How My Apple Watch Motivates Me To Move More

Everyone knows by now that sitting is the new smoking habit. In our modern society, we mostly sit in front of a computer all day and get up at lunchtime at the most, or to get coffee. Our health suffers in many ways.

For freelancers who work alone at home, the problem is even worse. We have no colleagues to motivate us to go to a nearby café or supermarket for lunch. We don't have to get up and go to another office if we want to ask the boss or a colleague something.

If we are not careful, we sit motionless in front of our computers for hours and get sicker and sicker over time.

For a long time, I tried to motivate myself to walk a few thousand steps a day with a simple app for counting steps.

But after some initial successes, it stopped working after a few weeks. At some point, I didn't open the app anymore and finally forgot about it.

Since I bought an Apple Watch, however, things have changed massively.

Gamification and reward principle

With the Apple Watch, gamification and reward go hand in hand. In the Apple Watch's Activity App, steps are not merely counted.

Daily goals are set, and progress towards these goals is visualized in two different ways.

First, when you open the app, you will see three colored circles. One stands for "Move" (red), one for "Train" (green), and one for "Stand" (blue).

The more you move, for example, the further the circle closes during the day. Following the same principle, the other two rings close more and more. When all three rings are closed, you have reached your daily goal in all three categories.

If you scroll down a little, you will first see the current percentages for each of the three areas. There you can always see how many percents of the movement goal you have already reached that day. Directly below the area with the percentages are bar charts that show how much you have done for the three purposes at what time of day.

The effort to close the three colored rings represents the aspect of gamification. It's amazing how motivating this simple task of closing three colored circles can be.

I have been experiencing this for weeks.

Additionally, the reward center of our brain is activated when one of the rings is closed. At that moment, the Apple Watch discreetly vibrates on my wrist, and a small firework appears on the display.

Both together immediately draw the owner's attention to the success he has achieved.

So the Apple Watch also shows us our successes without us having to think about opening an app. After a few days, you are already so addicted to these fireworks of success that you look impatiently into the app to see what is still missing to get it started.

So the Watch conditions its owner to think about the activity app continually and thus motivates its owner to do more exercise.

My wife and I have both become so addicted to these closed colored rings that we often jog around our apartment late at night to get the last few percent of exercise or the previous ten minutes of training together.

Above all, we have gotten into the habit of going for a walk several times a week in the evening instead of lying motionless in front of the TV on the couch.

Now I have to finish because my Apple Watch tells me that it is time to get up.

Stay healthy and keep moving. See you next time!