providing potential customers with another perspective outside of our own,” says Julianne Kiider, the affiliate and influencer manager for Tuft & Needle. “The way we sleep is such a personal thing, so these diverse perspectives help guide followers to the right product for their own sleeping habits.” Several major mattress brands declined to share data about how much of their advertiser budgets are spent on influencers, if mattresses are given to influencers for free, and how well influencer marketing really works. But a scroll through major wellness-influencer accounts shows plenty of cozy bed photos with discount codes in the captions. Shannon says in this scenario, the influencer’s payment is often a kickback of the percentage of mattresses sold with their discount code. For him, it’s paying off.

“We all dream of being a little more relaxed, a little less stressed and not feeling guilty about indulging ourselves,” he says. That dream—of sleeping through the night and being more relaxed and waking up refreshed and ready for the day—is exactly what has made sleep wellness such a lucrative industry.

In March, four months after my visit to the sleep retreat, COVID-19 began to spread in the U.S., and the dream felt further away than ever. Several of my friends got sick, and I stopped sleeping. Then the Black Lives Matter protests began, and I continued to sleep fitfully, worried for my friends and fellow citizens. This time, though, I knew what mistakes I was making. I knew that stress was keeping me awake, bolstered by scrolling through my phone for news updates until 11 p.m. and not exercising and having another glass of wine. I knew all that, but I was too stressed to stop. One night, in a sleepless haze, I swiped away from the news and found myself browsing my old online shopping haunts. I added a new lavender spray and a set of pajamas to my cart, and clicked Buy Now.

McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector Media

from Blogger https://ift.tt/3fw9yh7 via IFTTT

[itsfinancethings]

In a small room without windows, I am instructed to breathe in sync with a colorful bar on a screen in front of me. Six counts in. Six counts out. Electrodes tie me to a machine whirring on the table. My hands and feet are bare, wiped clean and placed atop silver boards. My finger is pinched by an oximeter, my left arm squeezed by a blood-pressure cuff. Across from me, a woman with a high ponytail, scrublike attire and soft eyes smiles encouragingly. She is not a doctor, and this is not a lab. The air smells like lavender and another fruity scent I later learn is cassis. My chair is made of woven reeds, topped with a thick cushion and a pillow for lumbar support. The windowless room feels more cozy than claustrophobic; this is not torture but a luxury. I am, in fact, in a five-star resort with a 2,000-sq-m spa and an indoor heated pool. This process, I have been promised, will help me sleep better.

For years, I had been waking up exhausted. My primary care doctor ran my blood work three separate times to try to suss out an underlying problem, and each time it came back fine. I had no problem falling asleep, or even really staying asleep. The problem was that no matter how many hours of sleep I got, I had to haul myself out of bed in the morning, grumpy and lethargic.

So, in December, before COVID-19 ravaged the world and made travel unsafe, I journeyed to a beautiful valley in Portugal’s Port wine region to take part in the €220-per-night Six Senses Sleep Retreat to try to learn to sleep better. Six Senses has long made wellness and sustainability two of its main pillars of business. They have yoga retreats and infrared spas. They’re aiming to be plastic-free by 2022—all plastic, not just single-use. But for the past two years, the luxury resort brand has bet big on sleep. In 2017, they launched a sleep program with a sleep coach, sleep monitoring, a wellness screening, bedtime tea service and a goody bag of sleep-health supplies. The idea was that, with three nights of analysis and behavioral adjustments, I might finally train my body to get a good night’s sleep. It’s a vacation with a purpose, and it’s one with big appeal: Six Senses offers the program at 10 of its resorts and is requiring all new resorts (including New York City in 2021) to include the program.

Luxury hotels have been pushing health as a selling point for travel since well before events made the two oxymoronic. The global wellness-tourism market was valued at $683.3 billion in 2018 by Grand View Research, and according to the Global Wellness Institute’s 2018 report, 830 million wellness trips were taken by travelers in 2017. That was up nearly 17% from 2015. In 2018, American Airlines partnered with the meditation app Calm to help their passengers sleep. Headspace has partnerships with seven different airlines to do the same thing, all over the past few years. A survey from the National Institutes of Health shows that the number of U.S. adults who reported meditating while traveling tripled from 2012 through 2017. And all this travel wellness has one common goal: to get people to sleep better, because we know that—generally—people aren’t sleeping well.

In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published findings claiming that one-third of adults are not getting enough sleep and that sleep deprivation is costing the country some $400 billion each year in productivity. It is also important to note that many studies have found a large disparity in sleep quality based on race, ethnicity and socio-economic status. In comparisons of white and Black populations, studies have found that white women have the best sleep duration and Black men the worst. Those disparities do not go away when studies adjust for socio-economic level. The Sleep Foundation writes that a factor may be higher levels of stress because of discrimination in daily life.

