If you're dedicated to getting more exercise,
Striiv can help you keep track of your daily efforts and keep track of your stats, including how much you've done in a day, the current week and since you started using it. As you walk, run and take the stairs, your
Striiv will let you know when you've reached certain noteworthy milestones, such as climbing up enough stairs to be the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty or burning a cupcake's worth of Calories in a single day, walking the length of the Big Sur Coast in a single week or walking the distance across Rhode Island since starting to use the
Striiv. In addition to seeing the achievements that you've completed, you can also see which achievements you're getting close to completing. On several occasions, an impending achievement has led me to take an extra lap around the block or take the stairs and extra time or forty-one in a given day.
Another way to challenge yourself is with the Challenges feature. The Challenge screen has an Easy, Medium and Hard Challenge you can select from and you can hit the "Spin" button to change the available Challenges in a manner similar to a slot machine. Once you see a Challenge that you want to attempt, you select it and start it. Doing so typically involves wagering some amount of your Energy points, but if you complete the Challenge within the allotted time, you get bonus Energy points, which can help you get enough to complete that Fountain of Youth you've been working on (in the built-in game... keep reading).
I thought that the Striiv played "games" when I first saw it. Well, it's not "games" so much as a single game, but as I understand it, the folks at Striiv are working on creating additional software for it. In fact, I would imagine they sort of have to, but more about that later.
The game that comes on the Striiv is called myland and seems similar to a Farmville sort of game; you spend coins to build new buildings or plant new plants, and then, after some amount of time has passed, you click on the items to harvest them. In myland, however, when you harvest any item, you collect gold. This gold may be spent, in turn, to plant or build more things. The trick here, however, is that you can only start building or planting something by purchasing it with coins. You then have to take it through three additional stages of growth/building by spending... Energy points.
Energy points are accumulated through actually moving around. You walk around the block, you gain Energy. You take the stairs, you gain Energy. You complete a Challenge, you gain some bonus Energy. Also, if you find yourself low on coin, you can exchange Energy points in for more gold... but you can't exchange it back the other direction. So, you quickly get to a point where progressing in myland primarily depends on you moving about and earning more Energy.
If you're a more selfless sort, and not motivated enough by games or simply seeing your own progress, Striiv still has a hook for you. The Walkathon feature lets you select from three different charities and when you reach a certain number of Energy points, the Striiv company makes a donation to that charity on your behalf. What sort of charities, you ask? Oh, just things such as providing Polio vaccinations for small children, providing clean water for impoverished children without access to clean water and protecting "parking spot-sized" areas of a rainforest. Surely one of those tugs at your heart-strings, if you have any.
