The Oura Ring provides you with a “sleep score” so you can track how well you, um, slept (yes, you read that right). But before you shell out $500 (yes, you read that right), there’s another way to approach this head-scratcher. It’s called “seeing how you feel.” Here’s how it works: If you wake up in the morning and feel like roadkill, you didn’t sleep well; if you feel like dew-kissed grass on a bright spring morning, you did.
Strapping a FitBit on your wrist is like slapping reading glasses on the James Webb Space Telescope — it’s a solution in search of a problem. Our bodies have been honed over millions of years, stress-tested over millennia in every conceivable way. We’re good here, folks.
The health tech crew has found a way to monetize our heartbeat, God b less ’em. But there’s another way. Nicholas Thompson writes about his experience turning off his smartwatch during an ultramarathon: “I stopped worrying about everything I normally worry about and instead tried to imagine that I was a young boy, bounding through the forests of New England, where I grew up. I let go of my concerns about time, my heart rate and cadence. I didn’t worry how many miles had passed or how many there were to go. … I knew I had learned an entirely new way to run.” Turns out, it’s the old way. And it sounds a lot like freedom and fun.
Zach Przystup in Baltimore Sun in 19 Feb 2026 op-ed