Layer 3 · the addendum
Beyond the guide
An evolving layer: early observations, a first tested finding, and open questions, all held apart from the settled guide.
The field guide holds the patterns Wiggers names against four years of my own data. That same record also turned up a few things her guide doesn't name, and this is where they live. Not corrections, and not a scorecard against her: just a few more things I noticed reading my own watch that might help someone reading theirs.
First looks past the guide
Two questions this page used to only pose have now had a first pass through the data. They stay here, not in the field guide, because they're newer and less settled than anything Wiggers' guide is graded on. The short version is below; the numbers, the controls, and the honest limits are on each finding.
- first tested · least-settled
After the crash: the feeling heals faster than the body
Does the body read differently after a crash, and does a crash leave a debt that carries forward? A first pass says the feeling snaps back within a couple of days while the body's autonomic load keeps settling for about two weeks, and the feared snowball (each crash stacking the odds of the next) didn't show up. A real recovery signature the feeling doesn't carry, and no measurable debt.
See the recovery finding → - a refinement of the guide · least-settled
When the strain isn't physical: what the watch catches, and what it misses
Wiggers is honest that a step-counter misses the non-physical draws on your energy, but expects the aftermath to surface overnight. Sorting my days by what the demand actually was sharpens that: the watch catches my emotional load (in stress and body-battery, never in the heartbeat) and stays blind to my cognitive load even overnight. What the watch sees, though, is not what triggers a crash.
See what the watch catches →
Early observations
Noticed across the four years, with some descriptive backing, but observations, not tested findings. They sit a step further from certainty than anything in the field guide, and they're labelled that way on purpose.
- early observation
The changing kind of crash
The crashes didn't just grow rarer over four years; they seem to have changed character. In the early, high-crash years the bad days mostly ran with the heart rate up, the body firing too hard. In the recent, stabler years they more often run the other way: heart rate down, the body gone unusually quiet. The guide notes a crash can deviate in either direction; what's new here is that which direction dominates appears to have flipped over time.
An observation about one body across one illness: descriptive, not a settled finding, and nothing to read on any single morning. The shift also overlaps a medication change, so it can't be pinned to the illness alone.
Still open
Things worth testing that the data hasn't been worked through to answer yet. Hypotheses, plainly: listed so you can see what's coming, not so they read as findings. A few of them are here; the complete list, including the ones still blocked or parked, is in the register.
- open question
The character-flip, tested properly
The changing kind of crash above is still just an eyeballed pattern. A proper test (early-versus-late crashes read channel by channel, by recovery phase, guarding against the medication change and coverage gaps) is scoped but not yet run.
- open question
Does emotional load help trigger a crash?
Separate from what the watch sees: whether emotional load in the days before a crash actually helps set it off. A first look found a hint, but it's suggestive only; it doesn't survive the multiple-comparison correction and sits inside the medication-shifted years. It's being held back for a proper pre-registered test, not claimed here.
- open question
Stress while I am sitting still
My own refinement of one of her ideas, moved here from the field guide because the tweak is mine, not hers. Wiggers watches for stress that will not come down at rest; I added a filter that throws out the minutes where I was actually moving, so a high reading means real arousal and not motion. When I ran it, the clean-rest sample fell to nine crashes, one short of the floor I set in advance, so it landed inconclusive: not a yes, not a no. It may get another pass as more data builds up.
- open question
Is 'best in the middle' really an activity map?
Another of my extensions, also moved here from the guide. On my data the felt-state peaks at mid-stress and falls at both ends, a curve, not a straight line (it is in the workings). But Wiggers also says a stress reading is really activity measured against how you felt that day, and that opens a rival I have not ruled out: on a good day I do more and land in the middle; on a shut-down day I do little; the very highest readings are real overexertion or illness. So 'best in the middle' might be partly a map of how much I did. Does the curve survive holding activity constant? Scoped, not yet run.
Why it sits apart
The reason I opened up four years of watch data in the first place was her guide. Wiggers' Smartwatch Pacing is read by a lot of people, so holding it against one real body isn't only interesting for me; it's interesting for anyone else reading their own watch by it.
But once you're inside the data, other questions surface that her guide never set out to answer, and that's what lives here. They're kept deliberately apart so it stays clear what's actually part of what Wiggers wrote, and what's my own poking around past its edges. The deeper you go on this site, the closer to the data and the further from advice: these are less settled than the patterns in her guide, never folded in as if they carried the same weight. Still one body, still a weather report on it, never an alarm, and never a rule to apply.
The change over time is seeded back on the story; the settled patterns are in the field guide; the method, and the tests as they close, live in the workings. The work pointing past the guide (like whether a watch can predict a crash rather than recognise one) is in reading & sources.