Although consumers have opened their wallets in pursuit of better sleep since the debut of memory foam in 1966, the past five years have been a boom for the sleep-wellness industry. The global sleeping-products market brought in $69.5 billion in revenue in 2017, and, according to the most recent report published in May 2018 by P&S Market Research, the industry is on track to hit $101.9 billion in 2023. The consulting group McKinsey put out a seven-page guide to investing in sleep health in 2017. And anyone who has tried to buy a mattress online recently has noticed just how many new mattress brands there are: Casper, Tuft & Needle, Purple, Leesa, Allswell, SleepChoices, Bear. The U.S. mattress industry has doubled in value since 2015, from $8 billion to $16 billion.

In my desperate quest for good sleep, I’ve bought into all of this. When I sat down to calculate it all, I was stunned to find that over the past three years, I have spent more than $1,000 on sleep. I bought a Fitbit, a Sonos speaker with a built-in alarm, a new pillow, a new mattress, a fluffier comforter, a weighted blanket, cold eye masks, a humidifier, pajamas made of bamboo, pajamas made of 100% cotton, pajamas made of satin and an alarm clock that mimics a sunrise. The sleep retreat, I hoped, would do something all the other purchases had not.

I don’t sleep well on the plane. After four hours of fitful slumber interrupted by turbulence, dinner service and my seat neighbor bumping into me on the red-eye from New York City to Lisbon, I groggily deplane and replane for the short flight to Porto, down another espresso and drive the one and a half hours to the Douro Valley. By the time I arrive at the hotel, the sun is beginning to set and my bed looks very inviting. It is only 5 p.m.

I’m led to my room by a woman named Vera who introduces my supplies: an eye mask, bamboo pajamas, earplugs, lavender spray for my bed and a worry journal where I can write down anything bothering me before I sleep. I flop down on the €2,500 mattress and hope that whatever I learn here will be easily transferable to the $200 mattress I bought off Amazon and my sad cotton-blend sheets. By the bed is a small box made by ResMed, which will track my movements while I sleep and present me with colorful graphs of data each morning.

I follow the given instructions: eat dinner leisurely, have only one glass of wine, take a bath in the deep tub, drink chamomile tea, put on the new pajamas, write in the journal and go to bed around 10 p.m. When I wake up, the ResMed app shows a series of colorful bars—my “sleep architecture” progression through deep, REM and light sleep—and a score of 97. “I had nothing to say about that sleep,” shrugs Javier Suarez, the director of the spa and wellness programs at Douro Valley, at my first consultation. He studied physiotherapy at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and he knows this is abnormally good. “What we [often] see here is the first night, [guests] sleep bad because they come jet-lagged or they’re anxious,” he says. I’d slept a hard, uninterrupted eight hours. I feel proud of the prep I did before I came, adjusting my bedtime to try to prevent jet lag.

There are many scientific reasons to desire good sleep. Poor sleep quality is associated with a whole host of unhealthy side effects. Getting bad sleep puts people at a higher risk for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, impaired memory, problem-solving issues, fatigue, anxiety, mood disturbances and poor performance at work. There’s a market, then, to help people sleep better, not just because it makes money, but also because it is generally good for people. “There’s no wellness without good sleep. Forget about it,” Suarez tells me. “If you don’t make sleep your priority, then you will not be healthy.”

The Global Wellness Institute attributes the growing wellness industry to four things: an aging population, increased global rates of chronic disease and stress, the negative health impacts of environmental degradation and the frequent failures of modern Western medicine. In the case of insomniacs, the ever popular sleep drugs Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata and others received black-box warnings from the FDA—the agency’s most serious caution—in May 2019. Those turned off by the foreboding -packaging may turn to more holistic sleep-wellness methods. Sleep scientists have also been working to better publicize their research on the benefits of sleep hygiene. In 2013, the CDC and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine launched the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project, which aimed to raise public knowledge of sleep disorders and the ways sleep affects health.

Obsession is the inevitable peak of any trend. While I’m at the resort, Suarez recommends several other ways I can optimize my health, including Wellness FX, a company that will run a full blood panel, and Viome, a company you can mail your poop to in order to learn about your gut -micro-biome. We have the ability now to analyze absolutely -everything about ourselves sans doctor oversight: our blood pressure, our pH, our urine, our poop, our genes. Sleep is just part of the cultural movement toward health obsession. A 2017 study done by Rebecca Robbins at New York University found that a full 28.2% of people in the U.S. track their sleep—with an app, a wearable sleep tracker, or both—and Robbins, now a postdoctoral fellow at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, says she thinks that number has likely increased since the study.

