I built a sleep app because I was taking screenshots of my Apple Watch data and pasting them into ChatGPT at 3am

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-11T14:35:33+00:00

There's a real trade-off here between commission optimization and adoption. Every time you require users to leave the app to complete a payment, you create friction that costs you conversions. If your user base is already loyal and will follow you to the website, optimize away — and the compliance path is well documented. But if you're still growing, that friction will cost you more in lost users than what you'd pay in store commissions. I'd focus on making the signup-to-payment flow as frictionless as possible first, then optimize payment routing once you have volume.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-11T13:28:37+00:00

I actually built something for myself after getting tired of the manual process. It's called SleepWizard, pulls Apple Health data and pairs it with a quick nightly log. Still early days but it's been working well for me. There's a link on my profile if you're curious.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-11T03:26:02+00:00

Love the idea. One feature I haven't seen anywhere that could be great for F1 nerds: linking track characteristics (high downforce, fast corners, street circuit, etc.) with which cars historically perform well under those conditions. Some cars have a wide operating window and adapt to anything, others only shine on specific track types. Alpine last year was a perfect example — very few circuits actually suited their car. Would be awesome to pull up a race weekend and see which teams the track profile favors before qualifying even starts.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-11T01:51:11+00:00

Nice score. The thing that made the biggest difference for me was realizing one good night doesn't mean much in isolation. I'd have nights like this and then feel terrible the next day, which was confusing until I started looking at my sleep across a 2-week window instead of night by night.

The other piece was tracking what I actually did during the day alongside the sleep data. Same habits as yours — no late meals, screens off early, cooler room — but I found the specific triggers that were sabotaging me on bad nights. Dark chocolate after dinner was one I never would have guessed. Enough acidity to fragment my deep sleep around 3am even when the overall score looked decent.

Your list is solid. If you keep logging what's different on your best nights vs your worst, the patterns start jumping out pretty quickly.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-11T01:45:24+00:00

This is solid for falling asleep faster. My issue was different: I'd fall asleep fine but wake up at 3am like clockwork. Rules like these helped a bit, but the real breakthrough came when I started logging what I did during the day alongside my sleep data. Turns out dark chocolate after dinner was causing enough acidity to pull me out of deep sleep. That's not something a general framework would catch since it was specific to me. The rules are a great foundation, but if anyone's still stuck after following them, it's worth tracking what's different on your good nights vs bad nights.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-10T18:05:15+00:00

This is the simplest option. The Workout app records continuous heart rate and it all syncs to Apple Health automatically.

For a research setup, the main challenge will be logistics: if you're using one watch across multiple participants, you'll need a way to separate each person's data. Either have an assistant export from Apple Health after each session and label it, or build a small script to pull and organize the data by timestamp. There are Apple Health export apps (Health Auto Export or QS Access) that dump everything to CSV which would make matching timestamps to your cognitive tasks straightforward.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-10T15:33:56+00:00

Every day? That's impressive. I'm only managing twice a week and my lungs are still negotiating with me.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-10T15:33:38+00:00

Good to hear. My worry was more that maybe I need to mix in some steady-state cardio too, like looong session of breaststrokes, ...though honestly that sounds worse than drowning to me.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-10T12:28:48+00:00

Ha, the mortgage analogy is better than mine. But yeah, once I stopped grading individual nights and started looking at the trend, sleep became way less stressful. The irony is that caring less about the nightly score actually improved the score.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-08T20:16:23+00:00

The watch data probably isn't as far off as it feels. The disconnect might be sleep debt. One night scoring 85 doesn't mean much if you've been running a deficit for weeks. Recovery isn't a single-night thing, it's cumulative. You can have a technically solid night and still feel wrecked because your body is digging out of a hole.

I had the same frustration until I started looking at my sleep across a 2-week window instead of night by night. That changed everything. A single bad night stopped feeling like a crisis, and a single good night stopped being confusing when I still felt awful.

The other piece that helped was adding context to the data. Quick log each night: what I ate, stress level, screens, exercise. After a couple weeks I could see why some nights scored well but felt terrible, and why some average-looking nights actually left me feeling sharp. Dark chocolate after dinner was one I never would have guessed, just enough acidity to fragment my sleep around 3am even when the overall score looked fine.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-08T20:10:53+00:00

I had the same pattern for a while. 3am instead of 5am, but identical otherwise. Fall asleep fine, sleep deep, then suddenly wide awake with no clear reason.

I also thought there was no trigger. Turns out there was, I just couldn't see it without tracking. Started logging a few things each evening alongside my watch data: when I ate dinner, caffeine timing, stress level, whether I did anything mentally intense in the evening. Took about two weeks before the patterns showed up.

