This is because like most people these days, even if we don't know it, we are gamifying and tokenizing our experience by introducing the tracking of our activities, keeping score, so to speak.
True stuff, and I'm actively trying to stay away from devices that encourage this. While it can be a motivational tool to take those 1000 steps more to get your 10.000 daily, or to run that extra lap to burn those nice round 300 calories, I don't think it's something that's sustainable or healthy in the long term. Smart watches like these let don't leave too much room for failure, and that scares me. It makes our society even more results-driven and number-driven than I would like it to be.
I appreciate people who can live by the numbers and put in the work to reach the results they want to read on their devices, but I don't envy them. I wouldn't like to live life like it's a daily challenge, because I already have enough of those waiting for me around the corner. I don't want to see my watch pause at 3/4th of the bar because I "only" did 8500 steps today instead of 10.000. Sometimes 8500 is good enough.
Not saying that I disagree with your article, but I do take a different stance on it. My friends can love their devices and healthy lifestyle all they want, it wouldn't differ me on eating my pizza tonight. I'm a healthy young man with a healthy lifestyle and I'll keep it that way for sure, but in no distant future I will resort to any sort of device to keep track of that. I will listen to my body and look in the mirror, and that will have to do :).
The tracking gear is a tool. Most allow you to set your targets yourself and thus define whether the watch becomes pressure or is just there to generate some stats allowing you to see if your healthy life is indeed as healthy.
More often than not the pressure comes from social circles measuring against each other or platforms like Strava and Runkeeper.
Tools are supposed to be our tools, we are not their slaves de facto.
I considered the same watch little more than a year ago. Compared different models for months. In the end I realized all I truly cared about was an average overview of my heartbeat. I went for a cheap MI Fit band and while it had a bunch more, I got what I wanted and even basic sleep analysis which was rather interesting.
That tracker and its performance reminders never pressured me. I set the targets low enough to have to be hungover all day long to actually get any reminder. It is totally possible to be combine useful info without feeling tracked or pressured/forced into performance. But that may require actual use and configuring of the tool rather than black/white assessment only.
If you have the discipline to not succomb to them, as exhibited, you most likely belong to the small demographic who can more out of them than most because you will configure the tool to work for you. Rather than be defined by "universal standards" which are mere average recommendations.
I see what you mean. Some people might be able to use these devices to push them a bit further without feeling pressured, or maybe they like them purely out of interest for data.
I'm not like that. I don't want to know my daily heartrate, I don't care about my sleepcycle and I don't need to know how many steps I take daily. I'm healthy since my body says so. I feel it. I don't need numbers to prove it for me, you know what I mean? I think society as a whole is drifting away from their own emotions too much and it feels like we're more comfortable to trust a device to tell us we're fine than we trust our own body and mind.
Perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point I guess :).
You know those people that go to the gym and always skip leg day? I think that is what many of us do in many areas of our life, we do what we like or think has an effect, even if we are actually putting our mind or body out of balance. For some people at least, these kinds of tools can be used to recalibrate and set new defaults.
We're not there yet but the top devices like Apple Watch and Samsung Fit will always more become "health prevention" devices as they cram more and medical hardware in those small casings.
We already have heartbeat irregularity discovery in those, we know it's inevitable Apple Watch will soon introduce a sugar monitor as Tim Cook is known to wear prototypes and Apple has received regulatory approval. Oxygen levels will become hardware based as well rather than software as is now. And so many more the naked eye can't track and would previously require blood analysis. It's an interesting niche and aside from those more medically focused implementations many people will definitely benefit from the more basic guidance/reminders the devices offer.
And then there will be the insurance companies buying the data, as well as big pharma :)
Apple is not an advertising company nor data reseller. ;)
Besides the function of that tool is to send people to ER before someone hopefully discovers them needing an ambulance. No week passes or an Apple covering sites finds another person in regional media who was "saved" thanks to their watch and got away with early stage surgery rather than who knows what.
I wouldn't trust Google or Amazon with that data tho.
But they are a corporation and an investor. When they know who is going to end up where, they also know where is going to get sales :)
Oh and for sure, there is definitely a push toward being controlled in this way - but then for the last 50 years, there has been a push to not pay attention to reality and instead, listen to how we feel. Feelings are generally not a very good indicator of reality, as they can be based on fantasy that feels very real :)
And for the last 2000 years we have been told to contain those emotions and to make our decisions with our ratio (the celibate for example), which didn't always got the nicest results either.
