The Next 10,000 Steps
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Walking 10,000 steps a day is a mainstream thing now that has probably really done some good. “Getting my steps in” wasn’t a common phrase ten years ago, and now it is. Step tracking is ubiquitous. It’s built into smartphones and many people actually pay attention to it and move at least a little more because of it. Basically, 10,000 steps worked. It has been implemented at the societal scale successfully. It was an idea to promote a modest goal that the typical person could reach, and it worked.
What’s the next 10,000 steps? Sleep quantity? Sleep score? The sleep score has become a prominent metric across several devices and apps. Sleep scores may vary across devices, while step count is simple, transparent, and universal. Sleep can not be controlled as directly as the number of steps. But sleep is universal. The book Why We Sleep was a hit. Prioritizing sleep seems, anecdotally, more common in the last few years. In a way, sleeping more is a way of doing less, while walking more is a way of doing more. So perhaps it’s not as easy of a sell as the good old 10,000 steps.
Whatever the next popular health metric is, the big picture is one of progress in proactive management of personal health. With continually improving sensors and software, the average person will gradually get a fuller picture of their health and how they can improve it. They already get reminders to get up and walk, or that it’s bedtime. One day you might get a warning that the last few times you drank coffee, you slept 30% worse than usual.
Life is hard. It should be easy to nail the basics of sleep, exercise, and nutrition. This is one area where our ever-present personal devices are clearly helping us, and it’s just the beginning.