I loved my Fitbit. I was like having a friend on my wrist, a friend who knew where I was going, how far, how fast and how many calories I was burning. It knew how many flights of stairs I can climbed; in short it felt like there was a living being on my wrist. The result of having this ‘all seeing eye’ recording my movements was that I walked further, faster and took the stairs instead of the escalator in the Metro.
Disaster struck when it fell off my wrist in Pudong Airport as I was walking back and forth to reach my step target before sitting on a long flight.
I retraced my steps, I asked the cleaners, the police, lost property office but nobody had seen it. It was lost forever and I was demoralised. Now nobody noticed that I was taking the stairs rather than the escalator, so I didn’t bother. Because nobody was counting my steps, I stopped getting off the metro one station later than mine and walking home.
In short, I stopped caring and for weeks I was mourning this little purple thing.
I loved the graphs it gave me, I loved the competitive spirit in the activity groups and checked every day to make sure I was in the top 10% for that day.
However I have just realised that I can get the basic information from using free apps on my phone and when I installed them today I was delighted to see that far from nobody noticing what I was doing, my phone is constantly keeping track and sitting there quietly waiting for me to ask it. I didn’t know it was keeping all this data about me but I am grateful for it.
The game is back on – who needs Fitbit when you have a smartphone!