Personal essays
Getting rewarded for your efforts and achievements
Stickers
My vote-by-mail ballot arrived the other day.
I love voting. I have voted in every election I was eligible to participate in for almost fifty years.
I don’t understand why people who can easily vote don’t.
The people who voted for our awful Senator and President are responsible for the mess we’re in but so are the people who could have voted and just didn’t.
In my state you get a sticker after you vote.
I love my “I Voted” sticker and wear it proudly to encourage others to vote.
Do stickers work?
I don’t know but it’s one of the things I miss when I vote by mail. Sometimes I drive my ballot down to the county board of elections and drop it off there so that I get a sticker on my way out.
The sticker doesn’t motivate me to vote and not getting a sticker doesn’t keep me from voting.
But, something I’ve learned about myself is that if I vote, I do want my sticker. I want credit for it.
Credit
Last week, to commemorate the anniversary of the Apple Watch, Apple declared one day to be “Global Close Your Rings Day.”
It was a made up holiday - but, aren’t they all?
If you closed all of your fitness rings on the Apple Watch you not only got the little image of the award in the Fitness app but you could go to the Apple store - while supplies last - and get a physical metal pin.
I didn’t think much about it.
To close your rings you need to move a certain amount, exercise a certain amount, and stand up for at least a minute during so many hours.
I went to my Gentle Yoga class and forgot to record the activity on my watch.
So stupid. What’s the point of doing something that’s good for me if I don’t get credit for it?
On the other hand, my Apple Watch knows where I am and should know that whenever I’ve been in this location in the past six months I’m taking a Yoga class. That doesn’t take AI or some advanced algorithm. This is where I record that I’ve recorded that I’m taking Yoga at roughly this time, five days a week, for the past six months.
On a day where we’re supposed to be celebrating the Apple Watch, I’m looking at it and asking, “how could you not know this.”
I know the important thing is that I showed up on the mat and did the Yoga.
But, I want my sticker after I vote and I want my rings to close after my class.
Sigh.
Stickers work
I got home and saw posts from friends who had closed their rings and gone to their nearby Apple store to pick up their pins.
The last thing I need is something else to bring into my house. I’m trying to clear out my house.
And yet, I found myself wanting at least the virtual recognition of my achievement.
I think of myself as impervious to gamification. I don’t care about those stupid stickers.
It turns out that sometimes I do.
So I got on my bike and started to record a bike ride on my Apple watch. Just in case that didn’t work I recorded it in Strava as well. I took an indirect route to get coffee that would take a little more than fifteen minutes, paused the recording, restarted the recording, and biked home.
That closed my movement and exercise rings.
My stand rings were a challenge. I’d taken off my watch that morning to charge it and forgotten to put it back on.
Once again that meant there were five hours of standing that I hadn’t gotten credit for.
That’s ok. Sometimes my watch taps me to tell me I need to stand up and a minute later it taps me to congratulate me on standing when I haven’t moved.
This time it mattered. I had to close this last ring. In order to do so I had to stay up past my usual bedtime to meet my goal. I completed the challenge. That should have been the end of it.
The next day, after my Yoga class I thought, “the Apple store is right around the corner. I should stop by and see if they have any physical pins left.”
The woman who greeted me asked how she could help me. I asked if they had any pins left and she opened a drawer and said, “you get our last one” and presented it to me.
I thanked her and asked, “do you want to see proof?”
“That’s ok,” she said.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 266. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe