Why I don’t need a watch for Xmas

I bought an Apple Watch earlier this year.

I am not sure why and as a lover of a good timepiece, I now have a couple of beautiful chronographs sitting unemployed in a drawer wondering what they have done to deserve this neglect.

Instead, my wrist is adorned with a device that can take my pulse, do an ECG and check my oxygen levels to make sure I don’t need hospitalisation if I cough. Every hour, I get an alert from a fitness app reminding me to stand up and helpfully pointing out that I need to breathe. I can answer calls with it, especially useful if someone wants to get in touch with me when I am on the loo.

The problem is that I am 56 and if I am not wearing my glasses, I can’t read a bloody thing on that stupid tiny screen and unfortunately, Apple haven’t made an app which can tell me where I left them. The spontaneous convenience of responding to an incoming text is ruined by a 20-minute scramble round the house in search of the varifocals, only to realise they are on my head. Let’s be honest all you Apple-mad numpties, (and don’t get me wrong, I’m as big an Apple-lover as Granny Smith) it’s much easier to use your phone, which is unlikely to be out of range of your hand most of the day.

An Apple Watch is wearable tech and the traditional utility of a watch, telling the time, is its least significant feature. All of this is interesting because as we enter 2022, how we assess time in our daily lives, has never been less structured.

I used to be able to measure the year in blocks: there were working weeks, there were weekends, there were Bank Holidays and there were 20 days holiday a year. Your contract said 9 to 5. You travelled to and returned from work in the rush hour. When you left work, it was leisure time, as no one knew how to contact you outside of office hours.?

These descriptions of formalised time have become gradually redundant since technology has created the seismic shift in our accessibility and flexibility of the last 30 years. But spare a thought for poor old Father Time who is sadly trying to bring some order with the aid only of a scythe and an hourglass. He’s not going to make the trains run on time with that kit.

Since the last 18 months of pandemic turmoil, I suspect we all measure our routines very differently. The working day is longer and more fluid and can have interruptions for exercise, the school run or a pottery class without stigma because lost time is likely to be made up with working in the evening at home.

You can fly to somewhere sunny, when Storm Boris is lashing the country and sit by the beach combining a holiday with your working day without anyone thinking it’s weird you are wearing a snorkel on your Teams status meeting. But only if you can get away without a change in travel restrictions being announced 24 hours before your 5-day trip requiring you adjust what you do on day 3 of your travels and day 5 of your return. Apparently, a new variant will be arriving in months, no wait, weeks, no wait, days. Oh, bollocks it’s here.

Ironically, as the structure of our routine is broken down, we are becoming more punctual in many ways. The COVID rules have increased our adherence to timings, requiring us to work out when we must test, how long we need to isolate and when we can get vaccinated.

And with turmoil, comes greater respect for other people’s time. The elimination of travel to meetings has ensured that we arrive on time online, because it is just not good form to leave people hanging on in a Zoom waiting room. Since the time of the meeting has been clearly allocated and recorded in our calendars, and because meetings are taking less time, there is conversely more time for other meetings so that if you are not careful the saved time of working remotely has become additional time working to the detriment of your leisure time, family time and exercise time. It’s exhausting.

So, what has this got to do with my Series 6 Apple Watch which is fully waterproof and has just asked me if my walk to the coffee shop to write this piece should be recorded as an ‘Outside Run’.?

I used to measure my year by events: the parties, holidays, trips and events that would be sandwiched between a work schedule that was rigid both in terms of my daily routine and commercial milestones.??It seems now much more sensible to plan on a day-by-day basis.

I’d like to advocate therefore for 2022, the new concept of the ‘Corporate Carpe Diem’.?The source of the phrase for you classicists out there is Horace’s Ode 1:11 in which he declaimed:

Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?

In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb'd away.

Seize the present; trust tomorrow e'en as little as you may.

These lines suggest that we must squeeze pleasure out of every moment, although even fun-loving Horace would not advocate a Xmas party which flouts not just the rules of the country but any concept of basic morality. Rather, we should spend less time trying to plan, and more energy enjoying each day and controlling its experiences and outputs. Make sure it is a blend of professional stimulation and personal pleasure. Be spontaneous when you can. Time, of course still impacts our lives. We are governed by the demands of product launches, retail calendars, transaction dates, and the need to deliver services within agreed frameworks.??It’s just we can meet deadlines in more creative ways.

So have a great time-fluid, day-seizing Xmas and I wish you a new year of fulfilment, happiness, and health, which can be measured and shared by a variety of apps on my Apple Watch. I suppose it’s a good thing.??I mean, it’s not as if I get stopped on the street anymore and asked the time.