Why I Swapped My Apple Watch S9 for a Timex

It's 7:12. I was supposed to start at 7:00. I look at my wrist, see the twelve minutes I've already lost, and decide the shape of the rest of my morning based on that one number.

For a while, that number came from an Apple Watch Series 9. Now it comes from a Timex that cost less than a nice dinner. The strange part is that the same twelve minutes feels completely different depending on which one I'm looking at.

The Apple Watch was exactly what it promised

I want to be clear about this, because it isn't a story about a product that disappointed me. I loved the S9. It was reliable, absurdly feature loaded, and I actually used the stuff most people ignore: the gestures, the small quality-of-life touches, the settings buried three menus deep.

The single best thing it did for me was carry my access cards in Wallet. Tapping my wrist to get into a building is a genuine lifestyle shift, not a gimmick. I still think about it.

Then I started quietly turning things off

The honeymoon phase ended the way honeymoon phases do, without announcing itself.

I moved to a simpler watch face with fewer complications. I turned off notifications for nearly every app. I spent an embarrassing number of hours trying to get Focus modes exactly right, which in hindsight was me negotiating with a device to leave me alone.

What survived the purge was small: the time, the date, the weather. The things a watch has been doing since long before it needed a software update.

Underneath everything, it's a fitness tracker

And it's a great one. I tracked sleep, workouts, and rides, and the data was genuinely satisfying to look at.

It got less satisfying once I noticed the data wasn't changing my behavior. I already knew I wasn't sleeping well. The watch quantified precisely how not-well. That's a real answer to a question I asked, and then I sat there holding it, thinking: now what? The workout stats never once made me push harder. Maybe that part is on me.

The feature I miss most isn't a metric at all. It's the activity sharing. Seeing what my friends and family are doing, and keeping my father a little more accountable to his own workouts, was worth more to me than any sleep score.

Early June, and a rabbit hole with no floor

Somewhere around the start of June, I started following the watch community. I went in already knowing that watches carry heritage and history. I did not expect to get this invested.

The best discovery was that you don't need a fortune to own something nice and reliable. My first purchase was a Timex Weekender, and I fell for it immediately. It's the kind of watch people call an easy reader: large typography, high contrast, nothing on the dial that isn't earning its place. It tells me the time and it looks good doing it.

Then came a Casio AQ-230A, a small bracelet watch, and at that point I stopped pretending this was a one-off purchase. I'm building a collection of inexpensive watches. I also have a "when I get rich" list, which is growing faster than my income.

The turn: a hand that doesn't stop

The idea that actually changed something came from a YouTuber (I should have written down who, and I'll credit them properly once I track it down): a moving second hand reminds you that time isn't a reading, it's a process.

A digital display tells you what time it is. An analog dial shows you that time is going somewhere.

That sounds like a distinction without a difference until you apply it to procrastination, which I am very qualified to speak on. At 7:12, a digital watch hands me a verdict. Twelve minutes late is a failure state, the morning is compromised, might as well snooze and try again tomorrow. The analog dial gives me a position instead. The hand is a little past the top, not yet at the quarter, and it is visibly still moving. Twelve minutes reads like something I can make up rather than something I've lost.

There are plenty of articles claiming that people who wear watches are more time-conscious in general. I haven't gone through the research, so I'm not going to pretend that's settled. All I can tell you is that it's true for me, and that I'm in deep enough now that I'd probably believe it either way.

What I actually miss

Every payment. Every time I badge into my university building. Every workout. That's three times a day, minimum, that I reach for a phone I didn't used to need.

Would I go back, though? Probably not.

Notice what isn't on that list: charging. Daily charging was never the problem people warn you about. I plugged it in while I showered and it carried me through the next day without complaint. It is, however, genuinely nice to strap on a watch that won't need a cable again for years.

So which one was the phase?

Is the analog obsession a phase, or was the Apple Watch the phase? Only time can tell.

I'm happy where I've landed, which is the most honest answer I have. And it's 7:12 again, the second hand sweeping past the four, twelve minutes down and still going. The Apple Watch would have told me I was late.

The Timex just tells me it hasn't stopped yet.