Culture Training

The Apple Watch Worth it, For Me?

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I have had my Apple Watch for a few days now.  It hasn’t been enough time to write an exhaustive review about features, however I am not writing a full technical review.  I am writing about my experience with it to date.

Physically the watch face looks ok to me.  The band is a nice rubber band but its still not great.  I know I bought the cheap band.  Some of the other ones look much better however no super awesome band will take away from the fact that this is still a digital watch.  The watch itself is pretty thick and boxy.  It is well built but not beveled like someone at work pointed out.  Ascetically pretty decent.  Not fantastic but overall not horrible.

Someone pointed out in a review I read that the main things people will really regularly use a smart watch for is 1, telling time, 2 activity tracking, and 3 notifications.  I generally agree with this.  The other functions are nice to have’s but not anything that I would use often. The using the watch for example as a viewfinder for the camera is nifty but i am not going to use that very much.

Using those three main functions I wanted to see how the Apple Watch fared for me.  First as a watch it wasn’t great.  I was just ok.  I personally had issue with the watch taking a while to go on when i moved my wrist to look at the time.  It isn’t a lot of time but it is very noticible.  I also don’t have the best vision so once i am looking at the watch face I have to focus on the hands to know what time it is.  Most people may glance much faster at it and then the waiting for it to light up may not be a big deal.  For me waiting for it to light up and then having to look at it and get the time was just too long.  I know I could possibly solve my issue by just using the digital time however I have been an analog watch person for over a decade now and I don’t want to change now because the Apple Watch doesn’t turn on fast enough.

As for activity tracking I am honestly still confused by the three circles that the watch uses to track me.  Move isn’t really a step count I think.  I am not sure and if i can’t easily figure that out then it is too complex.  Tracking my standing is cool however if the watch knows i am active why does it matter that it knows i am actually standing.  My Up band alerted on lack of activity.  It just seemed simpler.  In any event the activity tracker seems good enough.  The main issue with the watch as an activity tracker is that it is built into the watch.  On one hand that is great.  One less thing to wear.  Of course what if I wear another watch?  Or as in my case I want to track my sleep habits as well like i have been for a few years with my Jawbone UP.  For me if I were to keep the watch it wouldn’t be my only watch so I would need an activity tracker anyway.  My Jawbone UP24 broke last week so I just ordered a new Jawbone UP2.  I will blog about that hopefully soon.  In any event I am not giving up my dedicated tracker so the Apple Watch as an activity tracker is redundant for me.  For others it may be great or the best function now that they can get rid of another wrist band.  I for one am happy to own a basic activity tracker like the up that doesn’t have a screen on it and just tracks what i do since that is the only reason i own it.

The 3rd main reason to have a smartwatch would be the notifications.  This is where my problem lies.  The Apple Watch is good at this. Really good.  In the few days i have had it i have loved the meeting notifications and the ability to snooze them and not forget to be somewhere.  The timer is helpful also however not much easier than just dictating to Siri on my phone.  Telling me about a new text was great, however there were a few that I never got on my watch but did get on my phone.  Overall I liked the notification features of the watch.  That in lies my problem.  This watch along with all smart watches are a huge distraction or so I thought.  I initially got concerned the first full day I had it when the girls were climbing all over me to play with it.  I was concerned about the distraction.  I am trying to adhere to be here now when I am home.  Because of the distraction I was all set to return the watch.  Then I read another blogger who said the notifications on the watch were great because it allowed them to keep the phone in their pocket and actually be less distracted.  I was intrigued.  That was exactly what I wanted.  Because of that the watch got a reprieve and I will keep trying it for a while longer.

