[writeinpencils]

This is something covered very well by Taleb in "Fooled By Randomness." Simply by exposing yourself to random fluctuations on a shorter cadence, you are experiencing stress reactions that would never occur if you checked it on a less frequent cadence. Anyone who has played fantasy football will be familiar with this. If you check your players' scores every five minutes, it is infinitely more stressful than just checking them once on Monday morning.

[wpietri]

Exactly the book I came here to mention.

I used to write software for financial traders, so I know it's possible to make money by following second-to-second shifts in the market. But it's a zero-sum game, and I saw our traders take a lot of money from people who were responding to second-to-second shifts in the market.

These days I put my money in long-term investments and then look at them every few years. The other day I saw mention of the big market price jumps. I thought, "maybe now's the time to rebalance things?" And then I sat very still until the urge passed, because reacting to headline news strikes me as a great way to lose money.

[kqr]

Also why defaulting to hooking up mothers in labour to continuous monitoring is a bad idea. Better, unless something else is medically called for, to check in at sparser intervals instead.

Also a good reason not to get these "breathing monitors" for infants, again, unless medically indicated.