All this data is what runs the sleep-wellness industry. Every major sleep-wellness company tracking sleep is collecting data—cumulative data. Eight Sleep, for example, says it has 40 million hours of sleep traffic logged. Alexandra Zatarain, a co-founder and vice president of brand and marketing for the company, says the medical establishment has “never had access to people’s actual sleep [outside of] clinical settings.” Six Senses, on the other hand, has complete data about how people sleep when they’re on vacation, thanks to their sleep programs. Companies theoretically use all this data to make their products better for the consumer, but they also use it for targeted marketing (perhaps to sell you a new pillow or blanket) or sell it outright. Some sleep-wellness companies more benevolently share their data with academic institutions to learn more about what it could mean. Eight Sleep is working on studies with Mount Sinai, UCSF and Stanford. Matt Mundt, who founded a company called Hatch Sleep, which makes a blanket cocoon sleep pod for adults, says he plans to announce a partnership with a major medical system to bring the product into clinical trials.

The sleep-wellness industry is made up of three categories of products: treatments (prescription sleep aids, homeopathic remedies, and doctor interventions like surgeries or sleep-apnea-treatment devices), routine disrupters (sleep trackers, meditation apps, dietary changes and sleep programs) and nesting (mattresses, pillows, curtains, humidifiers). Treatments are mainly performed and monetized by the medical industry and the hospitality industry (like this sleep retreat). Most of the buzzy sleep-wellness companies like Eight Sleep, Oura, Casper and OMI are creating products that fit into the routine disrupter and nesting categories. Eight Sleep, for example, sells a mattress that regulates its own temperature (nesting) and tracks your sleep to provide personalized coaching (treatment). The brand has raised $70 million over the past three years, with $40 million of that raised in November. Zatarain says the company plays to the public desire to self-analyze and self-optimize. “We want people to be asking themselves, ‘Am I sleep-fit, or not?’” she says.

Courtesy Six Senses Douro ValleyAn outdoor resting spot at the Six Senses Douro Valley in Portugal

After my first night of delicious, wonderful 97-score sleep, I’m feeling a little cocky. I—I’ve convinced myself already—am sleep-fit. Suarez is not so sure. “I bet you tonight you’re going to do worse,” he says on day two. “You’ll get an 87 or something.” The data, he says, does not care about my confidence.

I spend much of my second day at the retreat thinking about my sleep score. The keys to good sleep, I’m told, are simple: exercise; eating well; not drinking too much; a dark, quiet space; creating a wind-down routine; no screens two hours before bed; and a comfortable bed. The greatest enemy of sleep is stress. The main value of the sleep score—and sleep tracking in general—is not to affect your sleep, but to tell you when you need to change your waking habits.

“The biggest win [of sleep tracking] is in the behavior change,” says Els van der Helm, the co-founder and CEO of Shleep, which designs customized sleep programs. Through her company, van der Helm works to convince companies that employees’ sleep should be prioritized not only because it is good for them, but also because it will make the company more profitable. (Shleep itself raised $1.4 million in venture capital in August 2019.) At her presentations, van der Helm sees the same behavior again and again. As she describes easy things employees can do to improve their sleep, she suggests a wake-up light alarm. Immediately, everyone grabs their phones and orders one online. “That’s great, but can they be as passionate about exercise, or creating a wind-down routine?” she says. “The issue is that people love throwing money at the problem and just buy something and think they’re good. ”

The problems with our sleep—for those who are otherwise healthy—are often problems we can fix ourselves. “You don’t need any of that stuff,” Suarez tells me when I run through the list of products I’ve tried. “People say, ‘How can I sleep better?’ And my answer is, ‘How can you have a better life?’”

Making sleep improvement all about what we can purchase to help us also creates an untrue narrative around what that data means. In her study on sleep-tracking habits, Robbins also found a disparity in who tracks their sleep: the higher a person’s income, the more likely they were to track their sleep. “A very concerning aspect of the conversation around sleep is the message that sleep is a luxury,” Robbins says. “We need to remove the notion that sleep is a luxury and replace it with the truth, which is that sleep is something we all deserve and that unifies us.”

So on my second day at the sleep retreat—yes, a massive luxury—I do everything right. I think about my sleep score and forgo a second glass of wine, even though I’m on vacation. I think about my sleep score and go to yoga. My body and I deserve it.

That night, I feel terrible getting into bed. I’m stressed about the amount of work I have to do, and I keep thinking about how that stress will disrupt my sleep. Suarez is either a sleep witch who intentionally cursed me, or someone who knows what he’s talking about. My money is on the latter. I close my eyes and open them again only a few hours later, thinking about my sleep score. Eventually, I get back to sleep and wake in the morning to a markedly worse 85.

Suarez had warned me that some Type A people slept worse on their second night simply because they knew they were being tracked, but when Vera reviews my Night 2 results, she says she can tell what the problem was. The ResMed shows two scores for each night’s sleep, both calculated based on your movement in bed: one for your mental sleep and one for your physical. On the second night, my mental sleep was fine. It was my body sleep that was a disaster. I needed, Suarez says, to wear myself out.

