5HT #127: the race to track your focus, my expensive new desk toy, and 3 more

Okay, so Apple bought a brain-sensor startup in May, keeping it quiet 🤫 until it had to be disclosed in an EU filing. The company, Sonera, pitched making brain activity as easy to measure as heart rate. Now, the website’s dark and Apple hasn’t commented (the drama).

Now, I have no clue whether Sonera actually cracked that or what Apple intends to do with it. But it brings me back to a question I’ve been boring everyone with for a while: what is the CGM for your attention? 🤔

Every wearable that mattered has won by answering something people are curious about, then giving the data to make an informed decision. Did I improve my sleep last night? Should I push myself today or take it easy? Etc.

So far, that’s been mostly done day-to-day. But I think the next frontier is the hourly decision: Am I sharp enough to tackle my hardest project, or should I take a break?

We all know we have better and worse windows. Your cognitive performance isn’t a battery steadily draining—it’s more like a wave, influenced by your circadian rhythm and hours awake and caffeine consumed. It hits different for different tasks. Sometimes we feel more capable of writing, brainstorming, analyzing data, or just, er, doomscrolling. 

And, yes, research shows we have optimal windows for creative problem-solving and focus depending on the time of day. Buuuut reliably measuring those windows is another story. After digging into the research, the best evidence I can find is that self-reported data is the ground truth.

So, imagine a wearable that measures your focus and tells you when to use it 👍 (or cool it 👎). I think that’s coming.

I could see it starting with a model using your sleep, HRV, glucose, and other data you’re already logging—and connecting that to this new sensor, maybe calibrated by a short reaction-time test. It’d say, “Now’s a good time for deep work” or “Take a chill pill.” Or it could give you a window: “You’ve got 100 focused minutes left. Choose your own adventure.” (Even better if delivered in the voice of Morgan Freeman.)

My guess is this comes from WHOOP, Oura, and/or Apple. So what big business gets built around this?

Some ideas:

Personally, I can’t wait to learn when my attention is at its best—and organize my time around it.

Bottom line: I think there’s a major breakthrough coming soon… Think: a CGM for attention—and it’ll be game changing for productivity.

Speaking of wearables, the big news of the week is that Oura delayed its IPO.

Well, this was pretty unexpected.

Oura formally said it's "due to uncertainty in the IPO market," and CEO Tom Hale said, "We have the luxury of choosing our moment."

True? I think it's a little mysterious—especially given market conditions haven't necessarily gotten much less uncertain since they said they're doing it.

Anyway, the simplest explanation is that despite strong demand (Reuters reported "four-times oversubscription" at some point?), they couldn't get the price shareholders wanted. With Forerunner intending to sell all their shares (50%+ of the entire IPO), that likely didn't help—it essentially placed more reliance on external valuation than insider pricing.

And, since Oura is profitable, they actually can be patient in a market that's particularly uncertain at the moment 🤷. (Plus, as I understand it, the cash they were going to raise—$500Mish—wasn't actually going to do much beyond paying taxes on all the employee RSUs being exercised.)

Other reasons that seem plausible/at least interesting to think about:

What do you think the reason is? Hit reply 📥. I’d love to trade theories with you.

So, er, this isn’t great news: 

Hospitals are using AI to bill more, and it’s working. In fact, a recent BCBSA analysis found AI-assisted claims coding added $942M (!!) in healthcare spending over two years. AI just makes it way easier to “upcode” and to appeal denials. Classic Jevons Paradox: make something easier, get a lot more of it (there’s going to be lots more of this coming from AI, yeesh).

Next move? Insurers deploying their AI to “downcode” and deny more. Welcome to the AI coding wars, I guess? Will all this fix our broken healthcare system? Long-term: IDKID. Short term: NOPE, with employers already bracing for an 11% jump in healthcare costs next year. Yikes. 😳

My bet on a fix is to take the call away from BOTH sides and let a neutral third party decide claims. That way, there’s no arms race to win.

Buuut IMO the bigger conversation is about rethinking the whole system—and we got into that this week 👇

Earlier this week, I was at the Oliver Wyman Consumer Health Innovation Summit. It’s been a favorite of mine for over a decade, and it’s a rare room where plan leaders, hospital execs, and the innovators who badly want to sell to them actually talk for real. 

AI dominated, obviously: clinical workflows, care navigation, access, and (yes) billing. But the better conversation was bigger. Healthcare doesn’t need AI to optimize the system we have. It needs to be rethought from the ground up. 

And it’s the same theme I’ve heard every year: the shift from “patients” to “customers,” away from acute care only when 💩 hits the fan and toward prevention across the whole health journey. Baylor Scott & White CEO Pete McCanna made the best case I’ve heard.

Consumer health-ifying healthcare is the most important work in this space, I believe, and AI will speed up whichever direction we point it.

Right now, we’re mostly pointing it at the billing department. I’d rather point it at the patient—er, customer, that is. Oh, and Novo is already leaning into the shift. Let’s see if others follow. 👀

So I bought a tungsten cube, handed it to my kids, and… within 90 seconds there was a small dent in my floor.

The cube is fine (the cube will always be fine), but I am not, because my wife is very unhappy with me for handing my kids a cube that’s heavier than it looks. 😬

Tungsten is element 74 on the periodic table. It's about as dense as gold and nearly twice as dense as lead.

Mine is a one-inch cube, basically the size of a small die. Weighs in at 0.66 pounds and cost me $175. It is an expensive desk toy, but before you @ me, know that a 41.6lb version retails for $2,999.99. So really, I showed restraint. 😌

I bought mine as a set with a matching aluminum cube: same size, one-seventh (!) the weight. Hold one in each hand, and you get a live demo of the size-weight illusion (first documented by Charpentier in 1891, ah oui). Basically, your brain constantly predicts how heavy a thing should be from its size… and this cube really messes with that in a kind of cool way.

Every time I grab it (roughly ~40x a day), it feels like it's breaking some hardwired prediction in my brain. 🧠

Fun fact: These little cubes went viral in 2021 after a crypto joke about a fake shortage caused a real one. 

Following that tweet ☝️, Midwest Tungsten Service’s Amazon inventory got wiped out.

But the people wanted more. Because, of course. 

So Midwest Tungsten Service decided to sell a 14-inch, 1,784-pound version as an NFT, leading a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to spend $250K in Ethereum for the right to make a pilgrimage to Willowbrook, Illinois, 1x/year for a supervised 😆 visit with the cube. They could look at it, photograph it, and (gasp 😱) even touch it.

Anyways, the meme has faded, but the cubes still sell. Because they’re fun!

3 other healthyish things I’m into right now: 

Most clicked last week: Apparently a lot of you are STILL wondering if you’re showering wrong. 🚿😆

👋 Who are you again? I’m Derek Flanzraich, and I’m in the business of healthyish. I founded two venture-backed startups–Greatist (👍) and Ness (👎)—and helped dozens of brands you know grow including Ro, GoodRx, Midi, BetterHelp, and LMNT. I now run Healthyish Content, plus a few other healthyish things (like Fixie Dust, launching this fall).

Every Thursday, I share what’s hot, what’s not, and what’s next in consumer health. (Disclosure: I invest in and advise companies in this space—when I cover one, I'll say so.) I sometimes add affiliate links, but they influence my picks zero.

See something smart, strange, or seriously overhyped? Hit reply, I respond to every email.