[The Paradox of Perfection: Are Sleep Trackers Ruining Our Rest?]-[Losing sleep over sleep tracking data?]

And who cares about step countrankings?

It's tracking sleep data that really keeps you up atnight.

Anyone else caught in a sleep tracking nightmare that's more exhausting thanrestful.

Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on ApplePodcast.

Now, let's have a moment of Heart toHeart.

Youask. Weanswer.Roundtable.

Heart toHeart.Today, we are dipping into our mailbag and we will respond to some emailquestions.

Here's the first one from Craig Green in theUS.

The email goes likethis.

Dear HaYoung, I'm sending this message to tell you that I really enjoyed the latest episode of Roundtable as I listened to you and your co-hosts discussTetris.

I remember my early experiences with video games which was over 30 yearsago.

I have fond memories of playing Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 and it remains one of my all-timefavorites.

As I getolder, sometimes I re-examine the past and begin to appreciate it for artistic or historicreasons.

Having a committed comic bookcollector, I love the old artwork that was done to promote Atari in the1980s.

Your show consistently asks interesting questions and puts out positiveenergy.

And I appreciatethat. Sometimes my mind is troubled by serious matters and I know that China gets a bad rep in mycountry.

I was very disappointed to see Confucius Institute's close and in my state there was even a law passed to prevent Chinese citizens from owningproperty.

I strive to be an educated man with an open mind and I love and respect your country for the good it does for its own people and theworld.

The work that you do matters and I promise that I will keep listening and learning from yourexample.

All thebest,Craig. HeyCraig, thank you so much for staying in touch and thank you for your kind words about ourshow.

Through our show and your support and encouragement really means a lot tous.

And it is disheartening to see some of the things happening between our two nations but your commitment to being an educated and open-minded individual is truly admirable and I think this goes bothways.

Your willingness to learn and understand different perspectives is what makes a difference in bridging cultures and fostering mutualrespect.

So I really appreciate that from you Craig andJosh, do you have something to say here to our international listeners outthere?

Yeah, thanks so much Craig for writing in and calling in I should say and I really appreciate you acknowledging that episode because I really love that episode talking about Tetris and those games specifically it was really interesting thinking about why they've had such longevity and although it seemed like quite a simple topic at first it was actually one of those topics that ended up provoking a really good conversation about something deeper and about society in general and about actually that in itself that topic bridged between cultures right Tetris in itself sort of provided the building blocks and pardon the pun really to you know to communicate with one another right it transcended language and I think that it's really great that you make the effort to listen to a podcast that is recorded here in China and learn about these new perspectives and gain some globalawareness.

I know that that's what I started doing when I first got here and now I'm really really privileged to be on this great show and I can't tell you how much I've learned just by being here myself so I feel similar to yourself in the sense that I'm also gaining a lot of new perspectives and globalawareness.

So thankyou. And also that episode Tetris is also one of my favorite episodes as well so I'm just really glad to see our listeners especially our international friends they are expressing this appreciation about ourshow.

I think that's actually what we are trying to do we always want to find some interesting topics that are not only about what's happening here in China but also trying to find some very common messages that we can really send out to the international communities so that's why I think each member of Roundtable really cherishes and really appreciates this kind of message we receive from our dear listeners so I also want to call for more listeners to send us feedbacks to really tell us how do you think about our shows that's really something we really really need so yeah thank you againCraig.

And here's another email and it's from Lee AnnC.N.F.J.

