Digital self-tracking in the workplace: the business of sleep

Abstract

The article examines how we can understand digital self-tracking in a work-life context. Existing self-tracking studies have mostly explored self-tracking in the workplace from a critical distance and as an expression of a neo-liberal management ideology that exposes boundaries between work and privacy and govern employees through new forms of self-management. This lacuna of close-up empirical research is addressed in the article by studying the use of digital self-tracking in relation to sleep in a larger private company. With a focus on technology- in-use, we investigate how negotiation of responsibilities and boundaries between work and privacy is negotiated as a result of digital self-tracking. We show how the digital self-tracking results in employees and management try making both the employee and the company responsible for bad sleep. Hence, the boundaries of work become an ongoing negotiation and the responsibility for sleep remains partially unresolved. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for future research in digital selftracking in working life and practitioners.