Is Your Smartwatch Making You More Anxious? Here's What I Realized In Two Weeks

I'm one of those people who¡¯re hyper about notifications. My work email for five years has just 55 unread emails and my more than a decade old personal inbox has only one unread (from this morning).

I absolutely abhor notifications. I used to hate it when the judgmental red light on my Blackberry kept going off back then and I hate it even more when I encounter an unread WhatsApp alert on my phone now.

So, when I finally decided to scratch a long itch by getting a smartwatch, I was extremely curious about one thing. What happens when someone as restless as me about notifications literally straps them on my wrist with nowhere to hide? That my notifications and I are more symbiotic than having them on my phone which can be ignored in the pocket, on the desk or handcuffed to a plug point affect me adversely in any way at all?

8 am Saturday, experiment starts

So, the idea was simple. I decided to introduce myself to the Apple Watch after holding off on it for a couple of years. I would use the smartwatch for a full week (starting out on a Saturday) without the notifications on and one entire week with all notifications on.

I would monitor my heart beat and figure out if there was a significant difference -- spike or decline -- between the two weeks. The reason behind going with no notifications first was to give the brain time to get used to an extra device.

9-12 noon, Mondays

Predictably, my heart rate on Monday mornings between 9 am - 12.30 pm was the highest. This is the peak time when stories are being approved, I am also travelling to work, etc. I have an editorial call between 11 and 12 which is when my heart rate was spiking, swinging between 72/95 and peaked at 59/121 with the notifications on and 66/81 and 54/178).

My average heart rate for the week without the notifications was 48-178 bpm, my resting heart rate was 63-72 bpm. The same corresponding numbers with the notifications on were 46-176 bpm and resting heart rate was 66-72 bpm.

So there is an extremely minor 3 bpm increase in minimum heart rate between the two weeks (higher in the week with notifications). HRV (Heart Rate Variability) for my week with the notifications on was 43 ms (milliseconds) as compared to 40 ms without the notifications on.

11 am to 12 noon, Thursday

For some strange reason I realized Thursdays are my high stress days around 11 am - 12 pm where my minimum heart rate was 77 and max 102 bpm (beats per minute) with the notifications on and 80/131 without the notifications.

All day, Saturday

In my week of having the notifications on for the Apple Watch, I saw more chats than I needed to and answered more calls as well. By far the most annoying and anxiety inducing notifications for me were call alerts -- at least three times I ended up answering the phone (once on roaming on a flight) just because the Watch was adding to the commotion and conveniently placed on my wrist.

On other occasions, the WhatsApp alerts really get in the way if you want to take a nap over the weekend with the Apple Watch on. In both these cases, had I just been using the phone, I would have just put it away and ignored it for 15 mins. An always on wearable on the wrist pinging, vibrating and making a racket takes away that option.

10-1 pm, Tuesday

The same thing happens with emails -- all emails from personal accounts which even include spam emails show up on your phone. This actually is more annoying because I found myself having to pick up my phone and respond to these emails since they needed something beyond a yes or no answer that I could have typed (one letter at a time) or dictated.

There was a flip side too, the activity goals on the Apple watch were enough to push me to start going to the gym again.

7-10 pm, Night outs

reuters

This is a very obvious topic, since many of us are only now getting into the habit of ignoring our phones, putting them on silent and laying them face down when we are out for a meal instead of constantly looking at them, suffering from some incurable FOMO. A smartwatch by default makes this even trickier, unless you want to take off your smartwatch into your pocket or turn on the DND -- both of which require a conscious action.

At a fundamental level, while the Breathe app and the activity tracker, or even the heartbeat tracker (which I used for this crude analysis) are useful, they come at the cost of peaceful Saturday naps, WhatsApp alerts on pointless chats when you are driving or compulsive alerts on emails replying to which would have you anxiously looking for the phone anyway.

The one thing I can tell you though is -- thank god for the charging cycles. I recently started sleeping with my non-smartwatch on, and that is simply not an option with the Apple Watch (be wary of the smartwatches with long battery life). Notifications are evil. Don't strap them to your wrist.

P.S. if you want to buy a sparingly used Apple Watch series 4, hit me up. Free guide, I'll include with it:

1. Turn off notifications for calls (this is the most annoying).

2. Turn off notifications for emails (this is not useful since the display and the process to type a reply are very complicated).

3. Let the calendar be on. Probably the only useful phone reminder on your phone.

4. Turn off WhatsApp -- this is by far the most complicated one -- since this is the biggest way most of us communicate, even related to work. But this is also the most stress causing. So it has to go as well for your sense of sanity.