What have we become? One of my daughters told me about an app that you can download that tells you how long you spend on your phone. I downloaded it and ended up checking up on how many times I unlocked it. On one day it was 106 times. My obsession with my phone has become yet another thing to worry about.
This is my problem. I have an obsession with numbers and they are driving my behaviour. I have a seven hundred and twenty three day streak on Duolingo. I need to do it every day to meet the numbers. I am learning Dutch and dabble in French and Spanish as well. My streak should have been over a hundred days more but for some reason one of my days didn’t register. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter yet I still recall it. I know though that you cannot argue with a computer.
I have the Sat Nav on in the car all the time, even though I don’t go to many new places. It is set to tell me how many minutes to my destination which only makes me fret when held up in traffic. For some reason I get stuck at every traffic light. I know how many miles I have done this month, how many since I last filled up, the miles per gallon and my average speed.
I realise though that I am addicted and have started to fight back. I have switched off the pedometer on my phone. It was draining the battery though it could easily cope with that. It is a new phone after all. That is not the reason. I switched it off as the app had become another obsession. It was just another thing to check. I found myself looking at it every five minutes to see what progress I had made.
I would not say that I am the most active of people but I know if I have walked a fair way or not. I know the busy days and the couch potato days. I don’t need an app to tell me.
I never understood why the number ten thousand steps was relevant. I know where it came from but why not eleven thousand or nine thousand. The number was becoming more important than the purpose. The checking became the purpose.
I need to get off as none of these are relevant.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 