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Comment by pen2l | Hacker News Reader

If anyone here has an Apple watch, they likely experienced the "intrusiveness" of the breathing app.

At first, it did indeed caught me off guard... why was Apple, a company whose products I equate to be the pinnacle of principled UI design, so pushy and so annoying with notifications that I take a moment to breathe.

But then I observed something truly remarkably: it wasn't just randomly, aimlessly spamming me with the notifications... it was giving me these notifications at very key times. It gave notifications during times of acute distress, times when I was feeling off one way or another. And by golly, when I did then stop and take its suggestion to stop and do its guided breathing exercise, wow, it helped.

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I don’t think it’s actually tied to stress. That’s not documented anywhere. I think it’s more or less random, albeit you have to already be sitting still to get a notification.

*s/caught/catch/; s/remarkably/remarkable/;

Child post posed question about what measurement is being used to decide whether or not to give breathe notification, I googled around and saw that it's not documented as you say, but I think it's Apple being coy and secretive here, there's definitely something going on here.

My guess is it's some combination of pulse reading and lowered blood oxygenation level. The blood oxygenation measurement is probably more highly weighted.

When we are stressed out, we start taking shallow breaths, and taking shallow breaths is bad because it's then we start to lose a balance of oxygen/CO_2, and when that happens we're not at your best, we feel dizzy, we feel tired, our judgement is perhaps not optimal, so this is the right time to take a moment to relax and inhale deep to get some good air in, and exhale exhaustively and repeat a couple of times.

For my part the notifications seem almost completely random except that they come when I’m sitting down. I have not noticed them happening when I’m particularly stressed. You’ll notice in the app that you can specify how many notifications you get per day, further suggesting that it’s not tied to stress indicators in vital signs.

> You’ll notice in the app that you can specify how many notifications you get per day, further suggesting that it’s not tied to stress indicators in vital signs.

You make a very compelling point that an option of choosing how many times you get notified is suggestive of it being random/unrelated to vital signs, and I actually didn't know you could set this (I see now mine is set to 2 times a day).

But I still maintain it's more than that, it does use some measurement to trigger a notification, and the max limit exists so as to not burden the user with these notifications lest they start becoming a source of stress themselves.

The reason I'm so strongly convinced of this is that I seem to almost be able to trigger it in a sense, this all first got to me when I realized that notification would appear when I thought about something particular in a certain way during a rough time. Anyway, I'll be paying extra attention to this now and will report back with results after a couple of days! :)

Someone in this thread should take a minute to sit down and hold their breath to see if it triggers the notification

Oh wow. I always just assumed they were throwing these at regular intervals during the day! You’re saying they’re actually giving you these based on your pulse or smthg?

I have a tendency to hold my breath when I'm focused. My watch noticed that.

Is it looking at oxygenation or dissolved CO2 levels?

More likely a shift in your heart rate, although the latest model can measure O2 saturation

It is the latest model. I turned off the periodic notifications in the Breathe app - let's see if it continues to ping me.

for me its just the opposite, those reminders during stressfull times make me MORE stressed and i just toss the watch into a box for the rest of the day...

Did you ever….try the breathing exercise? 90% of people don’t, but it’s actually quite pleasant.

There are some situations of acute stress where one can’t take a 1 min pause, but in most scenarios it helps.

>90% of people don't

Thats good. The world isnt run by yoga gurus and zen monks for very good reasons. Not all stress is bad.

And people who dont have life experience or the right people around them can easily be misled by receiving the wrong signals about how to cope with stress.

"They told me to move to the back of the bus. I got so angry but my apple watch told me to breath and I calmed down..."

Calmness doesn't mean you stop taking action against injustice.

I want to agree with you on some level, not all negative emotions are bad. It definitely seems like a lot of people pushing 'mindfulness' are pushing some utopian, culty good vibes version where we try to ignore or subdue all negative emotion.

But overall, being able to focus on your breathing (and control your anger, and control the consequences of your emotions) is a good thing, and it doesn't demand that you ignore whatever it was that made you feel stress in the first place.

Calmness would just help you think logically. You can take a second to breathe and make better decisions. Maybe you would have made the same decision in the end and you just wasted those few seconds to take a breath but more often, life isn't so rushed that you don't have time to breathe and think for a moment.

You might have an obscured impression of yogis and monks if you think all they do is sit around focusing on their breath all day

Hint: the goal of Buddhism is to reduce suffering in the world. It’s not a bad idea to start with yourself.

Rosa Parks did not act in the heat of the moment when she refused to give up her seat. It was a carefully planned moment with multiple parties involved in the planning, intending to have a specific effect and executed calmly. Being calm was an asset.

I have a Fitbit, and I've had to shut off as many of the notifications as I can. I really hope the trend goes toward simplicity rather than cutesy rewards and notifications..