Changing Watches

My smartwatch, a Tozo S3, bare bones edition, sits to my left next to the laptop.  Its charger occupies a USB port, its magnetic terminals adding electrical refreshment to the dormant device.  Replacing it on my left wrist sits a much simpler timepiece, a new Casio 168, purchased through Amazon for just over $30, not that much less than the far more versatile Tozo S3.  I had taken a liking to digital watches since they first entered mass market use in the 1980s.  I have a small collection, most costing less than $10.  They share some features.  All tell time well enough.  All have a stopwatch and the ability to set an alarm.  Most have a chime that signals a new clock hour.  All have a backlight.  In its early days, some of these came with calculators of limited utility,  I never bought one of those.  Straps are mostly cheap, either plastic or woven synthetic cloth of some type, though my new watch has a more attractive silver band with a link pattern and a clasp that allows custom adjustment.  I have replaced batteries in previous ones, but in view of the minimal price and significant longevity, these are really disposables.  To my disappointment, upon changing the battery of my favorite previous relic, it still did not run.  

Two smartwatches later, I've returned to my comfort style of a small rectangular display with a single alarm set to remind me to count the Omer each night.  Why the modernization reversal?  And in this era of smart phones that do it all, with omnipresence almost mandatory, why wear a wristwatch at all?

My two smartwatches did some very useful things, though I wonder how well.  My two devices tracked my steps.  With the first one, I mostly admired my daily achievement of 8000 steps.  With my current one, 4000 steps typically appear in the display when I retire for the night.  My activity has not changed.  I like the sleep feature.  It records pretty accurately when I fall asleep each night and when I arise in the morning.  Mostly it captures those nights I depart from bed to use the bathroom.  The awake duration on the morning report varies considerably, and likely inaccurately.  As a senior with the common circadian rhythm of 3AM awakening, it rarely captures that in the tracker.  But once awake, I cannot restrain myself from that dopamine hit of looking at the display on the dial.  The time.  How I've done with sleep thus far.  I can expect a composite number Sleep Score that I don't understand, supplemented with bands of orange for REM, lilac for light sleep which comprises most of each night, and blue to indicate deep sleep.  These come in their expected sequence.  My staring at them likely delays my return to real sleep, even if the device fails to detect that I am awake but still horizontal.

The more significant incentives to replace this occur closer to dawn.  I like being able to set multiple alarms, including a wake time, 6:50AM seven mornings weekly.  The designers anticipated the difficulty people have keeping promises to themselves.  They programmed ten-minute snooze alarms to take over passively.  It became too easy to feel my wrist buzz, not even look at the display, but remain confident that another signal or two will find me more motivated to arise.  Between looking at the screen at night and having reassurance that I had some protection from not doing what I should do, even as basic as getting up when I should, the convenience of the device introduced a feature that harmed me.

I used other features.  The countdown timer provided a great incentive.  The Two Minute Rule is one of the staples of personal accomplishment.  If a task takes less than two minutes, just do it.  With a quck touch, I can choose 1-6 minute countdown intervals.  Great for cooking.  The device allows me to set any interval.  It let me challenge myself to pay attention for 20 minutes or to read for 12 minutes or take a mid-day break for 33 minutes and 33 seconds.  Only one countdown at a time, but enormously useful.  Easily replaced with my cell phone which has a built in timer and apps for kitchen timers and other forms of countdown.  But this might be the part of the smartwatch I used most, other than telling the current time.

It has a heart rate tracker, or really a pulse tracker.  The accurracy may not be what a real medical heart monitor could do.  I've checked my heart rate at the end of a treadmill session both on the watch and on the machine's grip pulse counter.  The machine invariably gives a higher count than the watch.  The very predictable daily range of 55 on the low side and 106 on the high side for each 24 hour interval adds to my skepticism.  My pulse must exceed 110 at different time in a day when I have a scheduled exercise session.  And my watch offers an oximeter.  I do not know how it works.  Mine has never read under 97%.

Some features I don't use, either for lack of knowing how, lack of need, or not wanting to constantly pair with the company's app.  I could listen to music.  The weather feature often fails.  While I could change the display format to dozens of options, I've picked only two.

Somebody did a landmark experiment on choice.  The investigators took college students to ice cream parlors, letting them select any cone they wanted.  Half went to a local shop with ten choices, others went to a nationally distributed chain that offered thirty.  The kids made their selection.  Not long after, the professors surveyed those young folks on their experience.  Those who made a choice from ten expressed better satisfaction with what they selected than those who chose from thirty.   More choice correlated with regret over what they might have had instead.

Despite finding my smartwatch useful, I also found it distracting.  It told me about my sleep, both in real time and in review.  I think it also deprived me of some sleep.  Setting a timer to work on something kept me focused, but for relatively short intervals.  The device overloaded me with things it could do that didn't really need to be done.

My new retro 1980s or early 1990s classic arrived from Amazon.  Sleeker in appearance, limited in function.  It forced choices.  I could only have one timer.  Set at appointment, Omer, or wake time?  I had to choose.  It does not count down, only up.  If I travel across time zones or semi-annual clock changes, I have to do that myself.  But with its small discrete display, I look at it less.  When I awake at 3AM, I no longer anticipate the duration of wakefulness.  One dial, light gray background, thin black numerals.  Nothing garish hits my retina when I want to know the time.  I left the hourly chime ON.  I only notice it when both awake and idle, never when I am engaged in an activity.  And it need not be recharged periodically.  It better matches the purpose of having a wristwatch.  

There will emerge times when the smartwatch will have a temporary Second Act.  Days of multiple appointments.  Days of deadlines, where the ability to set multiple alarms or time work intervals better enables me to meet obligations.  But simple suits me better.  Too many choices, too many functions, intrude.  Probably why Casio still sells so many of these 168 classics long past their apparent obsolescence.