The surprising ways my Fitbit is changing my life

Fitbit, as it turns out, is more than just a fitness tracker.

I thought about getting a fitness tracker for a long time. It actually started when I first heard about Jawbone UP3. The insane reviews for that gadget got me really, really excited.

But I held off.

For one, Jawbone was having major production issues. This was around early 2015. So even if I was ready to shell out a couple of hundred of dollars of my hard-earned cash, I wasn’t able to get my hands on one of ‘em.

After I got over my Jawbone infatuation, I waited for the Apple Watch. Surely, if there’s one company that can make me finally enter the so-called quantified self realm, it has to be Apple, I thought. Well, I was wrong. Not only was Apple Watch disappointing, it was also priced way above my I-get-paid-decently-but-I’m-a-responsible-adult range.

Disappointed with Tim Cook and his team, I was happy to hear that one of my fave retailers, Under Armour, was preparing to launch its own fitness tracker. The company’s “Health Box” sounded really cool and out of this world. I eagerly awaited for the reviews—only to be disappointed by the tepid response it got.

Around this time, some members of my family started getting Fitbits. It really started with my brother-in-law. He recently lost more than 50 pounds and got a Fitbit to keep the weight off. Next, he got my oldest nephew one. My sister got her own shortly after that.

The right mixture of FOMO and good timing is why I finally joined the Fitbit bandwagon. I chose the Blaze because it is kind of a watch but also a fitness tracker. (Like a poor man’s Apple Watch…but better!)

I’ve had my Fitbit with me now for a couple of months now, and I am yet to abandon it. (Apparently, many people who get fitness trackers tend to toss them out after a few months.) And to my surprise, my Fitbit Blaze has already changed my life in ways I didn’t expect. Here are some of them.

I started walking to work.

Ok, this revelation may not be surprising to some, but it’s something I wasn’t expecting. I mean, I knew that Fitbit counted steps, but the thing that surprised me was that 10,000 steps (the recommended number of steps one person must take in one day) was actually A LOT of steps.

I am a fairly active person—I do CrossFit, I run sometimes and I usually walk to my gym and going home—so before getting my Fitbit, I was sure that I was doing at least 10,000 steps. I was wrong. So badly wrong. To get close t0 10,000 steps a day, I had to start walking to work.

Walking to work has had a few surprising consequences, as you’ll see below…

I started listening to podcasts.

When I took public transit to work, I used my iPad to read and go through my RSS feeds. I couldn’t do that when I’m walking, but I wanted my walk to still be productive, so I started listening to podcasts.

As a new podcast listener, I first had to find the right content for me. At first, I thought business-related content would be my cup of tea since this was the type of content that I liked reading.

But what I quickly found out is that most business podcasts suck. I tried liking podcasts from reputable people and brands—podcasts like Shopify’s TGIM; Convince and Convert’s Content Pros and Social Pros; and Slack’s The Variety Pack—but I honestly didn’t find the content particularly engaging. This surprised me because I liked (and still do) the written content that these brands produce. But most business podcasts were so overproduced and too slick for my taste.

I discovered the I enjoy podcasts that were mostly conversations. Podcasts like The Tim Ferriss Show, where the post-production work is so minimal, seemed more authentic and more meaty to me.

That’s not to say that professionally produced podcasts can’t be good. The TED Radio Hour and the Freakonomics podcasts are so slick, but they’re well curated and informative. These podcasts have personality and depth—something that’s missing in many brand-produced podcasts.

I started obsessing about sleep.

Everyone knows this by now, but it’s worth reiterating: sleep is important. Science shows that you need a decent amount of sleep to be productive and be effective in your work.

As an early bird though, getting enough sleep can be a challenge for me. Staying in bed past 8 a.m. on weekend and 6:30 a.m. on weekdays is usually impossible for me. And when life gets busy, sleep is usually one area where I compromise.

Aiming for less sleep has actually resulted to more sleep for me, according to my Fitbit.

Having my Fitbit has made it painfully clear that I rarely get 8 hours of sleep per night, so it became an obsession. Ironically, obsessing about sleep has resulted to some stressful and sleepless nights. One approach that has worked for me is adjusting my sleep goal to 7 hours. This is a more realistic for my lifestyle. More importantly, I found that aiming for less sleep has actually resulted to more sleep for me, according to my Fitbit. Go figure.

I had more “micro-communication moments” with family and friends.

Fitbit’s real competitive advantage isn’t its technology or style. I think other companies actually excel in these areas better. For the most part, Fitbit is a more high-tech pedometer, with some cool features thrown in like the ability to track your heart rate.

But there’s a reason Fitbit is kicking ass — and why I made the plunge to get one: the social component.

I’m talking about the “challenges” feature in the app. Fitbit allows you to initiate or join challenges with your Fitbit friends. The goal: get the most number of steps in a given period of time. The challenges helps drive word of mouth of Fitbit because it gets people talking about the company’s products.

Many competitive people love this feature because they like winning, but I find that it’s also a fun, easy way of keeping in touch with my friends, family members and colleagues. Within these challenges, you can also send messages to people participating. I often find myself “cheering” (the Fitbit equivalent of “liking” something) for my Fitbit friends, including my mom, my nephew and my colleagues.

I discovered that Fitbit isn’t just a fitness tracker — it’s a social platform.

Yes, this type of communication is a lot more shallow than picking up the phone and talking to your friends, but it’s also an easy way of sending positive vibes to people throughout the day.

I discovered that Fitbit isn’t just a fitness tracker—it’s a social platform. And that really has been the biggest surprise for me: that somehow, a piece of tech that is supposed to be about counting something mundane — how many steps I take in one day!—can actually make me more social, more connected to the real world.

Any tech that can make me feel more connected with the people I love — no matter how small—is a tech worth keeping, in my opinion.