One for One

What I Learned from Wearing One Watch for One Month

Back on January 14th, barely two weeks into the New Year, full of ambition and optimistic resolution, I embarked on a bold experiment: I endeavored to live like a normal person for one full month. In other words, I put on a watch with the intent of making it the only one on my wrist for four weeks, until February 14th. In truth, this isn’t really living like a normal person since, as you might notice, most people you see nowadays don’t even wear a watch and, if someone does, they’re not likely to wear it like I did for the month. Other than changing the strap occasionally, an asterisked loophole I allowed myself for fun and variety, I never took the watch off my wrist. I wore it for everything—cooking, cleaning, sleeping, skiing (downhill and cross-country), running my four-mile loop once a week, 7,000-meter sessions on my indoor rowing machine, splitting wood for kindling, showering, and sleeping. Oh, and scuba diving under the ice of a frozen lake. It. Never. Came. Off.