Ever wonder why some mornings you wake up with a skip in your step, ready to take on the day, while other mornings, it’s all you can do to drag yourself out of bed? There is a personal sleep coach that may help you find these answers. It sits right at your bedside and watches you through the night. Sound creepy? It actually looks like nothing more than a fancy alarm clock. But it’s much more than a clock. It’s Zeo.
Zeo Inc., born by a group of sleep-deprived students at Brown University, offers a Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, comprised of a digital display that looks like a clock and a wireless headband that fits comfortably around the head during sleep. The headband transmits your sleep data to the display so that you can see your sleep patterns. It comes with a USB plug-in that you may use to transfer your sleep data to Zeo’s online program. From here, Zeo acts as a sleep coach, identifying factors that are causing poor sleep performance, and offering sleep education and tips to help you sleep better.
Though the New York Times claims that these sleep tips and insights don’t offer any new information about what it takes to get a good night sleep, they do concede that the Zeo proves to be a successful motivator.
The funny thing is, you do wind up getting better sleep – because of what I call the Personal Trainer Phenomenon. People who hire a personal trainer at the gym wind up attending more workouts than people who are just members. Why? Because after spending that much money and effort, you take the whole thing much more seriously. In the same way, the Zeo winds up focusing you so much on sleep that you wind up making some of the lifestyle changes that you could have made on your own, but didn’t. (“Otherwise,” a little voice in your head keeps arguing, “you’ve thrown away $400.”).