My Favorite WatchOS 10 Feature Is Overlooked, Underrated, and Life-Changing

For the past 30 days, I have been following my daily routine with one subtle change: a apple watch series 8On my wrist, running WatchOS 10.

This isn’t my first Apple Watch experience ever, but the last time I used it was about three years ago, and I’ve been reading about its latest capabilities from the sidelines ever since.

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So, it came as a surprise to me when watchOS 10’s most valuable feature, for me, came in the form of the Mindfulness app, and not topographic maps for hiking, better-oriented navigation gestures, or Smart Stacks. (Though, Snoopy and the Woodstock clock face comes in second.)

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The company’s latest wearable includes advanced health and fitness tracking, including crash detection, blood oxygen monitoring and more.

Specifically, I’ve been using the new State of Mind feature in the Mindfulness app, which surveys your daily feelings and what causes those feelings.

When you open the app on the watch, you have two options: log how you’re feeling at that moment or how you’ve felt overall for the day. Then, there’s a series of colored dials with which you can label your mood, from very pleasant to very unpleasant, followed by adjectives you can associate with the choice.

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“Recognizing our feelings helps us manage difficult emotions, appreciate positive moments, and improve well-being,” said Michele Crisco, PhD, professor of psychology and psychiatry at UCLA, during Apple’s June WWDC keynote. .

This is true. I found tremendous value when I reflected on my day. I had to postpone my morning meeting, perhaps because of traffic jams, which was frustrating, but that was followed by a very productive afternoon and a successful lunch with a work client. The main thing here is not the negative emotions that happened, but the positive ones that remained.

Self-reflection, or meditation, is something you can do without the Apple Watch, but here’s why I’m sold on Apple’s implementation. For one, the survey takes less than five minutes to answer, so it’s a quick and worthwhile exercise. Every day at 3 p.m., the Apple Watch gives me a light prompt to record my thoughts, and it’s now become one of the best things I look forward to during the second half of my work day.

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Secondly, there is a sense of privacy when filling in your daily state of mind through the clock. I don’t have to awkwardly hold my phone, dim the brightness, and tell my subway neighbor how my day went. Everything is done judiciously.

And finally, State of Mind works in conjunction with the rest of the Health app metrics on the iPhone or iPad, like sleep, exercise minutes, and even time in daylight — the latter of which is something Apple is adding to iOS 17. and is measuring more with. WatchOS 10 to reduce your chances of developing myopia or nearsightedness.

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So, if I had a “very unpleasant” day, one of my tasks would be to look at how much sleep I got the previous night, whether I got enough exercise, and how much time I spent outside.

There are so many factors that can affect your mental health, many of which are often not noticeable and mixed in with daily activities, but it’s great that I can experiment with different behavioral changes. And see what puts me in a more positive state of mind.