Yesterday, I enjoyed Jonathan Rothwell’s blog post reflecting on the motivation he derives—without realising it—from his smartwatch.

Like Jonathan, my energy levels go up and down over time, and sporadically, I benefit from a prompt to move a little more. But I’ve never been good at ‘recovering’: I had an Apple Watch ‘streak’ lasting over a year, for example, and once I broke it, I didn’t really feel motivated any more.

Over the years, I’ve found a slightly mad solution: I use many systems to motivate myself so that there’s always at least one I’m interested in. I look at Apple Watch stats, I use Gentler Streak, I use Streaks, I pay for Conqueror medals, I maintain spreadsheets, and more besides. They are all tracking, in one way or another, how much exercise I get—but all in slightly different ways based on different metrics and targets.

Jonathan says he’s worried that his motivation is a sign of addiction. My level of tracking myself is vaguely obsessive. But I think that if it keeps us both moving more than we would otherwise, then that’s probably a good thing overall.

The image at the top of this post was generated by Midjourney. Midjourney’s idea of what someone who is motivated to exercise by spreadsheets looks like is, to put it mildly, not exactly true to life. I often wear socks with my shorts.