Tim Nahumch on his Apple Watch move goal:

So in these times of being sick, I’m faced with a dilemma: how on earth do I complete my move goal? At the time of this writing, I’ve completed my move goal 296 times in a row – but it comes with a caveat. My wife will tell me that I’m cheating, but really, I blame Apple for what I’m doing. How am I “cheating”?

I lower my move goal.

Tim “cheating” on his Move goal really highlights of the negative aspects to the system of trying to Close Your Rings everyday: when you are on a long streak you are intrinsically motivated to fill your rings even if you don’t feel like it, but that built up motivation completely goes away as soon as your streak is over.

As of writing this, I am currently on a 153 day steak of filling all three rings. There are nights when I get home at 10:00 and have 200 calories to go and the last thing I want to do is workout, but I still do it to keep my streak going.

Eventually, my streak will break. When I face a similar situation after that happens, I will be much more likely to pick the option of just going to bed and starting over in the morning because breaking a two week streak isn’t nearly as big a deal to break as a many-months one is.

I think a better solution would be to prioritize longer periods of time rather than individual days. The concept of closing your rings each day is great and shouldn’t go anywhere, but I think the “reward” system should be based more on doing a certain amount of activity over a week or month. Instead of hitting 600 Move calories every day, I would much prefer a system where I have to hit 900 some days but only 300 on others.

Hopefully we see some news in this area in a couple of weeks.