One of the reasons I was not perturbed at moving from my Apple Watch to a Garmin Forerunner 255, which is a notably less capable smart watch and with a worse screen (though it works great in bright light, the opposite of the Apple Watch) is that I felt the Apple Watch gamified too many health aspects. I get it, the design is meant to prod and poke you into doing more, ultimately for your own benefit. But eventually it just felt like nagging.
The Garmin watch, by contrast, makes it easy to see your states, and awards you badges when you hit certain milestones, but it’s otherwise pretty quiet, so the gasmification mostly comes from within.
It turns out, I started gamifying my sleep and didn’t really notice it.
Specifically, if you get a sleep score of 75% or above for seven days in a row, you earn the Sleep Streak™ badge. I like earning this because badges, plus it means I’m sleeping well! This trained me to stick closely to my set sleep schedule, which the watch uses to issue relevant reminders before nappy time. It also puts the watch into a kind of sleep mode, where the display no longer lights up when you raise your wrist–you must specifically tap the backlight button.
Yesterday, IU found myself feeling in need of an afternoon nap (probably due to the run the day before) and the watch substracted nap time from my total recommended sleep for the night. This meant I could a) Go to bed at the usual time and get up earlier b) Go to bed an hour later with no penalty or c) find a way to screw this up somehow.
I chose Option C.
I went to bed late, but late enough that, even though I slept in a little past my usual wake-up time, I still didn’t hit the lower-than-usual minimum. My sleep streak ended. I had a sad.
I have resolved to return to a more normal sleeping pattern tonight. I swear! See: #$@!
