Tracking irritability made me perform better
Back when I began Embrace the Suck in 2021, which was the impetus for this newsletter, I decided to try something that I’d been reluctant to do for ages.
I bought a wearable.
My coach Stu McMillan and nutritionist Dr. John Berardi, who I still turn to regularly for advice, warned me against wearable tracking devices. John because of the distraction of the data they can cause in our normal lives and the stress they can cause by constantly looking at them. Stu because they’re not considered to be all that accurate. The level of specificity that a performance athlete needs can’t necessarily be derived from a commercial wearable device.
But I’m no longer training for the Olympics. I was just curious about how my body would respond to the physical demands I was about to put myself through and thought I could simply insert some discipline to control for John’s above challenge.
There are lots of options out there, but I went with Whoop. (fwiw - I have no connection to Whoop and they are not sponsoring this!)
One of the things I really like about the app itself is the daily journal that allows me to track personal behaviours of my choosing. Every morning I check a box for the previous day’s activities - like whether or not I took a cold shower that day, whether I had caffeine (and when I had it), whether I drank alcohol, mental health, and so on.
Among the things I track: my “Irritability.” More specifically, did I experience a period of time in my day when I was agitated, pissed-off, etc - irritable - for more than a few seconds (is my metric). Enoughf time for a natural reaction to occur and then consciously dial it back. If something happened and I couldn’t, or didn’t, consciously dial it back, then I check yes.
I decided to track irritability because I was finding my “mental health” had generally transitioned into “positive” every day so there was no variation to track, I was still - whether it was work, board work, family, etc causing it - finding myself becoming all hot and bothered on a relatively regular basis. Basically!
Now, after tracking this for over two years, I’ve noticed something pretty interesting.
Irritability is Terrible for my physical recovery. Yes, Terrible with a capital T.
Recovery, as assessed by Whoop, includes sleep quality and quantity; Heart Rate Variability (HRV - good piece here by Harvard Health on HRV and its relation to the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system - think fight or flight vs relaxed); Resting Heart Rate; and Respiratory Rate. These markers give a pretty good picture of whether or not you’ve been able to rest and recharge.
When my recovery is bad I feel physically worse (think - hangover), my cognitive ability is lower (think… hangover), and my mood can tend to be a bit worse than normal.
Logically, the harder we push ourselves or the more stress we take on in a day, the more sleep and recovery our bodies need to be ready for the next day. If we drink or have a huge workout, it makes sense our recovery would suffer the day after. Our bodies were strained physically.
That makes sense and the data plays it out. But here’s where the learning came in for tracking things I never would have equated with my performance 24 hours later. Here’s the data:
Figure 1: “12+ Strain” is a day when I’ve worked out above average the day before. “Alcohol” is when I’ve consumed the day before (it lets you tell the app how many so you can track that as well). “Irritability” is a day when I’ve journaled I was a bit hot and bothered the day before.
As you can see in the above chart, my recovery was negatively impacted by big workouts -5%, by drinking alcohol -7%, and by being irritable -8%!
In other words: getting pissed off is toxic to my health and worse for my physical recovery than physical strain.
And, in my own weird way, that actually makes me happy.
I love this insight. This is the kind of stuff I get really excited about. Because my own irritability is something I have 98% control over.
Sure, I don’t have control over other people and situations that upset me. I can’t control whether I get an annoying email, somebody cuts me off in traffic, or someone says something that gets under my skin.
But I do have control over how I react past an instant, primitive response. Within seconds, whether or not I continue to be pissed off after something happens is up to me. For that matter, I also have control over whether I want to be annoyed by stuff in the first place.
And that’s how we get better. Taking control of our own actions and thoughts.
I can also choose to do things that deliberately minimize my irritability–like exercising first thing in the morning so I’ve dumped dopamine into my body for the rest of the day so it isn’t craving conflict to get what it naturally wants, etc.
Point is…
When I have the information, I can make a choice.
I’ve made a choice to seek to control my irritability. It’s made a solid difference for me in my life, and if you ask Rhiannon, it’s made a HUGE difference in hers. ;-) What was the impact of that choice? A 74% drop in days I allow myself to get amped up. Which as someone who became the best in the world by harnessing all of my demons to move a 500-pound object as fast as I could, getting amped up is a skill I taught myself to be proficient at.
I’m now grateful that I was able to use personal data to help me not only curb that desire but to learn to control it. Here’s what the data looks like in a kind of before and after look at my journal entries over the previous 90 days from March 2022 and from May 2023:
Figure 2:
Left: March 2022 showing 27 days of 90 journaled as having an irritable instance on a day.
Right: May 2023 showing 7 days of 90 journaled as having an irritable instance on a day.
(the trick here is this data is for you so you need to be honest with yourself!)
And here’s how I view the process, at the end of the day, and how much I enjoy pulling this kind of process from my Olympic days and into the working world:
Gather data about yourself with an open mind. Be honest with yourself. And then act on that data if there’s an opportunity to make your life, work, and or relationships better. Do it without ego and without negative self-judgment.
We can’t see or know everything about ourselves through our own eyes. I never would have even thought to ask whether my irritability and recovery are linked.
And in fact, for some people, irritability wouldn’t be such a big factor. The Whoop average (as seen in Figure 1 above) of irritability and its impact on recovery is actually a +1%.
For context, that means for the average Whoop user (who is going to be on the more fit side than not), irritability may be beneficial for them.
Given how limited our own understanding of ourselves will inevitably be, it just makes sense to acquire data, or some kind of outside perspective, consider it as objectively as possible, and seek to act on it when we can control it.
There are plenty of ways we can gather data. It doesn’t have to be a Whoop; there are tons of apps and journals (like the Atomic Habits tracker) out there.
And of course, this goes beyond just health stuff. I think gathering data, over time, with the ultimate goal of getting better is what really counts.
This is why I’m a fan of 360 reviews. Getting feedback from others helps me see new areas for improvement that I simply wouldn’t be able to identify on my own.
And it’s why I like to use the classic training method of rolling the tape. Re-watching or re-listening to myself on podcasts or videos allows me to see room for improvement.
The insights we get are clues. They reveal more about who we are, how we tick, and ultimately, how we can do things a little better.
Honestly, I love that.
- Steve
