Your Sleep Score Should Not Run Your Life

Jack Raines, who writes the Young Money newsletter about money and work, was trading notes with Scott Galloway about why modern life feels so optimized and so unsatisfying.

Raines, who said he has never owned a smartwatch, put it this way: “the number starts driving the decision rather than informing it.”

He meant that a measurement is useful when it quietly helps you notice something, like drinking too much or eating poorly, and then you adjust. It becomes a problem, he argued, when you start organizing your day around hitting the number itself.

His example was sleep. He sleeps on a normal mattress, he said, without a score telling him how he slept. If he wakes up feeling off, he takes a cold shower or goes to the gym. He does not need an app to report that his night was bad and therefore his day will be bad.

The tradeoff is clearest on a Friday night, he said. You “can't really quantify how fun it is to have three beers with your friends on a Friday,” and you cannot put a value on the social benefit. Your sleep score will probably look worse on Saturday morning, and the beer will still have been worth it.

Raines added the same thing happens to creators. When YouTubers or podcasters watch performance data too closely, he said, they fall into audience capture and keep making whatever the numbers reward. He sees the same performative pressure among startup commentators chasing attention online.

In his view, the danger is chasing metrics without asking what goal you are actually optimizing for. Then, he said, you end up running in circles and “letting a number drive your life decisions rather than” lightly informing them. He allowed one limit: the three-beers argument does not apply if drinking has become a compulsive problem for someone.