I’ve been wearing a Fitbit smart watch for about three years now. Of course it counts my steps, which is handy if you’re into that, but it also serves as home base for my quantified life, helping me track calories, water and exercise; keep track of and evaluate my sleep, my resting heart rate, and my weight; and participate in varied challenges against other like-minded folks who happen to have a Fitbit, too.
But more than simply performing or enabling these tasks, my Fitbit has become a kind of teacher, too.
As is my wont, I’ve taken to extrapolating larger, albeit simple lessons from my Fitbit experience, and I’m delighted to share them with a larger audience today.
Being part of a group powers me.
Few things fuel me like competition, and the challenges on Fitbit create ad-hoc groups whose sole reason for being is to drive one another toward greatness. It’s coopetition at its finest. Steps taken solo in a forest simply don’t count as much as steps taken online together in a group.
The simple act of measuring something inspires me to improve it.
Now that I have an eye on my steps, my weight, my resting heart rate, my sleep, my water and calorie intake…I’m naturally inclined to try and improve them. I see my number at the start of the day and the end of the day, can compare it to the day or month or year before, not to mention others’ numbers, and my automatic instinct is to strategize and enact improvement.
For weight loss, diet trumps exercise.
No matter how hard or long I work out, nothing seems to make the pounds fall off like taking in fewer and higher quality calories. Diet over but not instead of exercise, folks.
Sound sleep undergirds performance and peace.
If I have a few nights of high quality sleep in a row, chances are they’ll align with a feeling of superhuman calm and potency. For me, quality sleep is the foundation of wellbeing, the best predictor of my overall happiness, resilience, and peace. Skimping on sleep is deficit spending, and it will have dire consequences sooner or later.
If I set goals, I push toward them almost unconsciously.
Simply setting a goal — a target weight, an ideal distance to walk, a resting heart rate improvement — seems to set the wheels in motion for it to happen. When I coast along with measurements and no goals, my ambition naturally atrophies. When I put a goal on something — even if that goal is simply maintaining a healthy number — it’s astounding and undeniable how often that wish comes true, and more often than not without any inhuman efforts.
I always have another rally in me.
Whether I’m losing step challenges or suffering an elevated resting heart rate or weight gain due to a big weekend in Vegas, all is never lost. All it takes is a couple days back on the program — sleeping, stepping more, eating and drinking right — and I see my measurables return to healthy, happy status. While the Fitbit does track my missteps, it does an even better job reminding me that I’m always just a day away from a comeback.
