Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

Data-Driven Connections: Me and Emerson and His New Oura Ring (Heroic +1 #1,652)

17 Dec 2025 · 2 min

Episode

17 Dec 2025 · 2 min

0:00

Brian Johnson uses his son Emerson's Oura ring to track how bedtime, food, and activities affect sleep quality. A late Bulls game that kept them out until 10:30pm cut both total and deep sleep. He combines the ring's data with what he observes: kids are more energetic when they sleep less.

Questions this episode answers

January 29, 2024

7:30pm

Approximately 10:30pm

About 90 minutes

Data-Driven Connections: Me and Emerson and His New Oura Ring (Heroic +1 #1,652)

Chapters

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Emerson got his own oura ring for the new year. It's been incredibly fun to analyze the data with him every morning and make quantifiable connections between when he goes to bed and what he eats and how his scores reflect those choices. As I discuss in the book and this plus one and throughout our coach program, I link to a plus one. We want to make the connection between our choices and their consequences. For example, when Emerson first got the ring, I explained to him what deep sleep is and what REM sleep is and how you tend to get more deep sleep earlier in your sleep cycle and more REM sleep later in your sleep cycle. Then, about a week into having the ring, we were blessed to go to a Chicago Bulls game when they were in town playing the San Antonio Spurs. Thanks for the tickets, Billy. And the thanks for the connection, Gina. So the game started when we're usually in bed. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Tip off was at 7:30pm Emerson really wanted to watch the whole game, so we didn't get back to the hotel to get to bed until 10.30pm it was an awesome game. Go Bulls. And an equally awesome family night out. And the next morning it was fun to analyze the data and see the total sleep numbers go down of and the deep sleep numbers go down. Not as obvious. And that's our plus one. What data do you have in your life that can help you make the connection between what's working and what needs work in your life? Remember, as Emerson's namesake Ralph Waldo once said, all life is an experiment. The more experiments, the better. Let's use the data to make the connection to what's working and what needs work while remembering the fact that we have bright lines to know when it's wise to cross them. Day one all in. Let's go, little P.S. here's another qualitative data point. After we enjoyed some adventures in San Antonio that morning, we drove 90 minutes home to our place outside Austin. Let's just say the two kids who got a few hours less sleep than normal were, shall we say, a little less than well resourced and might have been a little more crazy than normal. And all worth it. And all fascinating data.