Mark Morford, Optimize your way to a miserable life!
…Do not misunderstand. Goals are great. Achievements can feel wonderful. Fitness trackers can motivate you to stay healthy and workout more. Lists, efficiency, hard work – all lovely and powerful and, done correctly and with an open heart, laughter and good bourbon, fine playthings indeed.
But when they rule your world? When you can’t feel anything, connect to fellow humans, love or cry or enjoy your goddamn drink for a second because you got too much to do, places to go, scores to settle, appointments to keep, apps to download? When they replace intention, touch, a deep and connected pause?
Pure poison. The Void simply cannot be filled from the outside. Which is not to say that new, all-steel Apple Watch isn’t sort of gorgeous. Why not play with it? Enjoy it? And then laugh at its adorable attempts to tell you about something about the meaning of walking?
Be sure to read Morford’s entire post here: Optimize your way to a miserable life!
Image: Apple Watch at Apple.com
“The void simply cannot be filled from the outside” A good post. A good reminder.
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Karen, you captured the punch line of his POV.
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Pure genius. He nails it. A therapeutic read for lazy couch potatoes like myself 🙂
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He does Michael.
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i so agree with this. i hate the idea of the machines ruling anything in our world, especially when we’re the ones who invite them in. makes me feel like a cyborg to wear these things. )
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Smiling as your close (Makes me feel like a cyborg) Good!
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I wear my Fitbit religiously. For eight months. Since that time I’ve gained seven pounds. But I know how far I’ve walked….I’m not buying an Apple Watch. I can’t afford another seven pounds!
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Laughing. You should demand your money back!
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I wear my dad’s analog watch – all I need to know about the passage of time and life..
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I can see you wearing your Dad’s watch. I can.
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This guy gets it. My favorite passage? “There’s no answer waiting just around the next data set, no “ideal” mix of work, food, love and exercise just waiting to be mapped out just right. You change every day. Every moment.” Amen! I’m a hot mess of a work on progress, and when I try to regiment myself too strictly, all I get is misery. Heartening to hear that this may not be a bad thing after all….😊
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Yes. Yes. And if you missed the article he references, be sure to check out:
A Sucker Optimized Every Minute.
An excerpt:
The Apple Watch, which arrived on March 9 to the sort of popular rubbernecking that new machinery occasioned in the 1930s, is a Very Small Electronically Computing Machine with some prodigious optimizing chops. After time keeping, the watch’s chief feature is “fitness tracking”: It clocks and stores physiological data with the aim of getting you to observe and change your habits of sloth and gluttony. Evidently I wasn’t the only one whose thoughts turned to 20th-century despotism: The entrepreneur Anil Dash quipped on Twitter, albeit stretching the truth, “Not since I.B.M. sold mainframes to the Nazis has a high-tech company embraced medical data at this scale.” And yet what attracts me to the Apple Watch are my own totalitarian tendencies. I would keep very, very close tabs on the data my body produces. How much I eat. How much I sleep. How much I exercise and accomplish. I’m feeling hopeful about this: If I watch the numbers closely and use my new tech wisely, I could really get to minimum food intake and maximum work output. Right there in my Apple Watch: a mini Gulag, optimized just for me.
~ Virginia Heffernan, A Sucker Is Optimized Every Minute
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you have the most wonderful people who comment–I agree with them all (so far)
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Oh, yes. So agree. My Followers pull me up and along. Including you among the distinguished group.
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When one loses focus, in NOT slowing down enough to be part of the intimacy of the gift of life …there is such a Danger in being disconnected from the Light of a Soul’s Passion……
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Yes!
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Perhaps, I should have used ‘in becoming’ instead of “in being” ?
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It all works!
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I’ve noticed more often as I participate in races people wearing things (robots? ) that audibly tell them their heart rate, their pace per step, the number of steps and God knows what else (You’re slowing down, you’re speeding up! You’re off your pace! ) No thank you! I’d rather stab myself in the temple with a pencil (figuratively of course).
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LAUGHING AT THE CLOSE….So good.
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What I do not like is that the watch’s app appeared on my phone and there is no way to get rid of it….. 🙂
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Thought the same thing Tina. My solution: slide it into a folder with the “Extras” and I consider it now gone.
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I feel almost sick thinking about this fad as capable of optimizing life. To me it sounds more like a “disconnector” from life. I’ll rather listen to bird’s song on my walks, or some great music, than watch my HR…
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And we are all better for that as you take us on your daily nature walks with your posts.
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