I take my Coros Apex 2 Pro off when I climb hand cracks. I also take it off when I climb finger cracks. I tend to leave it on when I'm sport climbing. It has no clue what I'm doing when I go rock climbing.
My watch also has no clue that I'm grilling right now, which sucks, because my stress levels are going way down. All in all, a flawed tool at best, and as you suggest, insidious at worst.
In all seriousness, this argument could likely be expanded to all things that flood us with metrics and pressure to gameify them (social media, substack engagement, SLOS vs SLOP attendance etc...). I think I'll move to a cabin in the woods without wifi, minimize my social interactions, and try to set a PR on how many times I can read Walden each week.
Hey man, maybe leave it on for the finger crack next time!
You’re right that extending the argument to its logical end creates an endorsement of some form of Luddism. I’ve been trying to be better recently about not always immediately going to the edge cases and instead existing in the gray area. This is one area where I’m ok being a little logically inconsistent.
And don’t forget! Thoreau had his mom do his laundry every week when he was at The Pond. He didn’t take his wilderness experience to the edge case either, and yet still found some amount of transcendence!
Agreed that there's not much signal you can get from the noise, but I have been finding drops in HRV helpful to decide if I'm reading for a loading day in training or not.
Great read! I cast my wearables aside in May and have been without them since. In a way, I feel more in sync with my body now. Eventually, I let the scores and data dictate the tone of my days, and rarely for the better.
To your point about menstrual tracking, that's one thing I miss about my Oura Ring, as it was able to pick up on trends/abnormalities in my cycle. (All good here, fortunately.) These days, I log that information into my phone. Not quite as precise, but at least I'm keeping track at all.
I've worn the same Garmin religiously for the last 5 years, and did the back-calcs to realize that I've been in the "wearables game" since 2012 if you include the crappy Nike watch I had to count splits and track mileage in HS cross-country. After reading this piece, I realized I should count it as a blessing in disguise that I have baseline poor attention to detail and therefore often let my watch run out of battery. The insurance companies can't draw a clean trend line on me, and I'm not losing any sleep over what has surely been a decade of less-than-ideal shuteye!
I'll be interested in reading whatever you write when you decide to pick a fight with the activity-tracking apps. A lot of my pals who have long since deleted Instagram use Strava fanatically for witty quips and life updates (a friend of mine literally just shared a "poor" quality sleep score on his watch alongside a picture of his new baby as a way to announce to the world he had a kid) - and that's before you get into the overtraining and comparison aspects. I know I'm guilty of making subpar safety decisions on bike rides for the sake of breaking the 100km mark, and I have friends who change their activity on Strava to "private" if they fall into an injury or a bad training cycle as to not lose clout (including my own father). Strava also sometimes feels like another brand of "hustle culture" - e.g., instead of bragging about how much you study or how many hours you work, you brag about how many miles you run or ride. Overall though, Strava feels less addictive and more free of ads, which are my biggest problems with IG.
if you’re choosing between having Instagram and Strava on your phone, Strava is probably better. But it’s not perfect. When I run my next uber-scientific convenience poll I’ll reach out for your thoughts.
I was clued into the fact that I had a thyroid disorder from my watch after it started reporting a much higher than average resting heart rate. I noticed the heart rate discrepancy initially because my sleep scores seemed to be super low for how much I was resting. I thought it was odd and brought it up at the doctor who sure enough confirmed my thyroid numbers were all out of whack. In some ways, a win for wearables! And yet, I was mainly clued into the fact that I was having health issues because physically I felt absolutely terrible. Knowing my heart rate was higher than normal didn't elucidate that fact without a trip to the doctor which it was obvious I needed to take anyways.
It took me a while that summer to get an official diagnosis during which time I stopped wearing my watch unless I was actively exercising. Knowing I was sick and having the daily reminder that my body wasn't recovering or resting like it should caused me way more harm than good, and not wearing it brought me and has continued to bring me a lot of peace.
Part of me is quite tempted to go off-watch for good specifically for the data privacy things you mention at the end of this, buuuuut I do love having the on-watch workouts for different training plans 🤷♀️
hmm this feels very much like a wearables win to me. maybe you'd have still figured this out eventually but it seems to have sped up the process of getting something diagnosed. I guess everyone is healthy until suddenly they aren't.
I'm still using strava. I've got mixed feelings about the benefits of tracking distances and such over time, though the social aspect of it is, at the ground level, just as pernicious as all social media probably is. That will be my next survey question at trailheads, saunas, weddings, etc.
I think the logic in this piece is a little off, and I want to push back on the blanket advice to “stop using your health wearables.”
