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 :)
Tim Cook at US Senate hearing on data privacy on devices: "Would we like to know everything that happens on your device? Yes, that would be interesting but we don't think we should".
Tim Cook previously in shareholder meeting: "We're doing things in our way because we thats the way we believe in. If you're buying stock for pure profit gains, you're buying in the wrong company".
Coincidentally it was exactly that approach rather than the fiduciary duties pursue which made them the largest company out there. Oh and they make awesome TV ads and billboards. LOL
The blanket "they're a corporation" approach doesn't always apply, Apple's model is content delivery network for own hardware. THE App Store is a gold mine. Gotta study them a little before thinking that their sheer size automatically results in same behavior. And both Jobs and Cook have track record in not pursuing that slave of the shareholder company. If anything, over the years Apple has cannibalized its own models time and time again.
Interesting detail: it's Apple's privacy approach where all data stays on your device, and is encrypted, which made Google move in a similar direction. Yes, that's true, even the Big G doesn't send as much (personalized) data to its farms anymore as it used to do.
Amazon has already moved into making health insurance deals for employees. You're fucked if ever they make a watch too.
Note: not a fanboy, Apple definitely are greedy as hell. The profit margins on each device are ridiculous and at least two levels above others in industry. If not more. They're BMW to Samsung being a Volkswagen.
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".