Before I started working from home, I was lucky enough to commute to the office by foot. That was 35 minutes in each direction, which is not a lot, but it isn’t bad. I used to listen to music and lots of podcasts, and that time off gave me a nice buffer to disconnect from work before getting home. Enter the pandemic and the shift to working from home. While I love it because it allows me to spend more time with my kids and helps me juggle responsibilities at home, my walking was reduced to just the weekends. Being a software engineer by vocation, this shift significantly reduced my exercise time. This wasn’t good at all, of course. So I tried to get out of home and walk at lunch time, but I struggled to be consistent. The weather doesn’t help here! But I’m happy to say that something changed when I started using the app Privacy Friendly Pedometer, that is open source and, as its name clearly says, it is privacy friendly. I have to say that the app is far from perfect, and it looks like it is abandoned now, but it works for me. This was a milestone in August I’m not an expert, but it looks like the sensors used on the phone to count steps, don’t really do that. For example: you can shake your phone and the thing will start counting. Because of that I decided to have the app on and counting only when I go out for a walk. In this way I prevent noise in the data. Not that it is that important, but if I’m going to do something, I rather do it properly. And because of the way Android handles services is awkward and the app has potentially some bugs, it sometimes fails to start counting (or stop counting). Despite its flaws, it has been very useful. Checking your stats and seeing your progress is gratifying. It felt great the first month that I walked over 100km, and this August I pushed it a bit further and passed the 150km mark. All in all, it has a great effect on me. I can feel it when I don’t walk enough during the day. Sunny, raining, or snowing, it doesn’t matter. When possible, I have a quick lunch and I go out.