Workplace stress is something most professionals experience, but one Bengaluru techie decided to measure it rather than simply complain about it.
His unusual experiment, which involved combining fitness-tracker data with his work calendar, has now gone viral on social media. The reason? It helped him identify which colleagues appeared to trigger the biggest spikes in his stress levels.
How the experiment worked
The viral post was shared by Bengaluru-based professional Pankaj, who explained how he connected his Whoop fitness tracker to his work calendar. In the post, he wrote: "I hooked my Whoop to my work calendar to find which coworker gives me the most stress. Thanks to Fable, I reverse engineered Whoop to pull per-minute heart-rate data and matched spikes with calendar events and attendees. I now have a leaderboard and I think about it daily. Few details masked for obvious reasons ;)"
According to Pankaj, he reverse-engineered the system to access minute-by-minute heart-rate data from his Whoop device. He then matched those heart-rate spikes with scheduled meetings and the colleagues who attended them. The result was what he jokingly described as a "leaderboard" ranking the coworkers most associated with his stress spikes.
'I now have a leaderboard'
Sharing the results online, Pankaj joked that he now thinks about the leaderboard every day. The post quickly gained attention, with many users finding the idea both amusing and surprisingly relatable.
Social media reacts
The post generated a flood of comments from users who were intrigued by the experiment. One user pointed out that heart-rate spikes may not always be caused by colleagues alone. "Interesting idea, but it depends. For one meeting you could go to another floor, before another one you just ate something with sugar," the person commented.
Others were eager to try the system themselves. "Need to replicate this workflow ASAP," one user wrote.
Another simply commented: "Damn, this is smart."
The technical aspect of the project also impressed many people. One commenter suggested turning it into a product, writing: "Sell this. I will buy it." Others asked Pankaj about the technology behind the setup, including how he accessed the Whoop data and whether an open-source version might be available.
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