Heart rate variability is the tiny beat-to-beat variation your watch reads in about a minute when you wake up. Higher usually means the recovery side of your nervous system had the night. It only ever means something against your own normal, never against anyone else's number.
It is a trend you watch over a week, not a verdict on one night. The video covers the what and the why. This is about the part you can actually feel: the habits that move it.
HRV is like a fingerprint. Michael's numbers are his. Yours will sit somewhere else entirely, and comparing the two tells you nothing. The only useful comparison is you against your own recent normal.
Your morning number is really last night showing up. Here are three of Michael's mornings. For each one, tap the habits you think pulled his number down, then see what the research actually says. These are example mornings, not what to expect on any given day.
Tap the habits you think pulled Michael's number down. There is no wrong tap here, only what the evidence says.
You cannot count this one by hand. A pulse you take with two fingers gives you heart rate, not the beat-to-beat variation. It takes a device:
Pick one and stay with it. Devices disagree with each other and with a clinical ECG, so a number from one is not the same number from another. Same device, same time of day, same position, compared only against your own past mornings.
What the research actually says, with sources.