The Watch is upon us. The drumbeat for Apple Watch is getting so loud the very buildings around us will soon crumble away to reveal towers of gleaming gold and silver Apple Watches.
Connected watches are the future and this is a signal moment toward that vision. But the pundits reviewing the watch are getting it wrong.
Most focus on the endless stream of notifications that you will check on this device. One leading reviewer wrote, "it is designed for people who are inundated with notifications coming in through their phones..." Now you can get all those notifications on your watch! YIKES!
Don't do it.
YES, buy the watch, but do NOT turn on its notifications. Keep your friends, stay close to your family, don't get fired. You will lose ALL if you turn on notifications.
Don't say you were not warned. If you go down the road of watch notifications, you will become a #watchhole and alienate everyone around you.
Many of my friends already have smartwatches. We are the earliest adopters of technology, As kids we caused havoc by hacking our Atari game consoles to control the appliances in every house on the block and turning them on and off at random moments. We were the first to use Uber to take us to our Airbnb apartment and then order from Instacart and Postmates after we landed with our jetpacks and before we merged our consciousness into the singularity.
Not surprisingly, many of these friends have already been wearing connected watches for more than a year now. Watches, in particular, that give them notifications. I cannot tell you how annoying it is to be in a meeting or social setting with someone who is glancing down at their watch about once every 20 seconds. Not exaggerating -- every 20 seconds. Three times a minute. I used the timer on my iPhone to record how often they checked their watch.
This now when we finally have learned a thing or two about phone etiquette. When we go to dinner, many people now put away their phones. In meetings we check the phone a few times, but not enough to disrupt the flow.
Notifications on the watch are different. The watch buzzes you physically each and every time a notification comes in -- every text message, every Facebook update, every Whatsapp, etc., etc., etc. Oh, and add in the nudges from the watch on not sitting too long, weather changes and reminders that your personal security drone is set to stun.
Notifications on your watch do not "free" you from your phone as many have written. They enslave you to an endless buzzing of blather and will reduce your brain to a mesclado of the cocaine-level alertness of a meerkat standing on its hind legs facing an oncoming car and a Pavlovian-trained hamster waiting for the next hit of a meal nugget.
More importantly (!) you will become so annoying to everyone around you that they will up and leave. When one person in a small meeting is checking watch notifications it basically signals to the others that they have way more important items to attend to - such as the critical info that juke343 is now Periscoping their pet goldfish.
So, fair warning, dear reader. Get the gleaming watch, but turn OFF notifications and KEEP your life! Arianna talks about keeping yourself sane and healthy in Thrive this is one way to do so and avoid an alert meltdown.
Notification just came in....this piece was retweeted even before I published it....have to hop on hootsuite!