Speaking as a person who goes to a lot of meetings, having the right notifications on my wrist are great. I am rarely late for meetings now, and I can keep track of key events while sitting in those meetings. A look at my wrist is much more subtle than a look at my phone.
For me it's notifications. Calendar alerts, texts, app notifications, and alarms are much easier and less disruptive to look at on your wrist than to pull out your phone. It's a much better experience.
I can't believe I've never considered just how valuable it would be in these scenarios. Another reminder about how vast our blind spots (and those of us tech workers' so-often-not-very-diverse teams) can be. If I were spending hours at a time away from my phone, I'd value wrist notifications so much more than I do at my desk job.
None really I'm afraid. I enjoy having notifications on my wrist sometimes but most days I just slap on a regular watch instead since they're more fashion than utility item for me honestly.
My phone is always on silent now. It's much better to see notifications on my watch than have to dig out my phone to check. Like most people, most of my notifications aren't immediately actionable. A lot of them are just emails about things I'm already aware of but will be useful later. It's very useful to cut down the degree of interruption (and noise) from notifications day to day.
In certain situations it also greatly helps when there's a high rate of notifications due to some activity (sometimes I work events, for example), and there it can be helpful if you are part of a group of folks who are using messaging to coordinate in real-time to be able to not have to dig out your phone constantly to stay caught up. Typically you'll read many more messages than you'll write, so optimizing for reading without breaking your workflow (such as if you're working with your hands, walking, or doing something else) is practically a game changer.
Also, for me, I spent many years without a watch because it seemed superfluous during the cell phone era. And for a while when I owned a smartwatch I had only used it during events when I really needed it to keep up with a near continuous communication stream. But I spent a while experimenting with just wearing it everyday, partly to help with maintaining a more consistent schedule, especially with sleep. I have alarms (which just vibrate) on my watch to remind me when it's time to go home from work and when it's near bed time. That may seem like overkill but they are very unobtrusive and they've made it much much easier to avoid staying very late at work or staying up too late for no good reason. Also, I switched to using a cloth (NATO) watch band which makes wearing a watch much more comfortable than with a plastic or even leather band, in my experience.
Overall I've been wearing a smartwatch essentially every day for about two years now and I wouldn't go back easily. It's nice to just have a watch when you need it, it's nice to get notifications less intrusively, it's nice being able to leave your phone on silent forever, it's nice having a step counter without having to worry about it, it's nice having a way to control fitness apps like STRAVA so that I can go on a bike ride and see how many miles I've ridden, my average pace, etc. (although they dropped support for pebble unfortunately).
The thing I like particularly about pebble, and the reason I haven't upgraded since then even though I could easily afford it (I've even resorted to running an old version of STRAVA on my phone that still works with pebble) is that it's always on (it has a transflective LCD display), has weeklong battery life, and in general it doesn't try to be a 2nd smartphone just a complement to my existing smartphone. Unfortunately, so many other smartwatches seem to fall into the trap of being blingy high-status toys that are expensive and flashy but have super short battery life and displays that are only on sometimes. I wear my pebble when I go hiking or camping, starting from a full charge it works just fine as a regular watch even with my smartphone off.
I don't know how much time it really saves me, but in addition to the convenience I find it much less intrusive (e.g. in meetings or other social situations, or when walking) to quickly glance at my watch to read an incoming notification rather than pulling my phone out.
You know, I thought the same thing until I got a Pebble to do some development on. Turns out, I really like getting notifications on my wrist. Lets me know if it's actually something I need to get my phone out for.
Also, it's easier to dismiss calls if I'm in a place where I can't/don't want to take a call.
It's a fair question, but for me moving notifications (vibration and tones) from my pocket to my wrist has been one of the best things to happen to my productivity this year.
My job is to give people I'm in conversation with my full attention. Getting texts or whatever used to completely destroy my ability to concentrate, and they are almost always useless — but not completely, preventing me from turning them off. With my Pebble, I can casually stretch and glance at my wrist to make sure that the house isn't on fire, and my client has no idea.
Likewise, I've never had a phone that vibrated strongly enough to get my attention when walking or biking. This is usually when all of the important calls would come in. Now the problem is solved.
Notifications on my wrist let me receive phone calls/alarms without waking up my partner. That is probably my big reason, but since I use it for that, I also use it for run tracking and fitness+ app.