On the third day, I sign up for a cardio class in the gym after a nice long walk. By the time I begin my wind-down routine in the evening, I’m already sore. In the morning, I wake up feeling refreshed. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way first thing in the morning. I roll over and check my score: 94. Success. The charts show that I had not only slept well, but I also got plenty of deep sleep. “I’m not giving you a perfect solution for sleep,” Suarez says before I leave the resort, “I’m just showing you what happens when you do things right.”

When I return from the sleep program, I feel better physically than I have in a long time. I find myself making decisions based not on my health, but on how they will affect my sleep quality. I don’t have coffee late even though it’s a struggle to stay awake back on the East Coast. I do my wind-down routine and spray my lavender spray and sleep hard through the night. The biggest change, though, is how often I think about my sleep, which is constantly. I join a gym, something I had been meaning to do for a year, simply because I know it will help me sleep. And it does work—for a while.

My perfect sleep routine begins to devolve even before the pandemic hits. At home, I fall asleep with the TV on watching Monday Night Football. I don’t have time to exercise every day. Unsurprisingly, I’m much, much more stressed than I had been at the luxury hotel with every amenity in the world and no job to do. I need motivation—inspiration—so I turn to Instagram, and I find @followthenap.

Alex Shannon is a “sleep influencer” who spends most of his time running the account, crafting cozy-looking images of heavenly sleepscapes. He started the account a year and a half ago and says he has noticed a substantial growth in the focus on sleep health in the time since. The boom in products has been good for him too. Every new supplement or sunrise alarm clock or mattress is another potential sponsorship. He’s one of only a few influencers focused solely on sleep, but plenty of general wellness influencers also dabble in sleep, and the content is there. More than 26.8 million posts on Instagram have been tagged #sleep and almost 4 million have been tagged #nap. Even now, when he’s not traveling because of COVID-19 concerns—he was often sent to expensive sleep retreats gratis, in exchange for posts—Shannon has pivoted his sleep content to his own home. And he says he’s had a lot of interest from foreign travel boards making plans for when the travel restrictions are lifted. “I feel like as recently as a few years ago, making rest and relaxation a priority was seen as selfish somehow,” Shannon says, “but with the rise of ‘self-care,’ it’s become much more acceptable to slow down and take care of ourselves.”

Part of that impulse to slow down has been engineered by sleep companies themselves. If wellness can look good on Instagram, it can make money. Just take the boom in Casper sales. Casper was hardly the first mattress startup to market, and it wasn’t even the first to roll its mattresses. But in 2014, the company encouraged customers to post videos unboxing their Casper mattresses and watching them unfurl. The influx of mesmerizing videos, all featuring Casper’s logo, helped the company become the leading brand in mattress startups. James Newell, a vice president at an investment firm that backed Casper, said in an interview with Freakonomics that Casper “would tell you they’re not a mattress company, they’re a digital-first brand around sleep.” It helps that Casper is estimated to have an $80 million marketing budget.

“Our brand ambassadors”—a common synonym for influencers paid to promote a product—“are providing their honest feedback and review of our products, providing potential customers with another perspective outside of our own,” says Julianne Kiider, the affiliate and influencer manager for Tuft & Needle. “The way we sleep is such a personal thing, so these diverse perspectives help guide followers to the right product for their own sleeping habits.” Several major mattress brands declined to share data about how much of their advertiser budgets are spent on influencers, if mattresses are given to influencers for free, and how well influencer marketing really works. But a scroll through major wellness-influencer accounts shows plenty of cozy bed photos with discount codes in the captions. Shannon says in this scenario, the influencer’s payment is often a kickback of the percentage of mattresses sold with their discount code. For him, it’s paying off.

“We all dream of being a little more relaxed, a little less stressed and not feeling guilty about indulging ourselves,” he says. That dream—of sleeping through the night and being more relaxed and waking up refreshed and ready for the day—is exactly what has made sleep wellness such a lucrative industry.

In March, four months after my visit to the sleep retreat, COVID-19 began to spread in the U.S., and the dream felt further away than ever. Several of my friends got sick, and I stopped sleeping. Then the Black Lives Matter protests began, and I continued to sleep fitfully, worried for my friends and fellow citizens. This time, though, I knew what mistakes I was making. I knew that stress was keeping me awake, bolstered by scrolling through my phone for news updates until 11 p.m. and not exercising and having another glass of wine. I knew all that, but I was too stressed to stop. One night, in a sleepless haze, I swiped away from the news and found myself browsing my old online shopping haunts. I added a new lavender spray and a set of pajamas to my cart, and clicked Buy Now.

McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector Media