Episode 1: Watches

“Sorry babe, I’m not up for it tonight: Garmin says no.” – Charlie Barber in sarcasm, July 2025

It seems kinda off to start on watches. But I think it’s the perfect place to start. It sits on your wrist all day. It tells you the time. That should be its purpose. It’s only purpose.

Part 1: Push Notifications are stupid.

Yeah you can get a ‘smart watch’. It will send you push notifications with news alerts (just in case you weren’t stressed enough). Seriously though, why the actual fuck would you want to micro-dose the news? Media channels are almost always reporting negative news. Not because they are a load of fun-sponges, but because negativity gets attention (and thus money). It appeals to anger, rage, frustration and our inherent loneliness. It pulls you in straight away because these emotions are our most primal.

I ask again, why would you want to microdose this?

To be ‘informed’? If we are being honest with ourselves, we can’t recount the nuances of three articles we read this past week. You certainly didn’t read anything of depth on a smart watch’s tiny screen.

I have a LOT to say on news, so much so it’s getting it’s own Episode (16). Even reputable sources these days produce news that is so surface level it serves no purpose other than getting you stressed.

We must humble ourselves. Knowing when the latest killing, the latest ceasefire, Trump policy or gaffe comes out doesn’t make you more informed than anyone else. It just makes you stressed and not fun to be around.

Likewise, push notifications from entertainment apps are just stupid social engineering designed to get you to either spend more time on their app, spend more money, or both.

So this leaves push notifications for messages e.g. SMS, WhatsApp, Signal. You want to be connected I get it. But you are trading true connection for cortisol. You know, and I know, we are checking our phone loads. You need your phone to reply anyway. So what exactly is the point of knowing 10 minutes before usual that person X said thing Y.

Part 2: Health Data

Again, this is such a big topic it will get additional mentions in my rage against the digitalisation of sport in Episode 16.

But I simply ask, knowing your ‘sleep score’, knowing your ‘body battery’, knowing your ‘step count’ – has it made you any less of a lazy bastard like the rest of us?

Now, I’m using lazy bastard affectionately in flippancy. But seriously, I don’t think knowing these things would actually make my life any better. I know I get bad sleep sometimes, and I’d be pretty miffed if I had a little gremlin of a mate on my shoulder reminding me of that fact every day.

I also know I’m prone to being a lay about – I don’t need some school teacher gentle parenting me to increase my step count. The disappointing check-in with the scales at my mum’s house already does that job.

The open question here is: is all this data really making anyone’s lives better?

It seems like for the most part its just making people a) more stressed, b) definitely more boring and c) spend more money.

There’s probably a case for older people having instant access to health data, but for young healthy people? I’m just not buying it.

It seems like predatory companies want you to be anxious, more paranoid and more stressed with the convenient solution being paid access to metrics you aren’t really of the medical knowledge to properly process or analyse. Harking back to Charlie’s beautiful quote from this summer’s climbing in the Dolomites, I think a lot of people need to chill out, be a little less boring and live more. And that certainly includes me.

Maybe less is more here. We don’t really need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to watches. We’ve reached peak watch. And that’s okay.

Part 3: Solutions

The solution is just to relax. Get yourself down to Argos and buy yourself a Casio F-91W. The most produced watch in the world. £10.99 last time I checked. Waterproof (I’ve taken it diving) and bulletproof (i’ve dropped it off cliffs). Has a 12 or 24 hour face. Has a stop-watch (invariably useful). You can set alarms on it. You can even get it to beep each turn of the hour if you miss push notifications too much (heeeeLLLO, I’m your WATCH and you need a mini-dose of CORTISOL because its ELEVEN AM).

Let’s end with a great quote from Samuel Pepys from 1665 about the insanity of checking your push notifications all the time, errr, I mean just checking a watch all the time,

“But, Lord! to see how much of my old folly and childishnesse hangs upon me still that I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this afternoon, and seeing what o’clock it is one hundred times..

…and am apt to think with myself, how could I be so long without one; though I remember since, I had one, and found it a trouble, and resolved to carry one no more about me while I lived.” – Samuel Pepys, May 1665

Tools and Tips

1) Casio F91-W (~£10.99 at Argos)