Activity Streaks

July 3, 2024

One of the welcome announcements from WWDC last month was the ability to pause your streak of closing Activity rings for a day or so. This is a long overdue feature that I’m glad to see finally coming to the Watch. It’s not healthy to do the same activities every day with no rest, but there’s also an interesting gamification angle to the product itself.

I used to try and close my rings every day. I did it for about 3 years straight, which at that point became more about keeping the “game” going than fitness. Once I stopped the streak due to an injury I never picked it up again. In fact, I find myself wearing the Apple Watch less and less each week.

I wonder if I would been able to pause my streak then if I would have kept with it and the Watch would still be a valuable product in my life.

On the surface pausing a streak is a great way to keep your fitness progress going. But it’s also a hard push towards keeping your Watch relevant and useful. I bet there’s a lot of people like me that have broken streaks and never gone back, resulting in a much less useful device.