Tag: Apple Watch

Pulling the Plug

Thirty years ago, the S. C. Johnson Company introduced a new member of their Glade line of fragrance products called the “PlugIn”. Maybe you have one in your bathroom. The PlugIn uses a small amount of electricity to warm up scented oil, which slowly diffuses into the nearby air. You can even get one that lights up. Ironically, the Glade PlugIn was my first thought when I read about this week’s National Day of Unplugging.

So this is what we’ve come to in the year 2021.  As a counter to our undying affection for our electronic devices, a portion of the next couple of days has been designated “National Day of Unplugging” (NDoU) by a non-profit organization called Unplug Collaborative.  The Collaborative started its membership early last year and is determined to “spread awareness about how to maintain a healthy life/tech balance”.  Theirs is a noble, if not impossible effort.

Should you choose to participate in the NDoU “24-hour respite from technology from sundown to sundown, March 5-6”, I ask, will your life necessarily change for the better?

It’s just an awareness campaign, I get it.  Unplugging phones, tablets, laptops, and whatever else you consider “tech” for one whole day is essentially raising the white flag on what each of us already admit: we spend too much time with our screens.  But let’s be honest – what exactly defines “healthy life/tech balance”?  I think the answer is highly personal, depending on your job, disposable income, place of residence, and the ways you choose to spend your downtime.

My wife is a wonderful example of “wired” (er, “wireless”); someone who twenty years ago tentatively navigated texting, apps, and what little else her basic cell phone had to offer.  Today, she sports the latest model Apple Watch, two iPads, and a MacBook, all of which seamlessly share information with each other and then with her.  She even sports a protective wristband to reduce her exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

I can’t imagine my wife “unplugging” for four hours, let alone twenty-four.  My conversation with her would go something like this:

NDoU wants you to put your cell phone to bed – literally.

“Hey honey, so there’s this thing called ‘National Day of Unplugging’ where we get to shut down all of our electronic devices and work on making our life/tech balance better.  Just give me your watch and your tablets and your laptop and I’ll lock them in the closet until tomorrow night.  Sound good?” 

The response I’d get (if I did get a response from her) would be something like,

“Wait, WHAT???  National Day of WHAT?  Are you freaking kidding me?  Hahahahahahaha, good one, honey.  Yeah, let me think on that for just a second… um, NO WAY.  And keep your hands off my screens!”

I get it.  Not only does my wife fiercely track her 10,000 steps and her circles on her watch, she monitors a dozen or more daily feeds on her tablets, and countless emails and websites on her laptop.  It would be just as soul-sucking as taking my Amazon Kindle e-reader away from me (and let’s not even discuss that possibility).

This NDoU supporter doesn’t need screens… ever.

Unplug our gadgets and then what do we do… watch TV?  Sorry, if I’m really gonna play this game the TV also has to go.  The point of NDoU no doubt, is to reestablish face-to-face communication, prepare meals together, get outdoors, read books (what’s a “book”?), and so on.  Unplug Collaborative’s website lists fully one hundred ways to spend your time devoid of tech.  You can’t unlock the full list without signing up for their membership so I’m just speculating on examples.  [Hey, if you join, let me know if one of the hundred is “fool around in the bedroom”.  That one doesn’t take anything plugged in.  At least, nothing I have any experience with.]

If the NDoU campaign really gets momentum, I could see the unplugging moving beyond tech.  Perhaps next year we’ll give the washer and dryer a day’s rest too, as well as the home exercise equipment, the stereo speakers, and the kitchen appliances.  Now there’s a frightening image.  Imagine twenty-four hours in dirty clothes, with no workout, singing just to make a little music, and sandwiches and pretzels for dinner.  Okay, skipping the workout wouldn’t be so bad.

For the record, I’m a proponent of a healthy life/tech balance.  Taking away my screens for a day isn’t such a bad thing.  After all, we could be talking about my coffeemaker here.  Now don’t be talking about unplugging my coffeemaker.  You’re gonna have a fight on your hands and you don’t want to see me without my morning coffee.  Do that and I might have to think about unplugging you.

