In the late days of September, I download a free app called Plant Nanny. While it was not a game, it was an attempt to gamify water. Specifically, drinking enough water throughout the day. I tried to keep with it for a while, but near the end of November I got to the point where I just didn’t care anymore. Which is sad, because in doing so I sentenced a bunch adorable virtual plants to their deaths.
The idea of the app is that for every glass of water you drink a day, you give your plant a drink of water as well. It has a little experience bar, and when the bar fills, the plant grows a bit. After a few stages of growth, the plant will reach its final stage, you put it out in the garden and plant a new… plant. Fully grown plants will also drop a seed every 20 hours, which is not for planting, but rather is currency to buy exciting new species of plants. And so the cycle continues.
The first thing I learned from this app is that I don’t drink anywhere near enough water. I found myself struggling to try to fit in so many cups of water a day. Fortunately, Plant Nanny has a helpful reminder feature that sends a notification to your phone every two hours (between 8AM and 10PM, so as not to disturb your sleep). In reality, the annoyance of that constant reminder was part of Plant Nanny’s downfall.
The second thing that I learned is that when I do drink enough water, I have to pee all the damn time. Which, you know, makes perfect sense, but was still annoying. I won’t get into details about my bathroom habits, but let’s just say that a number of people have commented on how seldom I seem to use the toilet.
Anyway, despite the positive feedback loop of growing cute little plants and the fact that it was ostensibly having a positive impact on my health, I just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. The reminders became grating, and I started to feel like I really just didn’t want to ingest that much water every day. I still think the thing’s calculations are off and it was telling me to drink way more than necessary. But I’m too lazy to actually do the math so we’ll never know for sure.
So now I’m back to drinking like half a cup of water a day. It’s probably not great for my body, but I don’t feel any different either way. You were cute, Plant Nanny, but in the end, I just didn’t care enough to keep it up. Like with pretty much everything else in my life.
I’ve been eating these Clif bars lately, in an attempt to improve my snacking habits by buying organic (or in this case, 70% organic) snacks. I don’t know if that actually means this junk is healthier, but at least I can tell myself I’m doing something good for my body. I also use the term “snack” very loosely, as a Clif bar is quite often my entire lunch on a work day.
