'APP-INESS IS IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS' - RESEARCHERS USE AN APP TO DETECT STRESS

This one is for all the students out there. Ever found that some days, no matter how hard you try, that to-do list will just pile up and the quality of work you produce just won't be that good? Yep. And, it's tempting to shut yourself away during exam periods in the fear that socialising will wipe clean all that revision that you just imprinted upon your brain.

But, research published in New Scientist (article here) has found that the mental states of students, which can be governed by loneliness, sleep and social interaction, directly correlates to academic performance. A team of researchers built an app measuring the physical activity, conversations, GPS location, and the length of sleep of volunteers over a 10 week period. This data was then used to 'measure' a person's happiness, loneliness and stress. (If these emotive states can be measured. And, I'm sure some deep-thinkers will argue that a person's happiness doesn't necessarily depend on the company of others...). The results showed that students who seemed to interact with other people less and have more disturbed sleep patterns (as well as other compromised factors), were faced with greater stress and depression levels, and consequently performed worse academically.

I found this article of particular interest for a few reasons. Firstly, I've said this many times to friends who never seem to believe me, that even during times of intense stress or a hot-spot of deadlines around the corner, I personally find that it is still as important to eat, sleep, exercise and socialise well, and that keeping these aspects of life under control can really benefit performance academically or in your career. Secondly, as the article states, an app monitoring your every move can be controversial and unnerving, and from an philosophical point of view, it then seems like your phone can tell you more about your mental state and mood than you can yourself - can an object with no mental faculties tell you more about your own? Or can you really attribute numerical values to a state of mind? However, I think above all, this is a promising move in many ways - not only does it provide a novel and potentially more accurate way of assessing mental health, but this research also 'stresses' (excuse the pun) the importance of figuring out what life balance will give you the maximum quality of work on a daily basis, and avoid any future stress-related breakdowns!