I’m admittedly a gadget guy from back in the day. My approach to the gadgets in my life has increasingly become one of reducing friction, increasing my productivity, and enabling stronger alignment to those areas of my life that are most important. At one point – my strategy with gadgets was centered in two areas – work/busy ness and home/media consumption. Talk about a conflict of interest…
In many ways, my gadgetry mirrors my overall evolution to how I spend my time now. About two years ago, a former boss of mine absolutely SWORE by his Apple Watch. I thought he was full of shit, and I told him as much. I really considered it an extravagance that was just overkill as I already had spent too much on my Apple iPhone. I watched him and a few other peers fiddling with their watches in meetings and generally thought it was something that they were toying with. The iPhone was already distracting enough in meetings, how the hell could I justify another few hundred on another toy that was basically the same thing as the iPhone???
Fast forward to the summer of 2016 as many things began to take hold in my life, and I revisited this topic with my boss that still swore by the thing. So I dove into research mode and uncovered a few things:
- The Apple Watch battery life was average at best.
- The Apple Watch was largely indestructible in terms of the face, unlike the iPhone. I also learned that Apple Care could help insure against the risk.
- The Apple Watch had an increasing suite of apps, and investing into it would surely pay off as more use cases were ported over into it.
- My emerging task management platform/app of Omnifocus had a sweet integration for capturing to dos.
- The Apple Watch could help me in figuring out my sleeping patterns.
- The Apple Watch could help me in terms of my activities and exercise efforts.
- The Apple Watch could become a Mickey Mouse watch – seriously.
The killer use case for me was the exercise tracking, the sleep hacking potential, and the clincher – task input via dictation directly into my Omnifocus.
All of this coupled with the fact that I was smashing my fit bits on average 1 per every two months for very good reasons that maybe I’ll get into down the line – had me thinking that this was an investment worth making, as I’d be way more careful with this watch versus the Fitbits that were getting smashed regularly
So I purchased a Gen 2 Apple Watch, and I’ve only accidentally broken one in the past year. The investment was protected with Apple Care – thank God it was covered and for the five days I didn’t have one – it sucked. This period of not having it was the tell for me that it was the right investment, and that it had seeped into my daily practices.
Here’s what has changed and the most important lessons learned:
- I missed my fitbit for about two weeks
- I learned that this thing is completely waterproof and can track your walking/jogging and swimming (even in the ocean off of Curacao) via GPS seamlessly weaving all the measurements back into the various apps you want to feed back on your phone
- KILLER FEATURE – the voice recognition is unreal with the Apple Watch versus the iPhone, it is unreal to be able to text or email on the fly into your watch.
- Building upon the voice recognition, I never lose a thought or to do being captured anymore, as I have since converted to a fully digital style.
I’ll talk about my personal workflow in a follow on series of posts – let’s just say that the Apple Watch coupled with OmniFocus unlocked my ability to do so much more at work, home, and across a number of re-established areas of my life.
Now does this thing serve as a means for distraction? It could, but for me – I bought it to support my fitness goals both in the gym and in terms of my sleep along with the belief that it could really help me in capturing my to do’s while eliminating the yellow sticky pile that had been a frame on the laptop or desk monitor…
The apps continue to come through with increasingly cool things popping up as new WatchOS capabilities as sidecars to existing apps that I already love. More to come on my favorite Apple Watch Apps.
If you are in need of some on the fly capture, you love your fitbit but are looking for more, and already have an iPhone – take a look. It has helped me free more time and reduce some stress in ways I could not have predicted. I dove into the investment intentionally and the payoffs were unexpected. Likely there’s a pattern here involving technology and intention…
