Ever wondered which colleague causes you the most stress at work? A Bengaluru techie decided not to leave it to guesswork. Instead, he connected his Whoop fitness tracker to his work calendar and analysed his heart rate data during meetings to identify which interactions triggered the biggest spikes. The unusual experiment quickly grabbed attention on social media, with many users amused by the idea of creating a workplace “stress leaderboard”.
How the stress tracking experiment worked
The post was shared by X user Pankaj, who explained how he combined data from his Whoop fitness tracker with information from his work calendar.
In the caption, 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 and matched spikes with call events and attendees. I now have a leaderboard and I think about it daily. Few info masked for obvious reasons ;)”
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According to the post, Pankaj used the system to compare minute by minute heart rate data with scheduled meetings and attendees. This allowed him to identify which calls coincided with noticeable increases in his heart rate. The result was what he jokingly described as a “leaderboard” of the colleagues who appeared to trigger the most stress.
Take a look:
Social media users weigh in
The post quickly generated a flurry of reactions, with users sharing jokes, suggestions and technical questions about the setup.
One user pointed out that heart rate changes can be influenced by several factors beyond meetings. “Interesting idea, but it depends. For one meeting you could go to another floor, before another one you just ate something with sugar and when you met with a senior developer it was several hours after your last meal. You may also have joined a meeting after spending time working on something boring.”
Others were immediately interested in trying it themselves. “Need to replicate this workflow ASAP,” wrote one user, while another simply commented, “Damn, this is smart.”
Several users even saw business potential in the idea. “Sell this. I will buy it,” one person wrote.
Another commenter joked, “As soon as the meeting starts and your heart rate shoots up, you’ll know exactly which colleague is to blame.”
The technical side of the project also attracted attention. One user wrote, “Can you point to the protocol that the Whoop device uses to communicate or the methodology used to get data from the device? If you have an open source version, share it.”
Some users suggested alternative ways to achieve similar results. “You didn’t need Fable for this. I did the same thing with Sonnet 3.5,” one commenter claimed.
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Meanwhile, another user summed up the curiosity behind the experiment, writing, “Damn, getting an inch closer to your stress reasons feels so good.”
