When it comes to fitness tracking devices, opinions are absolutely like arseholes – everyone’s got one. This isn’t going to be a debate about which one is best. Instead, I’m going to share what made me change my mind, and how I went from vehemently against them to in favour of using them mindfully…
I realised whilst training to be a PT that I might need to invest in a watch. I hadn’t worn one for a very long time, because for well over 15 years, I’d typically been using my phone to tell the time. And, as telling the time is the traditional purpose of a watch, I decided I didn’t need one. Plus I favour wearing bracelets on my left wrist; there wasn’t space on my arm for a watch!
However, there are times when it’s rude to use your phone to tell the time – namely, when your focus ought to be elsewhere, and you don’t want to appear as though you’re actually not paying attention to the person who is paying for your… time.
I’d been really wary of fitness trackers. I know that it’s really easy to get suckered into them, and allow them to run our lives in a misguided way, so I’d steered clear. Plus I don’t participate in activities that significantly benefit from the use of them (sports such as running, walking, cycling – ones which involve tracking time across distance). When I ran at the beginning of my fitness journey, I tracked my running using my phone, which has limitations, but fairly well did what I needed to do. Then, when I added strength training, I’d manually add in those workouts too, and that’s when things fell apart a bit for me.
I became very interested in making sure I trained a certain number of times, that my workouts got logged digitally, even though nobody but me was monitoring it and the numbers themselves didn’t matter. I caught myself doing it, deleted the app, and vowed not to do it again.
Until I decided I needed a watch.
Having read Nir Eyal’s “Indistractible”, I seriously considered getting an analogue watch. It would do most of what I needed to do – if I needed a stopwatch function for working with clients, I could bend my own rules and use my phone, or another digital device, or get an actual stopwatch. The book had made me consider it as the author points out that, when using our phones to tell the time and lighting up the screen for that purpose, we often get suckered in, either by our own brains or a notification we hadn’t previously spotted, and before we know it, rather than just checking the time, we’ve disappeared down a scroll hole and got distracted. And it’s a very fucking good point. It happened to me regularly.
But the lure of a smartwatch was strong. “If I’m going to get a watch…” I reasoned, “It may as well have all of those features. I’m spending the money anyway. It’d be nice if it connected with my phone…”.
So I bought an Apple Watch. To go with my iPhone. And my Apple Music account. And my AirPods. I fell deeper into being That person.
Once it arrived, I quickly got over myself and enjoyed the increased interconnectivity of my life. I love that I can have my payment cards on my wrist. It’s so helpful to actually just be able to tell the time. It’s pretty cool to know what my heart rate (well, for the level of accuracy a wrist-worn device gives) during workouts and my resting heart rate is nowhere near as poor as we assessed it to be on my PT course and I’m doing way more steps than I thought I was!
Oh, hold up. There you are with obsessing over the metrics. Because you’re standing up every hour because that thing on your wrist is buzzing and you’re constantly checking rings and the only thing you’re managing to hold off on is tracking your sleep because even you think it’s ridiculous to wear the watch 24/7. Shit.
I caught myself again. My brain and I had a word. We decided not to obsess about arbitrary activity goals set by a computer. We chose to trust ourselves, and enjoy our life as we like to live it, not as someone coding apps thinks it should be done. We’ve agreed that the watch won’t be worn on dates should we choose to go on any, and that for other occasions, I’ll still be wearing jewellery rather than tech.
So how do we make sure we use tech mindfully?
Firstly, I highly recommend the other book I read which positively influenced me prior to my watch purchase: “Screen Time” by Becca Caddy is well-informed, without being a telling-off. It’s not one of the books which takes you through a “digital detox” and convinces you that you’re doing everything wrong. I won’t spoil it by giving away the truly great things I learned from it, please go and read them for yourself, you won’t regret it.
Secondly, decide what you’re using your tech for. Set some (healthy) boundaries, and be willing to adjust those as you learn more about yourself and your usage (there we are with the data mining!). Learn from your tech. Allow it to inform you. Don’t let it own you.
Thirdly, stay on top of enjoying it. Do what I did when I realised I had a problem the first time – nip it in the bud. These devices, contrary to what the developers tell us, aren’t for everyone. Many of us will be able to teach ourselves to override the impulses designed into these clever pieces of kit. If it’s wearing you rather than you wearing it, it’s time to take it off.