A smart watch helped me (Garmin). I find it's a nice balance. For example, let's say I'm working with my hands on my keyboard. When an email or text message comes in, I glance at my wrist, I see who it is and maybe the subject, and then I continue working without reaching for my phone or mouse. MacOS is pretty good for that with the notifications - integrated with iphone and email, but I've moved away from Apple. If didn't get these notifications, I'd be wondering if it's important or not, so i just take second to look.
Interactions with smartphones generally are of two types. Type one is full interactivity, you're using the phone to "do something" that takes at least a minute, maybe many minutes. Type two is reading a notification, which often takes a few seconds and often isn't immediately actionable. For reading notifications smart watches are perfect, because they reduce the friction of reading notifications significantly. You don't have to take your phone out of your pocket, you don't have to unlock it, you don't have to pull up the notification, you don't have to put your phone back. In situations where you are likely to receive a lot of notifications, which is increasingly common for many people these days, it makes it trivial to keep caught up on notifications even if you're busy doing other things. Granted, that's not always what you want (though it's also trivial to put a smart watch away or on mute) but when it is it can be anywhere from highly useful to a lifesaver.
For me, I started using a smart watch exclusively while working events where me and my team would coordinate using group chat. It wouldn't be uncommon to receive hundreds of messages per day, and sometimes dozens over a few minutes. The vast majority of which wouldn't require a response, but being caught up on what was going on would be critical. And often everyone would have their hands busy doing something else, so being able to just look at your watch to read a message is an amazing improvement.
I started wearing my pebble every day maybe two months ago just as an experiment (after spending something like 2 decades not wearing a watch). So far it's been a success. Being able to stay caught up on my messages with little friction is helpful, and surprisingly having a watch is actually useful fairly often as well.
Based on your other replies it's probably just a fundamental disagreement on how you view notifications compared to those who find watch notifications to reduce stress.
For me, watch notifications reduce stress by allowing me to get absorbed in the moment while still being able to quickly check up on any important things without having to "context switch" by pulling out a phone.
It means that I can actually take advantage of my flexible work schedule and go out on a walk or be visiting my niece and playing with her, yet still available to others who might be working at the time.
In the early 2000s, sure there weren't devices vying for your attention, but such flexible work requirements were also not that common.
I get to do things whenever I want as long as the overall work is progressing at a decent pace. If I had to avoid getting into something enough to remember to keep checking my phone, it'd defeat the point of such flexibility, and if others had to wait an hour or two for me to notice and reply to them, work would not progress at a decent pace and the flexibility would be taken away.
This is probably also a function of my position. I'm at the start of my research career, so most of the emails I have ultimately involve me asking someone else for something which benefits me much more than them. My being extremely prompt with my replies helps a lot with making a good impression and getting things done, and a watch helps a lot with pulling that off without having to actually stress about paying attention to my emails.
I'm in the same boat. I select which apps send notifications to my watch and that prevents me from using my phone unnecessarily. Looking at my wrist is a lot easier than taking the phone out of my pocket and unlocking it. And I'm much less likely to get distracted by something unrelated.
I can attest that notifications which doesn't force you to take immediate, real-time action has productivity and may be even mental health benefits.
I have struck an old android wear watch to the front of the computer desk just to see the notifications from my smartphone. So when the notifications arrive, I can see it on the watch like a pager and it has cut my need to touch the smartphone for notifications which could potentially lead into a rabbit hole.
Yes a smartwatch on hand can do these as well, but reaching to it will likely lead to smartwatch rabbit hole. I use the smartwatch on the desk as read only, no actions.
I found this one out 10 years ago when I got a Pebble.
Getting notification on my watch was increasing my stress rather than decreasing it.
Also looking at my watch for a notification got many people thinking I was late for some appointment or that I was trying to find an excuse to stop talking to them.
When I disabled the notifications I was left with not-so-smart watch with terrible battery life (still many times better than current models!).
Nowadays I stick either with a Casio Waveceptor or a mechanical watch depending if I need the time precision of the Waveceptor or not.
Watch notifications are a positive for me, _after_ I disabled all but the apps I care about (plus, in messaging apps I muted all but the persons I need to communicate with in real time). Every time I get a notification and the Watch is not on my wrist I am annoyned by the phone vibrating on the desk, or wherever it is.
In any case, I wear it mostly for the health monitoring. Notifications as described above are a benefit for me, but I would probably not wear it for that alone.
Not that I wear my watch a lot of time but that’s far more reliable notification than anything in my phone. Though I turn the vast bulk of my potential notifications off anyway.
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