Dear Roundtable team I've been listening to Roundtable since 2016 almost every day at 1 o'clock PM Beijing time even when I'm traveling I listen on the plane accompanying me to 32 countries across five continents and over 100 cities I am a public servant from the foreign fisheries negotiation team of the Ministry of Agriculture your program is innovative with hot topics making it the best material for learning and communication and Lee Ann goes on asking about how to revisit some old shows from 2016 we also have LinTingwen, Gemma 40 and a few others asking about old shows prior the 400 podcasts entries available well if you like what you hear now download it yes yeah and if you want to really go on a can I say archaeological discovery that's going to be difficult because it's not existing on any official platforms anymore so yes bed our shows are really open to be downloaded on the official website of CGT and radio and of course you can always subscribe our show on major podcast platforms and yeah just to make sure you follow and listen to each episode of our show so that you don't really miss anything new yeah and if you like it just download it keep it in your pocket for the time being and another question we get a lot from you guys is where to catch us we are officially on Apple podcast and Xiao Yuzhou for Apple and Android phone users respectively and we're also on Spotify and other international podcasts platforms that's where you can find us podcast wise and of course our official CGT and radio website and every day on Xiao Yuzhou and almost every platform actually someone is asking about whether we provide transcripts this is a talk show so not everything is scripted and we don't have a script we do have some outlines of you know what direction we might want to go in the discussions so we don't have a word for word transcription yeah we don't already have this transcript but I think our dear listeners can really follow our some social media outlets like WeChat and also Weibo and I do know our colleagues they are really working hard to try to offer some transcript of our some of our shows occasionally only occasionally might you see an update on you you Xiao Yuzhou there might be transcripts of some sort but it's not been checked so therefore you know it's as good as the voice recognition apps out there and also I know some of our listeners who have taken it upon themselves to put the show through voice recognition apps to come up with I guess those transcripts could be like80% accurate or something along those lines and there are similar functions on Bili this is what I found actually by reading our listeners comments and then the international Apple Podcast Edition with the latest iOS system update provides this function too so these are some of the ways to come up with your own transcript pretty much if that's what you like to do and we cannot do the segment without you so let us know what's up will you simply record a voice memo sharing your questions and insights and send it our way to eZ FM around table at Fox mail dot com and if you're a bit shy sharing your voice on air it's perfectly fine shoot us an email to eZ FM around table at Fox mail dot com remember you can always count on us for a heart to heart coming up losing sleep depending too much or obsessing over sleep tracking devices and data might actually make your sleep habits worse we discuss why right after this break looking for passion how about fiery debate want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives then tune in to round table oreast, east and understand it is the goal is the hour of random tables myself how young I'm joined by Lee in the studio and Josh Caterl on the line sleep quality is yet another aspect of health that people are constantly encouraged to tweak optimize and quantify to improve their well-being the prevalence of sleep tracking wearable devices offers the promise of meticulously recording every toss turn and tiny twitch in pursuit of the elusive perfect night sleep does our relentless quest of perfect sleep metrics bring us closer to restful bliss or plungest deeper into the labyrinth of sleepless nights buckle up for a discussion on sleep tracking devices wear dreams of deep slumber collide with the reality of restless nights or as what doctors say or though samnia so what is orthosomnia does it have to do with sleep monitoring devices well or though samnia is basically an obsession with perfect sleep patterns and this term is derived from the Greek word or though meaning correct or straight and somnia meaning sleep and those with this orthosomnia may be really obsessed with you know achieving perfect sleep metrics such as you really want to achieve a certain number of hours of sleep every day or you really want to this very regular specific sleep stages for example people are really attentive to have this deep sleep as much deep sleep as possible or you want to have this ideal sleep patterns but according to you know medical experts it can really lead to increased anxiety and stress surrounding sleep and also according toDr.

