So, I’ve worked out (with help from Fiona and from a colleague at work) that you can do a screen shot on an iPad.
And the belittling response from my eldest offspring? “Will I be as hopeless with technology when I am your age?”
But I digress. This is about Steptember. Here is the graph of my daily stepping out for the past week as recorded by my Purposeful Thing.
You can see the two green days – I reached my goal of 10,000 steps. And it calculates my average. Even shows it with the dashed line. If I touch any of the columns, the exact number of steps are displayed.
(And for those interested in a Purposeful Thing of their own, you can change steps to calories, distance or active minutes. Groovy, hey?)
And the PT tracks sleep. Last night I didn’t sleep well. I kept waking up and felt a little unwell. So what does that look like?
A less restless night (but bad in its own way for how late I went to bed) looks like this:
Yes, you can tell if you’re tired in the morning, that you didn’t sleep well. But it is interesting to see what it looks like. Don’t know if I can do much about it! Except it is making me more conscious of getting to bed on time (so much so that if I go to bed too late I don’t switch my Purposeful Thing to monitoring sleep mode.) And you can fool the thing by staying still. One night I couldn’t sleep so I got up, and lay very still on the lounge. The PT thought I had fallen back to sleep. But all in all, I’m a convert, with the zealotry of a convert.
Sorry if my photos are too big but with the upgrade of my iPad, I can’t work out how to resize images from my iPad into WordPress. Win some, lose some when it comes to technology. Look I called my iPod a Walkman today. Don’t expect too much from me.
lucinda sans 
I’m reading this on a mobile phone and the pics are great. Everything loads quickly here.
Ooooh – the pics are convincing! I *love* (want, need) the Sleep Tracking even more than the steps. Very revealing.
It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to do a total impulse buy but I think I want (need) a Purposeful Thing. My sleep’s so scrambled I think it would really help.
(thanks for the link, too!)
Thanks for the reassurance re the photos.
Have to say this is the best thing and am so glad I got it. Only downside, if I am not near my computer it doesn’t give me the details.
L – we went out and got one – a ‘Jawbone’ though, not Fitbit (different type of strap but same idea.)
Shocked, is all I can say. Number of steps + sleep info has been a complete revelation. So glad we got it.
Good shocked or bad shocked?
I knew I was sedentary, just not how bad. Makes you move (or feel guilty not moving) doesn’t it? Like today, I haven’t reached my goal and I feel bad, just not bad enough to go out for a walk. No time anyway with work event on. I will walk a bit more tomorrow to make up for it.
‘Shocked’ in a bad way – over the sleep stats as much as the steps.
The Jawbone measures ‘light sleep’ and ‘deep sleep’. Every night so far DH has had less than 2 hours ‘deep sleep’. Also the number of night wakings (from our sick 10 yo) have left us shocked when you measure the wake times afterwards, the disruption to sleep cycles etc. Overall hours of sleep are drastically wrong.
Seeing stats like “90 minutes deep sleep” for the whole night really makes me think we have a Sleep Emergency!
Like the screen shots! What a fun toy, er, I mean diagnostic tool.
I’m thinking of getting rid of my other toys, I mean motivation exercise trackers.
How do you survive on that much sleep? I am SO grumpy with less than 8 hours, and need to have nana naps:) 9 is better, then I am quite pleasant to live with. It is in everyone’s best interest to let mummy go to bed early. This also demonstrates that I am the most boring person in the known world.
I catch up on weekends, which also makes me a boring person as I must have a Nanna nap. But even if I go to bed early, I often wake after 6 hours. That said, it am often tired, and last night I slept for over 9 hours. I sooo needed it.
Wow, I love the sleep tracking. Very interesting. I’m like Jo – grumpy (and hungry!) when I don’t get at least 8 hours.
All the pictures look perfect to me – they fit my screen exactly.
Maybe getting a proper amount of sleep will be my next challenge? (Only been trying to do that too since the start of my blogging! Lol)
Ha ha ha…..walkman…..haven’t heard that term in ages.
First time commenting. Have been a stealth mode reader for a couple of months. Thanks to your purchase and some on line research, I went out and bought myself one last weekend. Love it!! I used to wear a pedometer and I do use my Nike+fit, but I wanted something that was more of a tracking device. This fits the mold. Very revealing. It does tell me exactly when the feline in the house begins to walk on me in the middle of the night for attention. I keep telling him I’m going to close the bedroom door with him on the other side of it.
Thanks for your inspiration. I haven’t reached my goal of 10,000 steps yet this week, but I will. I used to do 10-12,000 a day and I miss it. This device just confirms how sedentary I have become. Keep posting.