I entered my Apple Watch era on May 23, 2016. It wasn’t on purpose. The Apple Watch was a surprise birthday gift from hubby and it quickly replaced all my analog watches.

It was fun to wear the Apple Watch. I enjoyed tracking my steps, checking my heartrate, and using Apple Pay. It was easy to use, it was convenient, it made me feel sporty. I became more active when I started tracking my steps. It gamified something I’ve never enjoyed — physical exercise.

When I broke my watch the following year, I quickly bought a replacement, promising myself I’d be more careful.

But at some point last year, I started getting tired of tapping buttons on my wrist. I had loosened my 10,000 step goal, I couldn’t remember the last time I checked my heartrate, and my (very old) watch started randomly shutting down so even Apple Pay became unreliable.

Last month, around the time of my birthday, I took off my Apple Watch, popped it onto its charger, and didn’t put it back on the next morning.

It’s been a month and I feel like a different person. It’s also weird though. Sometimes I still tap my wrist before I realize I’ve entered my watch-free era. And this change has brought about a few mini puzzles I’m still trying to solve.

Puzzle number one: How to move more

Now that I’m not tracking my steps on my watch, I’m not moving as much as I used to. I’ve been making a conscious effort to incorporate more movement into my day but my natural state leans toward comfort and relaxation so it’s been challenging.

I like novelty and experimentation though, so one thing that helps is changing up the ways I move. A couple new things: I read on the exercise bike almost every morning. I also bought a badminton and pickleball set to play fun games in the park.

Admittedly, it does bother me when I see my average steps trending down on my phone’s Health app, but I don’t check it regularly so I’m going to let that go. My goal is to make sure I’m moving enough — to feel energized, active, strong. It’s more wishy-washy than having a daily target of 10,000 steps, but I’m ok with that. I want to train myself to want to move for me, not to meet an arbitrary number goal.

Puzzle number two: How to stay on focused on what I’m doing

Another thing I realized: I relied on the alarm on my watch for a lot of things. And since my watch was such a handy tool, I rarely had my phone beside me. These days, when my alarm goes off, I have to track down my phone to turn it off (or scream into the void, “Hey Siri, turn off alarm” but I prefer not to do this).

Every time I get up to find my phone, I get distracted and forget what I’m doing. I’ve left many tasks half-finished, and I’ve stared into space for many minutes trying to remember what I was doing before I went on the great phone chase. Multiply this by many, many alarms each day and you can see why this is a puzzle I’ve been wanting to solve.

There’s an easy solution: Keep my phone near me. But after years of not having my phone beside me, this solution is easier said than done. I’m working on it. And in the spirit of staying focused, I keep my phone face-down if it’s beside me and I’ve left most of my notifications off.

These mini puzzles were unexpected but I’m looking forward to solving them. Since last December, I’ve been working on letting go of urgency and perfection. Taking off my Apple Watch seemed like a natural extension of that. Not wearing a watch feels expansive, freeing, and slightly reckless — in a society that demands efficiency and needs things “ASAP” (or even worse, “yesterday”). It’s a luxury to not have to know the time all the time.

I’m not sure how long my watch-free era will last, but I’m going to try to enjoy every minute.

This month’s reflective questions

What is your relationship with time? How has this relationship changed over time?

If you like, you can do some stream of consciousness journaling on the above question. If you prefer specific questions, I’ve included a bunch below:

Do you wear a watch? Do you like to always know what time it is? Do you rely on alarms — to wake up, to remind you of meetings, to prompt you to get ready to go out? Do you have a reliable internal clock? Are you usually early? Is it easy for you to lose track of time?

Reaching through time,

The end of an (Apple Watch) era

This month’s reflective questions