Your watch is designed to live on your wrist so you don’t have to baby it – every scratch, ring, and splash of water should be a reminder of the ball experience you had. (Okay, most of my things come from banging them on the door, but I can pretend they mix.) And while electronics and water don’t usually mix, today’s best smartwatches are waterproof to protect them from the elements.

Notice that I just said “waterproof” – not waterproof. Despite what you may have heard, there is no such thing as a waterproof smartwatch, and any product that markets itself as such is lying to you. In fact, device manufacturers have even been sued for that in the past.

Then again, I’m not here to lie to you. Yes, I put “waterproof” in the headline because most of the people out there are Googling – and I hope these people come here where I can bait them and turn them into the real truth. Manufacturers may try to hit the line with words like “swimproof,” but ultimately your device isn’t waterproof: it only has a certain level of water resistance, which makes it suitable for activities like washing hands, showering, and even swimming workouts in some cases.

More importantly, the water resistance doesn’t last forever. As your device ages (and the more you expose it to water with salt chlorine or other contaminants), the waterproof seals will break down and eventually allow water into the device. Some manufacturers will replace water-damaged devices, others may only offer discounts on new models – from what I’ve read, it seems like a crapshoot (especially after the warranty has expired). Oh, and a lot of bands aren’t waterproof either, so make sure you have it a nice silicone band for use in water.

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In other words, if you want your smartwatch to last as long as possible, your best bet is to keep it as far out of the water as possible. But that’s not to say that water resistance is useless: it’s still valuable if you have kids who like to splash around in the tub or if you live in a city that is particularly wet with rain. So, if you want something that can withstand the elements of everyday life – or if you’re absolutely out to get those swims down, longevity is damned – then here are a few waterproof watches that should be just right for you.

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Let’s get one thing out of the way: the Apple Watch isn’t just the best waterproof smartwatch or the best smartwatch for swimming training. It’s pretty much the best smartwatch out there (as long as you’re using an iPhone). The Series 6 is the newest and best model, but every Apple Watch model since Series 2 has a water resistance of 50 meters intended for swimming (although Apple lists it) a lot of caveats its water resistance on their website). If the Series 6 is a little too expensive for you, this is it Apple Watch SE is a great alternative that is slightly cheaper with a starting price of $ 270.

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A powerful smart watch for Samsung users: Galaxy Watch 3

On the non-Apple side, Samsung makes theirs a compelling alternative Galaxy Watch 3. It’s primarily a smartwatch, but it has a range of activity tracking features, optional LTE connectivity, multiple sizes and colors, and multiple days of battery life – in addition to being water resistant to 50m. It’s not advertised as a swimming watch, but Samsung has a few Tips for using in the waterjust like Apple. Oh, and if you want something even more fitness focused from Samsung, this is it Galaxy Watch Active 2 is another great choice.

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G / O Media can receive a commission

While Apple, Samsung, and Google track all activity on their respective smart watch platforms, Garmin’s watches are primarily designed for fitness – with a few other smart watch features to top it off. The Vivoactive 4 is an affordable option with 50m water resistance and built-in swim tracking. Like most smartwatches, it has its limitations in tracking swimming workouts, like the inability to read your heart rate underwater, but that’s a small price to pay for its otherwise great all-round versatility.

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While Garmin has been making fitness trackers for nearly two decades, some people prefer Fitbit’s software and ecosystem. your Versa 3 The Smartwatch, for example, which has the same water resistance of 50 m, has, in contrast to the Vivoactive 4, integrated voice control from Alexa and Google Assistant. If you’re into that sort of thing, it has a nicer display too. It may not provide the abundance of tracking information, but it won’t be a problem, so it’s a great alternative if you prefer the Fitbit’s jib cut.

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Best fitness tracker for swimming: Garmin Swim 2

If you’re more into swimming than smartwatch features, check this out Garmin’s Swim 2 fitness tracker. It’s a bit lighter in terms of everyday smartwatch functions and has a much more basic non-touchscreen – so it’s not for the all-round smartwatch enthusiast. However, it excels at tracking swimming workouts, so you can see your heart rate underwater, track swimming in open water, and see a ton of other useful stats that other watches don’t have. (There are some basic running and other fitness tracking features built in too, so you don’t have to limit yourself to just swimming.) If you want to really dive deep into your swimming workout, this is the watch you want.

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A higher water resistance rating: Apex choirs

Like the swim 2 that Apex choirs is firstly a fitness tracker, secondly a smartwatch – with a matching non-touch design. However, as a multisport tracker for the outdoor enthusiast, it was designed to handle the items with a water resistance of 100m a little better than the others on this list – with some built-in swim tracking features (though perhaps not quite so ) versatile like the Garmin Swim 2).

