How to Measure Stress and Tiredness Levels to Improve Your Focus and Wellbeing

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Stress, sleep deprivation, and lack of focus are strongly interconnected and influence individuals’ mental health, productivity, and have a huge impact on your daily life.

Learning how to deal with stress and get better sleep can lead to improved focus and general health. With the help of TypingDNA Focus, we’ll show you how to get daily insights on these key factors and improve your general wellbeing.

Why it’s important to reduce stress right now

Physiologist Walter Cannon first mentioned stress in 1915 in a paper that got little attention. 60 years later, the International Institute of Stress was founded by Hans Sleye that introduced the “syndrome of just being sick” after seeing patients with different diagnoses but generic complaints like looking tired, having no appetite, and not being in the mood to go to work.

Extensive research in the past years has shown that exposure to stress can impair your cognitive abilities and involve dysfunction of the newly evolved prefrontal cortex. This is exaggerated by chronic stress exposure, where architectural changes lead to persistent loss of mental function.

Studies from the past decades have shown how uncontrollable stress drives mental illness, including cognitive disorders such as schizophrenia, and new evidence suggests it may also contribute to the cognitive deterioration of Alzheimer’s disease. Reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate depression may become a primary reason for disability worldwide by 2030, while today, more than 16% of the global population is affected by it.

What causes stress?

Stress can be triggered by various events in your life, and each individual responds differently to being under lots of pressure, facing big changes, or not having much control over the outcome of a situation.

Analyze stress levels with TypingDNA Focus

When stressed, individuals have shown specific typing patterns, which can provide hourly statistics of their stress levels. By downloading the free TypingDNA Focus app, you can associate this data with your stress-reducing efforts and determine which activities in your life lead to the greatest reduction of stress. So for example, if you start exercising in the morning, you might notice your daily focus increase. If you stop answering emails after 6 pm, you might see your stress levels decrease. TypingDNA Focus shows weekly statistics about your stress, so you can retroactively assess the most stress-causing activities and try to reduce or avoid them entirely. The Focus app is an experimental one and every word users type helps make the Focus app more accurate — benefiting you, the community, and the future of this technology.

How to cope with stress-triggering factors

Never before have we had access to so much information about stress management and various techniques to cope with it. There is no general advice to fit us all. Still, most people see improvements in reducing stress with the following, but you can track your progress with TypingDNA Focus to see what works for you:

Maintaining a healthy social support network

Talking about your concerns or stress-inducing thoughts can be beneficial. People have an innate need to belong, and this becomes even more powerful as we age. Individuals with stronger social ties have an increased likelihood of reporting good or very good health. Remember, having a support network and getting involved in social interaction is key in improving health and wellbeing.

Regularly exercising

Studies about the effects of physical activity on anxiety, depression, and mood show that 15-30 minute sessions have significant benefits. The good news is that you don’t have to go to the gym every day to see improvements. Even exercises like jogging, swimming, cycling or walking bring significant changes to your wellbeing. In addition, sports have beneficial impacts on physiological reactivity to stress, self-efficacy, distraction, and cognitive dissonance.

Meditating

Meditation focuses on breathing to help activate the network of brain regions typically involved in sustained attention. It helps manage rambling thoughts and emotions and increases activation in brain regions related to response inhibition and attention. Thus, 15-minute long sessions over a more extended period could bring extensive mental health benefits and increased focus.

Stress and tiredness are interconnected

Feeling exhausted with low energy and decreased motivation is often a result of stressors and insufficient sleep. Yet a shocking 43 percent of American adults say they do not get enough sleep to mitigate critical risks that can jeopardize safety at work, including the ability to think, make informed decisions, and be productive. And they are right. Sleep deprivation and cognitive performance are closely tied together. Attention, working and long-term memory, visuomotor performances, and decision-making deteriorate in sleep deprivation.

Chronically poor sleep further affects your concentration, and up to 90% of individuals in a depressive episode report disturbed sleep. In addition, insufficient sleep leads to substantial deficits in various neurobehavioral or cognitive performance dimensions like lapses in attention and vigilance, which deteriorates mood and affect.

Sleep better

Creating specific sleep habits can have tremendous benefits on your health and improve your cognitive capacity. By tracking your tiredness levels in the TypingDNA Focus app, you will determine what sleep routine works best for you and how many hours of sleep you should get per night. Although the standard recommendation is 7-8 hours, individuals are not equally equipped and are advised to find their needed rest hours to recharge their body and mind.

For some individuals, dimming the lights and meditating for 15 minutes before going to bed is helpful. Others see improvements in avoiding blue light emitted by device screens 2 hours before sleeping. Nutritious meals and exercises throughout the day may also influence your sleep quality.

Start your progress towards a better you

Once you start implementing better self-care routines, you will also be able to track your results and see which one works best for you. With TypingDNA Focus, you can monitor a series of emotions and moods to understand how to improve your general wellbeing. Based on your typing behavior, the experimental app will also show you when you are most energetic, calm, or happy throughout the day. These are key indicators in understanding how to improve your daily activities and take care of your health and wellbeing.

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