The argument seems to assume that because some people become obsessive, anxious, or misinterpret the data, wearables themselves are inherently bad. That’s like saying we should stop weighing ourselves because some people develop disordered eating, or stop budgeting because some people get stressed about money. The tool isn’t the problem—the relationship to the tool and the context in which it’s used is what matters.
Health wearables provide objective feedback that most of us wouldn’t otherwise have access to. I can see how my resting heart rate changes after a tough workout, how my sleep is affected when I have a late dinner, or how my stress spikes during certain meetings. That doesn’t mean I live or die by the numbers, but it gives me data I can use to make more informed choices. Without that feedback, I’d just be guessing.
It also feels contradictory that the article acknowledges the benefits (awareness, motivation, early health insights) and then jumps to the conclusion that they should be ditched altogether. If the real issue is over-reliance or misinterpretation, the solution is education and balance, not abandoning the technology.
Finally, health wearables are evolving. The data will never be perfect, but dismissing them outright ignores the progress being made in areas like detecting arrhythmias, early illness, or even supporting medical research. To me, saying “stop using them” because they’re not perfect is like saying “stop using maps” because GPS can occasionally glitch.
For some people, yes, it makes sense to take a break if it’s feeding anxiety. But for many others, it’s a powerful and helpful tool. The logic that wearables are inherently harmful doesn’t hold up—it’s not the device, it’s how you use it.
Wait but if I can’t see a 5 year longitudinal study from my wearable data, how would I know that watching a 100 consecutive TikToks at 11 pm would make my sleep worse?
I'm surprised that I differ from you and Daniel Frank on this one. But yeah, if your sleep score is causing you stress, definitely the right move to stop looking.
My Apple Watch helped diagnose a case of mild sleep apnea (but only at high altitude!) and also what works to reduce it. So I'm grateful. And I only check my data once a month or so — basically, my same approach to checking my investment portfolio.
I take my Coros Apex 2 Pro off when I climb hand cracks. I also take it off when I climb finger cracks. I tend to leave it on when I'm sport climbing. It has no clue what I'm doing when I go rock climbing.
My watch also has no clue that I'm grilling right now, which sucks, because my stress levels are going way down. All in all, a flawed tool at best, and as you suggest, insidious at worst.
In all seriousness, this argument could likely be expanded to all things that flood us with metrics and pressure to gameify them (social media, substack engagement, SLOS vs SLOP attendance etc...). I think I'll move to a cabin in the woods without wifi, minimize my social interactions, and try to set a PR on how many times I can read Walden each week.
Hey man, maybe leave it on for the finger crack next time!
You’re right that extending the argument to its logical end creates an endorsement of some form of Luddism. I’ve been trying to be better recently about not always immediately going to the edge cases and instead existing in the gray area. This is one area where I’m ok being a little logically inconsistent.
And don’t forget! Thoreau had his mom do his laundry every week when he was at The Pond. He didn’t take his wilderness experience to the edge case either, and yet still found some amount of transcendence!
And you know that.
This comment helped my sleep score, I’ll tell you that!
Agreed that there's not much signal you can get from the noise, but I have been finding drops in HRV helpful to decide if I'm reading for a loading day in training or not.
Great read! I cast my wearables aside in May and have been without them since. In a way, I feel more in sync with my body now. Eventually, I let the scores and data dictate the tone of my days, and rarely for the better.
To your point about menstrual tracking, that's one thing I miss about my Oura Ring, as it was able to pick up on trends/abnormalities in my cycle. (All good here, fortunately.) These days, I log that information into my phone. Not quite as precise, but at least I'm keeping track at all.
There seemed to be an asymmetry: rarely would unexpected good scores make me feel better, but often unexpected bad scores would make me feel worse.
Thanks for reading!
This one was fun!
I've worn the same Garmin religiously for the last 5 years, and did the back-calcs to realize that I've been in the "wearables game" since 2012 if you include the crappy Nike watch I had to count splits and track mileage in HS cross-country. After reading this piece, I realized I should count it as a blessing in disguise that I have baseline poor attention to detail and therefore often let my watch run out of battery. The insurance companies can't draw a clean trend line on me, and I'm not losing any sleep over what has surely been a decade of less-than-ideal shuteye!