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The Most Looking Smart Watch: Fossil Gen 5

Photo: Fossil

Fossil’s smart watches are frankly the most “watch-like” options on the market. If you’re looking for something that is more like an everyday watch while also having smart features like notifications, voice control, and some activity tracking –Fossil’s Gen 5 Watches are among the best. However, at just 30m, they have slightly less water resistance than the other watches on this list. Fossil says Every watch with a heart rate monitor, including Generation 5 smart watches, is “swim-proof” (there’s that word again) and has passed a 10,000-beat swim test. However, the same page also states that they do not recommend their 30 meter watches for swimming so you can see manufacturers get into trouble. Personally, I wouldn’t use it for swimming, but if you’re just looking for something that will withstand the occasional splash, Fossil’s Gen 5 watches should be fine … assuming Wear OS can overcome some of the problems it’s had lately.

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Screenshot: BBC / YouTube

There may be no better representation of failure than when a project you’ve been working on spectacularly explodes in front of thousands of viewers. If SpaceX CEO Elon Musk does – as his company probably did in the end Starship prototype starts on Wednesday– The agony of failure is made tactile in towers of flames and clouds of burning splinters pouring around the world.

Musk is a billionaire, industrialist, and audacious public figure known for her resounding success in various industries. And yet he often fails, and occasionally even sees his ambitions to build rockets that will take people to Mars and literally go up in flames.

He’s not the only successful magnate or icon who occasionally wallows in the pits of failure. Thomas Edison is known for his recognition its close relationship with failure;; For years, JD Salinger’s literary genius was unsung because his short stories were repeatedly rejected by the New Yorker. Michael Jordan failed to make his high school college basketball team on the first try.

We don’t always need to be guided by the efforts of wealthy tycoons – especially those with Call as checkered as Musk’s– or from visionary inventors or legendary athletes. A lesson can be learned from the stumbling blocks that are overcome by both the hugely successful and the anonymous people. Failure haunts us all no matter how many triumphs we enjoy in the course of our lives. But failure can be instructive. There are often important lessons, if not glimmers of success, within our failures – consider the fact that this SpaceX rocket exploded before it exploded did something unprecedented– but appreciating this fact means rethinking the concept of what it means to fail.

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Failure is a constant so don’t stick with it

Well-known stereotypes about failure exist in context, but especially at work. The term “fail early and often” exists to encourage younger workers who are struggling to gain a foothold in their jobs. “Embrace of Failure” goes without saying for entrepreneurs who gamble in their early attempts to build something with perseverance. The suggestion is that your embrace of failure should be a temporary step toward an idealized idea of ​​lasting success.

But things are seldom cut and dried that way in life. Success works well with others, according to Ross McCammon, the author of the guide to business etiquette. Success comes with failure more often than you might expect. However, as he puts it, this is actually a good thing – if failure can be interpreted as an actionable dilemma.

“Failure is not a dead thing,” he tells Lifehacker. “It’s a living thing and you can draw energy from it. But the longer you wait to think about it, the calcified it becomes. And then it’s just a big dead thing that happened, rather than an integral part of your present and future. ”

Taking a mindful approach is key to realizing how missteps can help you in the short and long term. McCammon emphasizes a more proactive approach, where you identify mistakes when they occur and discuss them honestly with colleagues and supervisors.

He says:

Recognizing success within a bug is best done immediately after realizing what happens as a bug. Or maybe even during. I think failing early and often failing works as a philosophy, as long as you also rate early and often and make your assessments known to your colleagues and even your boss.

Not everyone has the luxury of having such courteous workplaces and friendly, understanding bosses and colleagues. But you can avoid the black cloud of failure in your own mind by broadening your perspective on what it means to fail.

Accept that your career is not linear

“I’ve been fired from almost every job I had because of budgets or downsizing,” says Sean Abrams, editor of the Ask Men website. As a 29-year-old millennial writer, Abrams is no stranger to the upheaval in the digital media industry, entirely not to mention the changes that have permeated the wider labor market since the 2008 Great Recession. For those in his position, failure often stems from circumstances beyond their control – recognition of which can provide valuable prospect.

“Sometimes the factors that led to your failure have little to do with you at all. You just got the short end of the stick, ”Abrams says.

Marking an unsuccessful business as a failure is too reducing to have much educational value. McCammon suggests “rejecting the idea of ​​stages like failure and success and playing a longer game” in which we accept that the arcs of our careers will be anything but predictable.

He says to Lifehacker:

As we move through our career, we first think of it as a line of sorts and a line that should rise at all times. Of course that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t always go up and sometimes it goes sideways and drags itself over itself. Maybe you tried a new career for a few years, maybe you were unemployed for a while. Careers are not linear. And I think that’s a helpful context for judging mistakes.

