Exactly 8 years ago I started wearing an Apple Watch, the original series. At that time, Apple was offering an aluminium sports watch, the “regular” watch made from stainless steel, and an outrageously expensive gold watch. Apple did not yet know what to do with the watch and they eventually pivoted to health and fitness, which happened to be exactly my use case from day one.
I wanted to close my rings every single day of the week, and I have now been doing this for 8 years. As you can see, I completed 2900 days with reaching my move goal, out of 2920 days. My longest move streak has been more than a thousand days until I missed one day by a few calories.
A few years ago, Apple Watch alerted me of a health condition that turned out to be a severe sepsis, a potentially life-threatening situation. Three doctors made the right decisions within just two hours. I had surgery the next day and I walked out of the hospital three days later.
In the years since Apple Watch has received an ECG monitor, fall detection, crash detection, irregular heart rhythm detection. The display has gotten a lot better, it has been always on for more than three years, its battery life has gotten much better, and it charges faster, so that you can wear it 23.5 hours a day and track your sleep. The long-term health data makes it so valuable for me. When my resting heart rate goes up, I know something is wrong.
With Apple Pay I can pay for almost everything just by holding it to a payment terminal, I can take a call without even carrying my iPhone and can dispatch iMessages just by talking to it. When I leave the house, I continue to listen to a podcast through my AirPods, and all this tight integration makes the watch indispensable to me.
That’s all nice and good. But what makes me wear this thing every single day is that it watches over me.
I may not even be here without it.
On to the next 100 days to complete the 3000 days of closing my rings. #dontbreakthechain
Volker, you are the major reason why I decided to get an Apple Watch in November 2017. Back than my doctor told me to change something in my life (do sports, stop eating shit) and I thought your #dontbreakthechain on Twitter is worth a try to motivate me to do sports and turn my life into a different, more healthier direction. And it worked out! I not only lost weight, I also don’t need to take pills anymore.
Since then, I‘m doing 45-60 minutes of sports per day, like Yoga, Rowing, MTB, HIIT. Sometimes I’ll miss a day of workout, but than I at least take a walk.
I was so used to close my rings every day, that I thought I can do it without my Apple Watch (was kinda bored of it) last year. I decided to sell it and used for 3,5 months a more stylish Withings watch. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bad idea. I not only lost 4 months of reliable health data, I also #brokemychain and stopped doing sports every day, because I thought I’m already fit enough and 2-3 days of sport are more than okay. Of course I gained a few kilograms back, and I missed things like paying with my Apple Watch more than I thought. But most annoyingly was for me, that the Withings was really bad in capturing health data in workouts. After almost 4 months I went back to the Apple Watch and don’t look back anymore.
I felt this might be the right time and place to say thank you to you Volker 🙂
A little human masterpiece of content / text about another masterpiece of technique. By far I am not as good in daily use of the watch, or the daily sports you do. But it‘s continuing inspiration anyway. Thanks Volker.
Same here. Was a non-watch guy for at least 20 years. So gave it a lot of thought if this really could be a thing for me. Never regretted the decision … feeling kind of naked now without 🙂
ApplePay, yes of course! But mainly for sports and fitness. Not the “don’t break the chain” person but love everything about sports/training and health related data and statistics. And of course using it for sleep monitoring … was able to improve my sleep quality (and especially time in bed) significantly.
Hi Harald, if you don’t mind, could you elaborate on what you did exactly to improve your sleep quality? Was it just the fact that you became more aware of the time you spent in bed sleeping (or not) and then changed your behaviour accordingly or was there a specific tool/feature that helped you?
Sorry for the late answer.
Yes, it’s about awareness. It’s of course kind of silly because it’s basically things you know anyway (sleep longer, when to go to bed etc.).
But seeing the data, especially over longer periods of time this is when I am able to change my behavior to create better data.
Danke, Harald!
Impressive track record, Volker!
I am not quite as long in absolute terms and not quite as disciplined daily (my exercise routine is a bit more fluctuating, with peaks in Tuesdays and Sundays due to team practice schedule). But the „watch over me“ as a safety net and the payment as the daily convenience is what really makes the case for me.