Gamifying my daily stroll

I'm pretty happy with this FitBit so far. In the couple of weeks I’ve had it, I’ve only missed my 10,000-step goal once: that was the day we drove the 500 miles back from the North Carolina beach.

Most days, I’m well over 10,000. The subtle nature of the FitBit — that it quietly remembers every freaking step — has a tendency to gamify the act of walking. You want to better your high score, even if the reward is no more than a silly badge appearing on your phone. And you definitely don’t want to see the sad-face that appears when you’ve fallen short. Too bad it doesn’t also administer a mild electric shock.

Not that I’m experiencing dramatic weight loss. It is just walking after all, not the Tour de France. I’ll never attain the physique of Lance Armstrong this way, but I suppose I’ll never have his pharmaceutical bills either.

Anyway, just an update. I like it so much I ordered one for the wife.

The good: It’s tiny and completely unobtrusive, easy to forget you have it clipped on. It creates a surprisingly effective incentive to get off one’s behind every single day. Checking it against a GPS, it seems pretty accurate at recording steps. There’s no recharging or docking or anything else to remember. It resets at zero every night at midnight so there’s no fudging the exercise between one day and the next. The battery is supposed to last three months.

The not-so-good: I think it has a tendency to overcount steps around the house, sometimes showing I’ve walked a half-mile in a morning of puttering around indoors. That can’t be right. But I’ll take it anyway.