Watch Your Steps!

The punk rock duo The Proclaimers are Scottish twins Craig and Charlie Reid. Now 58, the Reid’s were born just a month after I was, back in 1962. Even though The Proclaimers produced eleven albums and sold five million copies, I only know them for their 1988 chart-topper, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”. It’s the song thrumming in my head every time I’m close to getting my 10,000 steps for the day.

5,514.  Good Lord, I’m only halfway to my 10,000 steps today and it’s already two in the afternoon.  I need to get moving.  I even worked out this morning (lifting doesn’t get you many steps).  As usual, I strapped on my (Fitbit) tracker immediately after waking up but I’m usually further along by now.  I’m gonna have to go long with the dog tonight if I have any shot at making the magic number.

Magic number?  10,000 steps?  Who made this the “minimum for good health”?  A Japanese pedometer company; that’s who.  In 1965, they nicknamed one of their trackers the “10,000 step meter” and the number stuck all these years later.  Not that 10,000 steps has any significance when it comes to health benefits.  It’s all relative to whatever number you normally walk.  For that reason, we Americans can go less than half the 10,000 and still lower our mortality rate in a big way.

If you’re reading this post and you’re Amish, you’re already pooh-poohing 10,000 steps.  You and your people average 14,000-18,000/day just by removing motor vehicles from your world.  If you’re Australian or Swiss, 10,000 is just another day in the outback or the Alps (yodelayheehoo!).  Even the Japanese find a way to average 7,500 steps/day inside a small island nation.  Bringing up the rear?  The Americans, of course (drum roll, please…).  We clock an average of 4,800 steps a day – downright pathetic for residents of the fourth largest land-mass country in the world.  Is it any coincidence the U.S. makes and sells more vehicles than any other country besides China?

Source: Pedro F. Saint-Maurice, National Cancer Institute

Back to the “magical” 10,000 steps.  Let’s diminish the facts, shall we?  A recent collaborative five-year study of 15,000+ participants determined as few as 4,400 steps a day associates to a 40% reduction in mortality rate (when the norm is more like 2,700 steps).  Make it to 7,500 steps and the mortality rate drops by 65%.  In other words, you’re doing your body good well below 10,000 steps.  Unless you’re Amish, Australian, or Swiss.  Sorry, you people have to keep going.

Alas, no collaborative study nor determined blog post is going to change the world’s obsession with 10,000 steps.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services instead recommends five hours of moderate exercise a week (or half that much in “vigorous” exercise).  Doctors prefer a rather vague recommendation of “about 2,000 steps more than you normally walk”.  But none of that shuts down tracker production: 33 million devices shipped in the first quarter of this year alone.  You know who you are; doing mindless laps in the kitchen late at night just to “close your rings”.  10,000 steps remains the benchmark no matter the expert advice.

Close those rings!

Speaking for Americans at least, the magic number really is burned into our culture.  We’ve switched out our most glam watches for fitness trackers (because even a Rolex can’t count steps).  We download apps, print out weekly results, and obsess over “rings”, consecutive days, and “personal bests”.  We get cheap thrills when our tracker vibrates 10,000 and those little digital fireworks shower the screen.  Companies offer employees financial incentives if they can demonstrate extended habits of 10,000+/day.  We are beguiled of time and money for this fairly arbitrary number.

[Side note: The other day I woke up and checked my Fitbit history, only to discover I’d hit 9,999 steps the day before.  Didn’t bum me out; still strapped on the tracker and started a new day.  Kinda proud of that.  On the other hand, one time I strapped my tracker to my ankle to try to get “steps” out of a cycle class.  Didn’t work.  Not so proud of that.]

The pertinent lyrics of The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be” go like this:  But I would walk 500 miles, And I would walk 500 more, Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles, To fall down at your door.  No wonder I’ve got that song on the brain.  I don’t think I’d walk a thousand miles, even for my girl.  But I would walk five miles (about 10,000 steps) to hit my daily tracker goal.

Some content sourced from the 6/12/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “10,000 Steps a Day Is A Myth.  The Number to Stay Healthy Is Far Lower”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.