I’d better hurry up and write this before my watch starts bugging me again.
Maybe I should call it “my watcher” instead of “my watch.” It seems intently interested in everything I do. It reminds you how much technology really can track our every move, in this case quite literally.
I recently received a smartwatch as a gift. It tracks my steps with a pedometer. It notes how strenuous my activities might be. It even intercepts my text messages and notifications from various apps on my phone, so I can check those without pulling my phone out of my pocket.
It’s a pretty nifty piece of technology that answers some questions about just how sedentary my life is. After all, I’m paid to sit in my office all day, staring at a computer screen to monitor emails, social media and the wire for news and sports stories we might want to get into The Lima News.
While the topics might be far-ranging, my actual movements aren’t. My job’s similar to an air traffic controller, just waiting for that next blip on the screen and trying to direct it to the best place possible.
If you think it sounds exciting, my watch will tell you otherwise. About once an hour, it buzzes my wrist as if I’ve received some kind of a notification. When I look at it, it delivers a somewhat insulting message, suggesting that I really should move around a little more. It stops short of using the words “lazy butt,” at least so far.
People in the health community recommend we take around 10,000 steps a day for better health. A 2010 study showed American men generally took 5,340 steps per day, compared to 4,912 steps per day for women.
My watch set my goal at 6,000 steps. That’s about three miles a day. I’ve found on days I’m working, I’m lucky to get 2,000 steps, or about a mile, in the course of my time inside the office.
And this thing reminds you how short you are of that goal. I finally understand how the subject of The Police song “Every Breath You Take” must have felt: “Every breath you take, and every move you make; every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.”
I’m proud to say on days off and weekends, I’m much more likely to exceed my targets. On one particularly glorious day of preparing our garage for winter, I tallied more than 10,000 steps, something my wife achieves regularly but something that’s a bit more foreign to me.
I know like most people who nag, my watch probably has my best interests at heart. But even its name makes me long for the days when an item did one job and did it well.
I keep thinking back to the verbal confusion in “Back to the Future,” when Marty’s in the 1950s diner, trying to get a Pepsi Free, a Tab, or something else without sugar. The man provides him with a black coffee in response, answering the question as well as he could with a 1950s sense.
Similarly, we use phones daily where the quality of the voice for calls is an afterthought. It’s as if Alexander Graham Bell always meant to text, “Mr. Watson, come here!” instead of yell it over his new device to Thomas Watson.
So to it is with a watch that I look at dozens of times a day, to see tweets from people I follow, read text messages or check the forecast.
And every so often, I’ll even look at it to find the time, just in time before it buzzes me that I should move around some more.
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