One of the first things that my wife and I do when we wake up on the first of each month is open the Fitness app on the iPhone to see what challenge it has for us. This started during the pandemic as an outside force on us. Since then it’s engrained into our rituals. If you have an Apple Watch, the Fitness app will look at your activity level and present monthly challenges that (appear to be designed) to push you a little further each month. If you succeed, you get a cool visualization on the watch, a badge in the app, and a hit of dopamine.
We still do it to this day, but I’d be lying if I’d say the challenges it’s been presenting us are very exciting. This seems to have happened around October 2022, likely the latest version of watchOS. Before the update, most of the challenges were to focus on one thing and doing it a lot! I refer to these as cumulative goals. Examples I had to deal with: Walk or run 287.66 miles in a month, Exercise 4,308 minutes, or Burn 35,483 calories. Every now and hten there would be other challenges I call binary events where you have to do something in a day. Either you do it or you don’t. In the past those were focused entirely on closing the 3 Activity rings. Now everything is a binary event and it’s boring!
The cumulative goals were awesome. The thing they introduce to the mix that binary events don’t, is that if you go over and above one day the rest of the month become easier. If you don’t hit the daily average, guess what? The daily average for the rest of the month goes up and you need to work harder. It gave me more control on the strategy and truthfully really pushed me to go further. Now with the binary events, there’s no real point within the context of the challenge to go any further than accomplishing the event for the day. If it tells me to do 7 yoga sessions a month, you don’t get any outside satisfaction by doing 10 or 15 or 20.
I’m still going to do it. This morning I woke up and the goal was another binary one… I need to move 9.08 miles 14 times this month.
My successful Apple Fitness Monthly Challenges:
- November 2018 - Close all 3 Activity rings 23 times
- December 2018 - Exercise 3,267 minutes
- January 2019 - Double Move goal 5 times
- March 2019 - Exercise 1,615 minutes
- May 2019 - Exercise 2,473 minutes
- June 2019 - Double Move goal 9 times
- July 2019 - Burn 33,050 calories
- October 2019 - Close all 3 Activity rings 31 times
- November 2019 - Double Move goal 6 times
- January 2020 - Exercise 2,545 minutes
- February 2020 - Move 287.66 miles
- March 2020 - Close all 3 Activity rings 31 times
- April 2020 - Exercise 4,308 minutes
- May 2020 - Burn 35,483 calories
- July 2020 - Close all 3 Activity rings 31 times
- August 2020 - Burn 32,445 calories
- October 2020 - Exercise 4,820 minutes
- November 2020 - Burn 23,313 calories
- December 2020 - Exercise 3,990 minutes
- January 2021 - Burn 30,189 calories
- March 2021 - Close all 3 Activity rings 31 times
- April 2021 - Burn 30,079 calories
- July 2021 - Close all 3 Activity rings 31 times
- August 2021 - Close all 3 Activity rings 31 times
- September 2021 - Double Move goal 12 times
- October 2021 - Move 233.27 miles
- November 2021 - Exercise 4,005 minutes
- January 2022 - Burn 25,922 calories
- February 2022 - Move 279.89 miles
- March 2022 - Exercise 4,300 minutes
- April 2022 - Burn 37,377 calories
- May 2022 - Close all 3 Activity rings 31 times
- June 2022 - Burn 30,501 calories
- July 2022 - Move 248.02 miles
- August 2022 - Burn 31,397 calories
- Septemer 2022 - Move 290.94 miles
- October 2022 - Exercise 149 minutes in a day 14 times
- November 2022 - Double Move goal 7 times
- December 2022 - Burn 808 calories in a day 14 times
- March 2023 - 4 indoor cycling workouts
- April 2023 - Burn 306 calories in a day 14 times
- May 2023 - Move 5.86 miles in a day 14 times
- June 2023 - Exercise 75 minutes in a day 14 times
- July 2023 - 6 Yoga workouts
- August 2023 - Move 8.54 miles in a day 14 times
- September 2023 - Exercise 119 minutes in a day 14 times
- October 2023 - Burn 981 calories in a day 14 times
- November 2023 - Close all 3 Activity rings 27 times
- December 2023 - Move 8.80 miles in a day 14 times
- January 2024 - 7 Yoga workouts