Daniel Jim Belum who is also the clinical instructor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine or though somnia is more of a trend rather than an actual diagnosis but it's really essential to start to notice that people will just come in and have a lot of this faction with their sleep particularly related to the feedback they were getting from their commercial fitness trackers Josh do you see this as kind of prevalent problem that more people are becoming aware of or are experiencing I think so I still think that it's sort of not as big as the problem of not being able to get enough sleep I still think that this problem sort of overshadows this particular issue but I do think that it's very interesting and I think that it sheds a light on how the methods through which we should get better sleep right and maybe a sleep app that monitors your sleep really isn't one of the best ways right and I think that this is what this highlights which is very very important I actually found some case studies from my own country I found one by the sleep council in the UK and they found that74% of Britain's regularly get less than the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep a night which has prompted the surge in interest in the sleep tracking technologies but we know if we think about what causes things like insomnia or a lack of sleep it's one of the reasons isn't usually because I don't track my sleep right the main reasons are because of stress and anxiety that's usually one of the top ones right it for many people it's the number one thing and actually being on your phone leads to this and tracking your sleep obsessively will lead to this right so it makes a lot of sense to me but I guess that the positive thing to take away from this is that maybe it better highlights the issues that are leading to insomnia and what we can do about it another one thing I'd like to say before that now I this is maybe a bit of a hot take from me but this is one reason why I think that smart watches unless you're in some sort of job where you know you need to respond immediately like an emergency response or something like that for me I don't really see the point in these watches I think that they can lead to a lot of anxiety and stress which can often be counter to a lot of the devices that are it's being marketed for right but that's maybe a bit of a hot take yeah I also believe that people are being too obsessed with have this appropriate or even perfect sleeping patterns nowadays and I think one major reason is that we do have this kind of smart devices to help you track your sleep patterns I mean they can really track how long you got the sleep and also so-called sleep quality and different sleep faces you are at and even they can track this environmental factors such as amount of light or temperature in your bedroom and even your lifestyle factors but I mean these kind of smart devices are only making people putting too much attention to their sleep qualities and also with those modern technologies and these kind of devices I feel like somehow we're having this kind of misconception that we can really control everything about our body and about our health conditions it's true because with all those promotion or popularization of you know medical knowledge on TV on social media people just start to get being so careful about tiny little symptoms about their body and also with the advancement of modern medical techniques people somehow believe that as long as they can detect and they can track the symptoms they can really solve everything that is abnormal coming from their body but in fact it's not really true in most cases so similar thing for this sleeping thing people might just believe that with those devices that we can really have this perfect sleeping patterns but in fact I don't really think there's a perfect sleeping patterns atall.

Hmm that's really interesting and I do agree that these days because we can you know track yoursteps, track your heartrate, track this and that and then all that tracking boils down to the collection of data and then analysis of data and therefore we're relying on data to as we want to improve performance and technology in a way has exacerbated that problem and that kind of mindset or psychology can lead to anxiety for many reasons that Lee has already touched upon but maybe I'll just maybe drill on it a little bit further for one thing humans have an inherent need for control over their environment and outcomes and when it comes to performance whether it's sleep fitness or work having data provides a sense of control by offering concrete information to work with however when things don't go as planned or when data isn't meetingexpectations.

Let's say you slept for seven hours according to your sleep tracker and you want to optimize for eight and isn't that just the most challenging thing it can lead to feelings of loss of control which can trigger anxiety and also Lee you mentioned perfectionism that is hugely relevant here many individuals strive for perfection in their performance aiming to achieve the ideal outcomes indicated by the data however perfectionism often leads to unrealistic expectations and a fear of failure and this fear can manifest as anxiety especially when the data doesn't align with those high standards and you know what else that adds to the anxiety that is comparative mindset social comparison is another factor that contributes to anxiety when relying on performance data in the old days it's just whether you had a good or bad sleep or did you have enough sleep but now you're competing with other people when it comes to sleep as well those who are using the same device connected with you on the same platform that just does not sound good to me at all and seeing other people's achievements or abilities to do well it adds pressure to us and I just absolutely despise it when it's sleep you know it's something that's supposed to be about relaxation about finding some z's and really let your body in mind relax and rest and that becomes a competition for some people when you add the social aspect to it and I guess already I am kind of beat up with the pedometer function on WeChat that is you can compete or compare or just see how many steps other people have taken that day and I think that's enough but sleep as well doesn't sound like a great idea to me so also I want to ask you guys with all these sleep trackers and wearable devices out there which of people or some users certainly rely quite a bit on the results how accurate arethey?