On Being Asked Why I Wear Two Watches

During the Via Ferrata I did on Sunday I was asked why I wear two watches and I answered with a joke before giving the serious answer that I wear two watches at once because I want the data from both watches. I was asked why I need the data from both watches and that’s where there is a change that is happening at the moment.

A Waning in Garmin Watches

By wearing the F-91 for a few days and wearing the Garmin watch less and less I find that my desire for heart rate, steps, recovery and other things to be recoreded is declining over time. I wore the Garmin for the Via Ferrata because I wanted the data. In the end I just looked at the temperature data and not much else.

Over a period of weeks I think I have weaned myself off of the desire to quantify everything I do, to several different services. I’m wearing a casio on my left wrist, as the primary watch, and the Apple watch as a secondary watch on the right wrist. For weeks, or even months, I have been keeping data from walks but I don’t feel the need to check that data at the end of walks, runs or other sports. I’m happy just to do things.

Dependencies

Both Garmin, and Apple, made such a huge effort to get us to wear them twenty four hours a day, and work towards challenges, that they have turned me off of wearing them. They “punish” us for not walking, they “punish” us for not keeping a never-ending streak. According to the Apple watch I walked three hours out of five so far. It feels like we’re filling an addiction rather than getting interesting data.

Not the Only One

Funnilly I was not the only one wearing two fitness trackers. Someone else had a fitbit and a Garmin watch but because one was a band and the other was a watch it was less obvious. I suspect that it may become more common for geeks to wear two watches in the near future.

And Finally

If we want to we can use hand held gps devices and we can use our phones as GPS trackers. In my experience relying on phones as GPS trackers is likely to result in incomplete data. If you put a phone into battery saver mode while tracking you may lose the GPS track, including with Sports tracker, among other apps.

During the pandemic I could wear two watches without it being a problem. Now that I am slowly going back into normal society I have to choose whether to wear two watches or not, whether to be normal, or not.