The feeling brain is the one in the driver's seat if you ask me, while the thinking brain is next to us giving guidence. Nevertheless human beings like to follow their emotions since it's the easy thing to do. Nobody is able to alays do the right thing, because that's simply put not how our minds work. In the mid 20th-century we tried to delete the feeling brain by lobotomizing people, but they simply became ghosts. We need a balance between the two, but in the first place we need to understand that we act because of what we feel 95% of the time. Only by reflecting on it, and allowing the ratio to tell us otherwise we can fight the urge of following the easy path our feeling brain offers us. Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman is a great book about this topic by the way.
Feelings are my reality, but I try every day to be extremely aware how tricky they tend to be. They form my ego which tells me i'm right when I have a discussion with my girlfriend, that recollects all the instances where she did me wrong so I can add some extra arguments to the discussion, it tells me that my girlfriend should be the one to come to me to make ammends because she started the fight etc. It's a slick **** sometimes. And I FEEL all thse things. That's what makes it even worse. And then I need to go back to my thinking brain and put all these feeling to a different, more honest light. That's when I can see that I'm very often in the wrong and I'm being irrational. That's when I find the strenght to go to her and say i'm wrong. It's what makes me a better man. But it's damn hard.
If there's no data offered which interests you, then of course the topic ends right there. :)
Personally I'm like abh12345 and don't need the watch for the 24/7 tracking to improve my laziness. But there's some data recording I find value in, I suck at chores like regularly taking my pulse.
except to the tools of the flesh :D
I came very close to getting this instead - as I don't worry that much. But it didn't track routes afaik, so I wanted something that had a gps, so I don't have to take my phone.
I think the self assessment factor can be important, as we tend to focus on much of the wrong things, what we enjoy rather than what we need. We are already skewed, the tools can give a pathway to bringing us back to the normal.
Or control our brain through radio waves...
The independence of a phone is a very strong selling point for the Amazfit. And while majority of my music is Spotify nowadays, 2GB space is plenty to last few workouts, just need to find those not DRM'ed mp3s again.
And indeed, the self assessment and features needed is most important. Unless you're prone to marketing and fashion. But then you're going to end up with the smoothest Pavlovian experience yet, AKA the Apple Watch. :D
I don't need music when I run or workout, but I don't mind a good podcast :)
Archive.org for the mp3 download it is for you then. Altho those "Pumping Iron" or BPM 150-170 playlists are enjoyable when... pumping iron.
Pretty much. I have mine set at 2000 Steps and 6 hours sleep - very low, and if I can't manage those then the watch is right to give me a kick up the arse.
Sounds like you've got a Limited Edition, most will only make you feel like Pavlov's dog when they buzz you.
:)
What I can't find is the switch to turn off the 'you've been sitting still for too long' notification, I can see that one getting annoying.
Hate it when that bugger interrupts me when I'm reading a comic.
Think i'll start using it as indicator to fill my glass.
It seems to collide with two "pomodoro" windows (popular productivity technique). So a refill seems definitely appropriate then.
Read faster :D
It's the pics, not the amount of text. I did say "comic".
I do understand what you are saying and I actually have much the same view, but will play devil's advocate a little more.
Perhaps this is a good thing as it puts the numbers on the surface, instead of hidden away. The numbers of our lives are there, especially digitally. The large handful of data gatherers have digital avatars created for all of us, and they use those numbers - while we don't even know they exist.
Yes, then there will be the jobs, the kids, the pressures, the whatevers that arise - and before you know it, you look in the mirror and not like what you see, lose confidence in who you are perhaps.
We are already gamified, most of just don't pay attention to the metrics that matter, even to ourselves. Regardless of whether we track them or not, they tick along, or don't.
Interesting take on it. But what's the merit of knowing? Of course i'm not talking about preventive screenings for cancer or anything like that. People should have themselves screened preventively, even if they don't feel sick or unhealthy. But a young man like me, 26 years old and in good shape, why would I care about my heartrate or daily steps?
And that's perhaps the thing about our society today. We put way too much emphasis on the ticking, when we perhaps are better off without that clock in the first place. Of course you can call it ignorant, and I would agree, but I really feel sometimes ignorance is bliss. Especially when we're talking about trivial things like daily life.
Interesting topic to discuss. Good article Taraz!
Most people don't know about economics and finance either, how is that working out? The problem is, knowledge is power as it affects behavior, and when only a small fraction have the knowledge, they can affect the behavior of the masses.
Not necessarily. Not knowing doesn't mean one isn't influenced by something and when one knows that they are affected but don't know what is affecting them - that is a suffering. Again with the economy, people suffer not having enough and blame all kinds of things, yet - they don't actually know, if they did - they would change their behavior.
I see "knowing" as more than knowledge in the head, it is practical.