I'll be interested in reading whatever you write when you decide to pick a fight with the activity-tracking apps. A lot of my pals who have long since deleted Instagram use Strava fanatically for witty quips and life updates (a friend of mine literally just shared a "poor" quality sleep score on his watch alongside a picture of his new baby as a way to announce to the world he had a kid) - and that's before you get into the overtraining and comparison aspects. I know I'm guilty of making subpar safety decisions on bike rides for the sake of breaking the 100km mark, and I have friends who change their activity on Strava to "private" if they fall into an injury or a bad training cycle as to not lose clout (including my own father). Strava also sometimes feels like another brand of "hustle culture" - e.g., instead of bragging about how much you study or how many hours you work, you brag about how many miles you run or ride. Overall though, Strava feels less addictive and more free of ads, which are my biggest problems with IG.
if you’re choosing between having Instagram and Strava on your phone, Strava is probably better. But it’s not perfect. When I run my next uber-scientific convenience poll I’ll reach out for your thoughts.
One time Michael cancelled on plans and sent a screenshot of his HRV as evidence of being too tired :/
I love this one!
I was clued into the fact that I had a thyroid disorder from my watch after it started reporting a much higher than average resting heart rate. I noticed the heart rate discrepancy initially because my sleep scores seemed to be super low for how much I was resting. I thought it was odd and brought it up at the doctor who sure enough confirmed my thyroid numbers were all out of whack. In some ways, a win for wearables! And yet, I was mainly clued into the fact that I was having health issues because physically I felt absolutely terrible. Knowing my heart rate was higher than normal didn't elucidate that fact without a trip to the doctor which it was obvious I needed to take anyways.
It took me a while that summer to get an official diagnosis during which time I stopped wearing my watch unless I was actively exercising. Knowing I was sick and having the daily reminder that my body wasn't recovering or resting like it should caused me way more harm than good, and not wearing it brought me and has continued to bring me a lot of peace.
Part of me is quite tempted to go off-watch for good specifically for the data privacy things you mention at the end of this, buuuuut I do love having the on-watch workouts for different training plans 🤷♀️
hmm this feels very much like a wearables win to me. maybe you'd have still figured this out eventually but it seems to have sped up the process of getting something diagnosed. I guess everyone is healthy until suddenly they aren't.
I'm still using strava. I've got mixed feelings about the benefits of tracking distances and such over time, though the social aspect of it is, at the ground level, just as pernicious as all social media probably is. That will be my next survey question at trailheads, saunas, weddings, etc.
YOU CANT STOP ME FROM YSING MY GARMIN
YOU CANT STOP ME FROM YSING MY GARMIN
I think the logic in this piece is a little off, and I want to push back on the blanket advice to “stop using your health wearables.”
The argument seems to assume that because some people become obsessive, anxious, or misinterpret the data, wearables themselves are inherently bad. That’s like saying we should stop weighing ourselves because some people develop disordered eating, or stop budgeting because some people get stressed about money. The tool isn’t the problem—the relationship to the tool and the context in which it’s used is what matters.
Health wearables provide objective feedback that most of us wouldn’t otherwise have access to. I can see how my resting heart rate changes after a tough workout, how my sleep is affected when I have a late dinner, or how my stress spikes during certain meetings. That doesn’t mean I live or die by the numbers, but it gives me data I can use to make more informed choices. Without that feedback, I’d just be guessing.
It also feels contradictory that the article acknowledges the benefits (awareness, motivation, early health insights) and then jumps to the conclusion that they should be ditched altogether. If the real issue is over-reliance or misinterpretation, the solution is education and balance, not abandoning the technology.
Finally, health wearables are evolving. The data will never be perfect, but dismissing them outright ignores the progress being made in areas like detecting arrhythmias, early illness, or even supporting medical research. To me, saying “stop using them” because they’re not perfect is like saying “stop using maps” because GPS can occasionally glitch.
For some people, yes, it makes sense to take a break if it’s feeding anxiety. But for many others, it’s a powerful and helpful tool. The logic that wearables are inherently harmful doesn’t hold up—it’s not the device, it’s how you use it.
Disgraceful to use ai to comment on my articles
amazing
Wait but if I can’t see a 5 year longitudinal study from my wearable data, how would I know that watching a 100 consecutive TikToks at 11 pm would make my sleep worse?
This is a really good point. I’m going to start doubling up on smartwatches and get an oura ring just to be safe
I'm surprised that I differ from you and Daniel Frank on this one. But yeah, if your sleep score is causing you stress, definitely the right move to stop looking.
My Apple Watch helped diagnose a case of mild sleep apnea (but only at high altitude!) and also what works to reduce it. So I'm grateful. And I only check my data once a month or so — basically, my same approach to checking my investment portfolio.
That is a principled approach that would solve the issue of creating stress/anxiety, if you can hold yourself to it!