 

 

Be Here Now

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Last year I went to some culture training in London for work.  I have wanted to write about the experience for a while and I keep putting it off.  Much of what I learned I have been actively trying to use every day.  That of course was the point of the culture training, to get everyone taking part to think and act differently in their interactions with each other.  At at the end of the training we were asked to write down things we learned at the training that we wanted to remember to do every day.We were given an “I will” card to write the items down on and put it in our wallets.  I don’t keep the card in my wallet but it sits at the base of my monitor at work so i have it to reference if I ever need to.  I keep a picture of it in my Evernote so I always have it with me.  On my trip to Minnesota last month I was having dinner with several managers including my manager and his manager and the topic of the cards came up.  Out of the 5 of us present everyone remembered what they had on their card or produced it out of their wallet to show they still had it.  Some of these people had taken this training 2 years ago.  It was interesting to see that everyone was still invested in changing our behaviors with each other, and that I wasn’t the only person actively working to inprove.

I have been mindful of things I want to improve on however that experience got me wanting to renew my efforts at self improvement.  The first item on my “I will” card was a reminder that I will apply what i learned at the workshop.  To me that was a catch all to just remember to think about what I learned and not forget.  That is harder than it seems.  There are many days were I don’t remember however thankfully I think the majority of the time I am mindful of things i want to be doing.  The first I will that I learned that I wanted to live by is “be here now”.

Be here now is a fascinating concept that can be applied to work life as well as personal life.  It simply is to remind me to be in the moment and avoid distractions.  At work that means focusing on a meeting or a conversation and not multi-task.  It means paying attention and giving what you are doing your undivided attention.  At home it means to not be distracted by work.  To me it means that I want to leave my phone on my desk or if i have to in my pocket when i get home and not be distracted by it or what it is alerting to me.  I get so little time with my kids when I get home and almost no time in the morning during the week.  I want to make use of that valuable time and not be distracted by my phone, work or anything else.  There are days when I am.  I am not perfect but i am getting better.  I want to get to a place were i put my devices away in a drawer and not worry about stuff.

Maybe I am concerned about this because I am in the technology field or because i read about how kids react to parents distracted by devices.  I also read and see how families and small kids just zone out with devices when together.  I  worry about that with my family.  I know MC and I are role models for them and the girls watch what we do and try to emulate us.  That is why be here now is important to me on a personal level as well as a professional one.

The training was a very enlightening experience for me.  Seeing how it affected and continues to guide others that I work with is also good to see.

Be here now was one of 4 items on my I will card.  I hope to write about the other ones in the near future.  One of the points in an upcoming post I think will have a lot to do with be here now so I wanted to write about it first.

Note the photo in this post is from my desk at home.  Everyone who went through the training got that placard.  I see it around my office here and there.  I know people who put up posters in their garage to remind them as they got home to be mindful.  I felt the biggest impact for me would be at my desk at home since that is where i put my bag and keys, etc right when i get home.

Teamwork Is an Individual Skill

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Over the past year and a half my team has been working on ways to improve how we work.  There are many aspects of this, and I am deliberately being vague with the high level.  One part of this improvement goal is to transform into a high performance team.  Turns out that isn’t just some buzz term.  There really is a definition for it and proven ways to get there.  Going into this process I had no idea!  Kidding aside this renewed focus at improvement has had me fascinated.

One of the trainers who I am generally friendly with recommended to me several books to read to help better my understanding beyond the training classes and coaching I have gotten.  The first one I read was “Teamwork Is an Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility” by Christopher Avery.  I thought it was a fascinating read.  Much of it was common sense but still I found myself not doing much of what it suggests.  It also made several points that were counter intuitive in todays business world but after reading the book and talking to others that I trust their judgment the concepts really made sense to me.  Ever since finishing the book I have been trying to adopt the concepts for myself and in hopes that my team also adopts them.  One major point of the book is i can’t expect the team to do what I want.  I can only influence them by my own actions.

I read the book on my commute home from work.  It was a good read and as much as it wasn’t as exciting as a novel I was very pleased I read it.  So much so that I want to read more books like it to help in my quest to be a better manager and a better member of a team.

This wasn’t the first book I have read for this initiative but it is the first one I am blogging about. I am hoping to write some more posts about some additional books that i have found were extremely valuable.