Arantza Pena Popo/ Insider
Over the past seven or eight years, I've developed a habit. Whenever I have a brief moment of calm or boredom during my day, without really thinking about it, I'll pull up my smartphone's health-tracking app to check my step count. If it's late in the day and the number is low, I might decide to go out and walk a few blocks or take the long way home. If it's low at the end of a busy month, I might try to squeeze in a few extra long walks to pull up the average. And if it's low at the end of a busy year, I'll almost certainly fall into a spiral of self-recrimination: What was I doing with my time, exactly, that was more important than getting a bare minimum of daily steps?