MY GIRLFRIEND GOT ME A FITBIT, BUT THE DATA MAKES ME FEEL LAZY AND ASHAMED. DO I HAVE TO KEEP USING IT?

摘要

A: I was in my kitchen the other night, slow dancing with my toddler before bedtime, when the Coldplay song "Fix You" came on-a song, I remembered reading, that Chris Martin wrote for then-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow after her father died-and I found myself feeling genuinely bummed, all over again, that Chris and Gwyneth had split up. I wondered what had torn them apart or whether-as these things often go-they hadn't been torn apart but slowly undone by some dark, unspoken dissatisfaction or resentment that gradually multiplied until there was so much cumulative darkness between them that it blotted out whatever had been luminescent about their love. And that's when I thought about you and your girlfriend and your Fitbit. I also thought about Steve Etkin. Etkin is an engineer by training and by temperament who enjoys walking. And so a year ago, his daughter, Jordan, bought him a Fit-bit. It seemed like the perfect gift. "I started receiving daily updates," she told me, "about the number of steps he walked, the stairs he climbed. After a few weeks, I was like, 'Hey, Dad, you're really treating this like a job.'" (She was also like, hey, Dad, I don't need all these updates.)