I completed my 30-day treadmill challenge and it worked out very well. I felt a lot better after those 45 days it took to do a 30-day challenge! However, now that my treadmill has been moved downstairs to the basement due to other family members’ need to use the treadmill, I fell off the routine of doing a 10 to 20-minute treadmill run a day. Therefore, I need a different way to keep moving. The solution that I found was *drumrolls* this WATCH.
I owned my Samsung Watch for a few years now but I have not used it too much. Now, I use this watch to reinforce my habit of moving daily in accordance with the Four Principles from Atomic Habits to rebuild my healthy exercising habits and the Habit Loop: Cue => Crave => Response => Reward (=> Cue).
My loop here does not start with Cue but with Reward. What this watch does particularly well is to count steps and so it makes achieving my goal of walking 6,000 steps daily satisfying. (The 4th Law: Make It Satisfying).
The gratification is in the instant and continuous reporting of the progress and the ability to see it right away while I was moving and walking around.
Every time I walk or play badminton, I check my watch every 5 minutes to see my progress. This adrenaline feeling of immediate reward reinforces my desire to reach the goal. I crave that feeling of reaching such a goal, and others who see me use the watch also get curious and want to get a watch to count their steps, too.
To create such Crave and such Reward, the watch helps make it easy for me to count steps which I consider a crucial element for The 3rd Law: Make it Easy. Others say that your phone can count your steps, too. However, phones are not as convenient as carrying a phone, while playing badminton for example, is cumbersome as it gets in the way of your movement. I see that besides the actual daily activity of moving around, the watch also makes it easier for me to instill the feelings of craving and reward to push me to respond or to take actions for the habit.
Due to the craving and satisfaction created by having the watch, I started to design my environment to reinforce these feelings (The 1st Law: Make It Obvious). By counting the steps, the watch helps me to build my daily activities around completing that goal and therefore, helps me implement intentions and habit stacking.
Currently, my daily activities look like this:
- Monday: Evening dance with the Vietnamese Essence Dance Group;
- Tuesday and Thursday: Badminton with Friends at Badminton Centre;
- Saturday and Sunday: Walk to Park with Family while Morgan bikes.
This perfectly completes the Habit Loop.
I have been walking and completing the 6,000 steps daily for the past two weeks since I started wearing my watch again.
This is what I want for myself: to move daily. And the watch, being a small component, makes it possible.
I likely will modify the Habit Loop a bit to make it more relatable: Design => Want => Do => Love (=> Design)
Some other tricks I used to make it easier for me to ensure I wear this watch daily and to count my daily steps are:
- Ensure that my watch’s battery lasts for two days: I have kept the features on the watch to the minimum: counting steps and telling time. The battery lasts for about 2 days and it takes around 1 hour for a full charge.
- Lose the distraction by keeping the functionality to the minimum: My watch does not record or sync the steps with my phone, it does not track and produce a weekly result, etc, and only focuses on steps. The Watch only connects with a Samsung or Android phone so it does not connect with my current iPhone but I have a spare Android phone so I have been using that phone to set up the Watch. But other than that, I have not needed to connect the watch to the phone for any other complicated setup. Honestly, this minimalism has been wonderful as I don’t get distracted by the many features of the watch or having to charge the watch too often.
That is how a watch can help me establish my daily habit of taking walks and exercising and keeping moving. It is a small act of putting on a watch each morning, but that act can help establish a healthy and positive habit that fosters your health and wellness for the days and the years to come.
What is a one-item that helps you anchor your habit and daily activities? Share with me!
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