A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader

Part IV. Good Night

Sorry about that. Whatever blew up, it blew up properly. She quit; the project failure became public news; you missed a huge, obvious thing…and it was sitting in plain sight. You were just too busy. You prepped, you lunched, and then you reacted, but now it’s nighttime, and you’re still just sitting there under an immense weight.

Take a deep breath.

At the time of this writing, I’ve been wearing an Oura Ring for almost a year. This is a health monitor. There are many like it.

Oura, like all of these health services, monitors your vitals and activity, then gives you regular feedback based on your data. This data often confirms what you already feel: “I got hammered last night and now I’m a little off.” Go figure.

The interesting signal from Oura is in the aggregate. Each day, you are provided with data-based Activity, Sleep, and Readiness scores. Each score is compiled from the ring data, and it’s a number from 1 to 100. If you get over 85, you get a crown.

I’m not going to litigate the pros and cons of how daily data might motivate or demotivate you. I want to talk a little bit about Sleep, but mostly Readiness. After months of watching and experiencing the data, I can confirm that Sleep tells you how well you slept. An interesting number, but a trailing indicator about what has already happened. Readiness uses a different set of data to tell you how prepared you are for the next day.

That’s your job tonight. Objectively look through all the parts of the day ...