How a smartwatch helped one writer regain control

BBY THE END OF MY FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS IN ISOLATION , I thought I’d perfected my lockdown routine: wake up promptly at 8am, take a long walk, shower, then get to work at my kitchen table. As the sun was setting, I’d Facetime a friend, Zoom into game night, or, when I needed a screen break, tackle a jigsaw puzzle. But as social distancing dragged on, the world got scarier, and my dining room chair started to ruin my back. I found myself in a deep funk, bingeing on Youtube videos I’d already seen of people playing video games I’d never play. I’d roll over in bed at 9:56am, barely awake, to crack open my work laptop. I wasn’t moving much. For lunch, I’d nuke frozen chicken nuggets and chips. ere’s nothing wrong with frozen chicken nuggets. But there’s something wrong with frozen chicken nuggets ve days a week.

In March 2019, my phone tells me I averaged over 11 250 steps per day. During the bleakest two weeks of this past March, that number dropped by 30%. According to new research by Evidation Health with data from personal tness trackers, physical activity in from 1 March to

‘I still have days and hours when I feel absolutely helpless. But the watch makes me feel a little more prepared to confront that helplessness head-on’

6 April of this year declined by 48% nationwide. As weeks in isolation turned into months, I needed something to get me back on track, to help me spend my time in a way that didn’t fuel my shame spiral. What I needed, it turned out, was my forgotten Apple Watch.

When Tim Cook introduced the Apple Watch in 2014, he said the company was trying to make ‘the best watch in the world’.

Early adopters ocked to the Apple Watch for its productivity features, revelling in the ability to get noti cations on their wrist instead of on their phones. Later versions of the Apple Watch began piling on tness tracking skills – a GPS chip, activity recognition, a heart rate monitor. Apple now pitches the Watch less as a wrist-mounted personal assistant and more as a personal coach. And it’s working: last year, the Watch outsold the entire Swiss watch industry.

My Apple Watch had been gathering dust in my drawer since last autumn, having been stashed there not long a er I got it. at

rst go-round ended a er a couple of weeks of annoying buzzes. Bzzzt. Tinder: Activity is up by 34% in your area! Get swiping! Bzzzt. Instagram: Two people liked that vacation photo from last year! Bzzzt. Gmail: Come back to Williams-sonoma and nish your purchase!

is time around, desperate for motivation and deep in a nuggetfuelled state of self-loathing, I immediately went into the Apple Watch app – also gathering dust in my phone’s junk drawer folder (ayyy, Stocks) – and set up the watch with intention. I lowered my activity goals, which I’d previously set optimistically and routinely failed to hit, and did not inspire more activity. I turned o most noti cations, except texts

and Aloe Bud (a colourful app that helps you set little self-care reminders – I highly recommend). And I spent a great deal of time customising the watch face so that it displays information I care about (the weather), rather than distracting info, like emails about chairs I’m trying not to purchase.

It’s been more than four months since I started selfisolating, and three months since I started wearing my Apple Watch again. Now that I’ve dialled back all those supposedly productivityenhancing noti cations, I pay attention to the ones I’ve let through. When the Apple Watch tells me to stand, I get up and ll my water bottle. When it tells me to take my allergy medicine,

I take my allergy medicine. When it warns me that I’m not moving as much as usual by a speci c time in the day, I mentally set time aside for yoga or a long evening walk. I’m doing things that help me feel good. In June, a er getting my step count back up to pre-covid levels, I started running again. (And I’m eating fewer chicken nuggets, knowing they making me feel rubbish during a run.)

Now, I have to get past the Smart Wrist Gadget cuto . Maybe you’ve been here. A report from Gartner, an Australia-based consulting company, estimates that roughly a third of people who get a smartwatch or tness tracker stop using them a er a few months. Dr Lisa Cadmusbertram, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsinmadison, published a 2015 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on the positive e ects of wearing tness trackers. She highlights the importance of meeting a tness tracker, or a smartwatch, or any supposedly life-improving gadget halfway with your enthusiasm and conviction. ‘We know from behavioural science research that people are most successful in changing their lifestyle when they both track their behaviour and also use other self-regulation techniques,’ says Dr Cadmusbertram. If you want to create behavioural changes that stick, you have to be able to set speci c goals that you regularly re-evaluate.

e Apple Watch, at this moment, has helped me organise my day around taking care of myself. It doesn’t always make everything easier to manage.

I still have days and hours when I feel absolutely helpless. But the watch makes me feel a little more prepared to confront that helplessness head-on.

ese are small victories. But in a moment where sickness and anxiety are the overwhelming norms, I feel okay taking comfort in the small victories.