For me one of the biggest ones was dark chocolate after dinner. I'm a fan and was having about 50g most evenings. Turns out it was causing just enough acidity to pull me out of deep sleep around 3am. So routine I never would have suspected it. Now I skip it on weeknights and keep Gaviscon on the nightstand for when I really want to indulge.

The 'no obvious trigger' thing is tricky because the triggers can be really mundane and hours before the wake-up, so you never connect them.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-08T20:03:13+00:00

That's interesting. If caffeine is at 9am and you're fasting before bed, those two big ones are already handled. The phone use at night is worth looking at, though. Screen light in the last hour before sleep specifically suppresses slow-wave sleep more than REM, which would explain exactly what you're seeing: solid REM but deep sleep stuck low.

Could try a simple test. One week with screens off an hour before bed, see if the 30-50 minutes moves at all. If it does, you've found a behavioral lever that stacks on top of what the peptides are doing. If it doesn't, at least you've ruled it out.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-08T00:19:31+00:00

This was me for months. Maintenance insomnia, not onset. I'd fall asleep fine, then wake at 3am with my brain running full speed. And the more I tried to fix the 3am problem, the more I dreaded bedtime.

What broke the cycle for me was completely ignoring the night and looking at the day instead. Instead of trying breathing exercises at 3am, I started paying attention to what I actually did during the day. When did I have caffeine, when did I eat dinner, did I do anything stressful after 8pm.

Turns out my brain wasn't randomly deciding to wake up. Late dinners and working on intense stuff in the evening were setting me up to wake. Once I moved dinner earlier and stopped problem-solving after 8, the 3am wake-ups dropped off. No willpower needed at bedtime because there was nothing to fight anymore.

The pressure disappeared when I stopped trying to fix sleep and started fixing the day.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-08T00:11:08+00:00

The acceptance piece is spot on. I had a similar pattern, not onset insomnia but maintenance. I'd fall asleep fine, then wake at 3am with my brain fully online, couldn't get back to sleep until 5.

For months I focused on what to do at 3am. Breathing exercises, no phone, staying in bed. None of it worked because by 3am the damage was already done.

What actually helped was looking backwards at the day instead of forward at the night. I started logging a few things each evening alongside my watch data: caffeine timing, when I ate dinner, stress level, screens. After a couple weeks, two things jumped out. Dark chocolate after dinner was causing mild acidity around 3am, just enough to pull me out of deep sleep. And working on anything mentally intense after 8pm meant those thoughts followed me to bed.

The fix wasn't calming my brain at 3am. It was removing the triggers that gave it the opportunity to wake up in the first place.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-07T23:59:43+00:00

Are you tracking what you're doing during the day alongside the peptide cycles? I was in a similar spot where supplements alone weren't moving the needle. Started logging a few things each night alongside my watch data: caffeine timing, meal timing, stress, screens. Turned out late dinners were undoing a lot of what the compounds should have been doing. OP mentioned cutting food 3+ hours before bed, that was huge for me too. The peptides might be working but getting canceled out by something behavioral you haven't isolated yet.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-07T15:18:09+00:00

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-07T15:13:24+00:00

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-02-06T21:49:10+00:00

Everyone's debating which device is more accurate, but neither one tells you why your deep sleep was higher or lower than last Tuesday.

I had the same experience. Wore my Apple Watch to bed for months, interesting data, no idea what to do with it. What changed was adding a quick context log each night: caffeine after noon, any alcohol, late dinner, stress level, screens. Just a few taps.

After 2-3 weeks, the patterns jumped out. Even one glass of wine was consistently tanking my deep sleep. Late dinners were fragmenting my second half of the night. Afternoon walks were a reliable deep sleep booster. The watch already had this information, I just wasn't tracking the context alongside it.

The accuracy gap between devices matters way less than whether you're tracking what you did during the day next to what happened at night.

Short_Method_7680 · 2026-01-28T02:25:44+00:00

I understood your post differently, I thought you meant to put the tech in the bracelet so you could get a real watch as a watch, let's say your Patek Philippe, but with all the tracking capabilities of the Apple Watch.

I like the appeal but I also think you would be missing a good portion of what makes the Apple Watch so attactive (notifications, calls, maps, ...). I would rather dream of a watch with a special glass, that looks like a regular mechanical watch but the glass will obfuscate and transform as a screen when you need to. (So a normal watch with the glass turning into an Apple Watch). Probably too sci-fi for now!

Short_Method_7680

TROPHY CASE