One way to redefine failure, especially in a culture that overly lionizes the successful, is to be less strict about them. Instead, think of setbacks as educational mistakes rather than dealing with the drastic consequences of a perceived failure. Errors are normal and excusable and occur regularly. People who make mistakes aren’t usually defined by them – and McCammon says you should own yours without an excuse:

“What any successful person – young or old – is good at is making mistakes with no excuses … you could argue that a career is just a series of mistakes that you navigate and turn into successes.”

With that in mind, it won’t be difficult at all to succeed within your alleged faults.

Photo: Eugenio Marongiu (Shutterstock)

There’s a name for the sadness we get when we spend too much time alone: ​​we’re lonely. But what about the negative feelings that can arise from not spending enough time alone?

Has a team of psychologists led by Robert Coplan at Carleton University suggested a name for it too: alone. As in, the opposite of lonely. We have to balance our time alone with our social time, and the right balance is likely to be different for everyone. This can be a more helpful framework for understanding our needs than trying to put ourselves in one of them introverted / extroverted binary file.

So what can you do about your loneliness? The first step is to acknowledge the problem: you are alone when you need more alone time than you can manage. The main tool that Coplan and colleagues used to discover loneliness was a simple questionnaire in which people were asked if they would agree with statements like “I wish I could just be alone more often”. With a little introspection, you can probably find out if you are actually alone.

When you are, you may feel “irritable, overwhelmed, or drained,” notes Psychology Today. With so much stress on our mental health these days, it can be helpful to try to separate those caused by loneliness from those caused by fear, burnout, and the myriad other stressors in our work and life . If this task is overwhelming in itself, keep this in mind It may be time to find a therapist Who can help you sort through everything your brain is dealing with?

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In the meantime, it can be beneficial to ask yourself whether you will feel better when you have more alone time, and then plan and protect that time on your own. For example, you don’t have to agree to every social outing or zoom call. You can decide that Friday nights are to stay in.

And even if you don’t have much time to yourself due to your current circumstances, you can make sure that time for yourself is a good time for yourself. Think of things that actually make you feel relaxed, happy, or refreshed – maybe reading a book or taking a walk instead of just scrolling your phone – and do one of these activities when you have a minute to yourself to have.

Photo: anikap (Shutterstock)

Spring weather can be quite fickle in many parts of the country. One day it’s sunny and it’s 60’s and the next it’s a blizzard. If you decide to take advantage of one of these beautiful days and preparing or planting a spring gardenThen wake up the next morning to find that your plants and / or seedlings are covered in fresh frost. He can crush. But that doesn’t mean that your garden is an all-rounder. How to save your plants after a late frost.

No panic

Even if everything in your yard seems dead after a late frost, it may not necessarily be the case, according to Gardner Goss, Master of Montgomery County. in the an article for the Houston ChronicleGoss breaks down on exactly what to do in such a situation and begins to understand that all of your spring gardening has not been in vain so far.

Hold back on pruning (for the most part)

As tempting as it may be to remove all of the dead parts from your sad looking plants after the frost. Says Goss This is actually a bad idea (at least until you know you’ve seen the last frost). Here’s why:

The first rule is not to prune or prune plants until you know the time for all frosts is over and spring has arrived. The dead material acts as an insulator in the event of future freezing. If there is frost damage, the extent will depend on the type of plant, its age and location, soil moisture retention, low temperatures and duration. When pruning, watch out for new growth. Be careful not to remove any living tissue that has survived the frost.

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Cut off the leaves of the sprouted onions

If you planted bulbs last fall, they can appear early enough in spring that there is still a risk of frost. If so, and the plant’s leaves have been damaged by the frost, Goss says it’s okay to prune them. In fact, they may have already turned to mush. But even if you find mushy leaves on your tulips, you don’t have to kiss them goodbye. Per Goss:

If the bulbs have been in the ground for a while, they are likely to have roots deep enough that even if the leaves turn to mush after being removed, new leaves will sprout. The flower stalk develops independently of the leaves. Most bulbs will have to go through cold weather anyway to stimulate the growth of the flower stalk. As long as the flower buds haven’t sprouted, they’ll likely be fine.

Do not overfeed or over water

In situations where a plant is really taking a lot of leaf damage, keep in mind that it has the same root system as it did before the big freeze. No, plants don’t love when this happens, but they can pull through – they just need time to recover. Goss explains::

Give the plants time to grow their new leaves at their own pace. Apply little or no fertilizer and rinse less than usual. Too much water can damage the roots as the plants don’t have the leaf structure to absorb it.

After year after year of disappointment, it’s comforting to know that plants are resilient too.