Hey everyone, thanks for being here.
Most people don’t realize how much stress quietly shapes their day - until it spills over. I’ve lived that story.
So as I build Contextual North, I want to share the lessons from the inside out. Not as polished advice, but as a real-time look at building something designed to help people steady themselves when the moment gets hard.
These updates are my way of sharing those lessons while shaping something human-centered from the ground up.
Contextual North helps people steady themselves in real time - guiding them back to clarity and meaning when stress or reactivity takes over.
Grounded in behavioral science and depth psychology, it combines biometric feedback with reflective design to make self-awareness tangible. A haptic nudge on the wrist, a moment of reflection, a shift in perspective. Over time, these micro-moments help rewire the brain toward calm, presence, and agency.
Unlike typical wellness apps, Contextual North isn’t just about chasing calm or optimizing performance, it’s about making the unconscious conscious, giving people a private, personal way to understand their own patterns and re-align with what truly matters.
It’s a compass for the inner world. Built with empathy, privacy, and a deep respect for human complexity.
Want to learn more? Feel free to reply to this email and let me know any thoughts or questions along the way. I’d love to hear from you!
P.S. If someone forwarded this to you, welcome - I’m glad you’re here. You can subscribe here to get future updates straight from me.
If you know someone that is stressed out, experiences spiraling thoughts, and overwhelm, please forward this to them.
Early conceptual design of the CN Watch experience.
A few highlights on where things stand:
• Brand system
The full CN brand visual identity is now in place! Color palette, logomark, typography, and the foundational feel of the product. It’s modern, calm, and directional. It finally feels like “us.” A very big THANK YOU to Eric Lovejoy and Hunter Muraira for their great work and collaboration on this.
• Newsletter is now live (you’re reading it)
This is the beginning of a real communication channel, a place to share the journey, the research, and the lessons behind building a privacy-focused, emotionally intelligent product.
• Apple Watch stress-triggering
20Spokes is fine-tuning how the system detects stressful moments by combining two signals: a drop in HRV and a rise in heart rate. The goal is to catch these shifts in real time - down to the second - so the nudge arrives when it matters, not after the moment has already passed. We’re now getting close to the point where we can begin testing these “in-the-moment” triggers with an early group.
• Baseline + trend tracking
Everyone’s nervous system moves differently throughout the day, so we’re building a simple way to capture your personal baseline and notice when you drift from it. In plain language: when your body shifts away from its normal pattern, Contextual North will be able to reflect that back to you. This will be a key part of what we validate in early testing.
• Early testing phase
We’re gearing up for an initial round of hands-on testing with a small group. I’ll share more soon - including a look at the Apple Watch experience and what we’re learning from early signals as they come in.
I’ve been revisiting the science behind HRV and stress this week, and one idea keeps standing out:
Your nervous system acts before your mind can make sense of what’s happening.
Physiology moves fast - faster than thoughts, faster than interpretation. By the time you “feel stressed,” your body has already made the decision and started adjusting..
That tiny gap between reaction and awareness is where so many conflicts, misunderstandings, and emotional spirals begin. It’s also the exact place Contextual North is designed to support.
We’re not trying to overwhelm people with data..
We’re trying to help them notice the shift in the moment, as it happens, so they can respond from a steadier place instead of getting pulled into a reactive one.
That one-second window can change everything.
One theme keeps showing up for me lately is inner pace.
As we’ve been moving quickly across design, development, branding, and decision-making - but somewhere in all that movement, I realized I was trying to push clarity instead of creating space for it. The signal showed up in my body first: the tightness, the shortened breath, the sense of urgency that wasn’t coming from anything real.
So I paused. And in that moment, something simple surfaced:
You can’t force insight. You can only make space for it.
That sentence has been my anchor these past few weeks, and it’s also at the core of what Contextual North is about - noticing the moment when you drift out of alignment and gently steering yourself back. Sometimes the most important shifts happen in the smallest windows of awareness.
If you , made it this far… Thank you! Seriously, and thanks for being part of this early wave.
If anything in here resonated or made you think about your own patterns, reply - I’d love to hear how your experiences can help shape how this product can serve you.
More soon.
-Jesse
P.S. if you know someone that is stressed out from work or in general, please forward this to them.