I love Apple’s activity badges, I’ve talked about them a few times here already. I find them incredibly motivating, particularly with the recent upgrades that have made the programme more personalised and more responsive to your performance. Rather than your standard “get your move goal every day of the month”, you now have specific calorie, kilometre, or time goals measured in absolutes or averages, with a new and different challenge each month.

It’s brilliant, if only because it gives you something to work towards that you might not otherwise have thought of. In fact, you sort of have to treat it as though that’s the only reason because quite often these badges aren’t functional. Apple came up with a “Ring in the New Year” challenge last year that was repeated in 2018, but some people managed to get the badge in December.

I picked up a badge last year that I didn’t actually achieve, whilst Mr C has been on the receiving end of working super hard and achieving the goal only not to be rewarded with the badge itself.

Like I say, for us, it’s more about having the goal to work towards and it’s the fun of actually doing it that makes it worthwhile. But for many people, and for me at the start of the process, it was more about getting the tangible badge to prove you’ve achieved something. And if you can’t rely on that, then the process actually becomes demotivating rather than having the more positive effect that Apple want.

I’m sure it’s just a bug or two that needs to be ironed out, and I’m also sure that Apple have some people working on it, but I hope they can sort it out soon so I can truly shout about how good the system is. There’s another one-off activity challenge coming up this month and the badge is adorable so I hope it doesn’t break this time!