My Health Resolutions for 2026 Have Nothing to Do With Weight Loss

Skinny is officially back in—not that it ever really left, if you ask me. Between "what I eat in a day" videos and before-and-after transformations, there's always been this undercurrent of weight loss anxiety masquerading as wellness. "Weight loss" is assumed to be synonymous with "healthy," but that's never been the whole story. And during this time for reflection and goal-setting, I urge you to think bigger than simply making yourself smaller.

If you've struggled to identify health goals beyond weight loss, you're not alone. We've been conditioned to believe that smaller bodies are the ultimate achievement, when in reality, health is so much more expansive, personal, and interesting than that. Here are the resolutions I'm making for 2026—and how to reframe your own goals around what truly matters.

Move in ways that feel good

The weight-loss version: I need to burn calories. Exercise is punishment for eating. Even if I hate working out, I have to do it anyway because discipline.

The reframe: What if movement was about feeling capable in your body? About the rush of endorphins after a dance class, the meditative quality of a morning walk, or the satisfaction of getting stronger over time?

My resolution: Find three types of movement I genuinely enjoy and do them regularly—not because I "should," but because they make me feel alive. Maybe that's swimming, hiking with friends, or finally trying that aerial yoga class. The goal isn't to torch calories; it's to build a relationship with movement that's based on joy rather than obligation.

How to measure success: Can I do things I couldn't do before? Do I feel energized rather than depleted? Am I actually looking forward to moving my body? These are the metrics that matter.

Eat foods that make me feel energized

The weight-loss version: Good foods versus bad foods. Restriction as virtue. Guilt when you inevitably "fall off the wagon."

The reframe: Food is information for your body. Am I making choices based on the moral value of different foods, or am I actually listening to what my body wants and needs?

My resolution: Notice how different foods actually make me feel, without judgment. Keep a simple log—not of calories, but maybe of energy levels, mood, digestion, and satisfaction. Do I feel better when I include more vegetables, not because they're "virtuous," but because they genuinely help me feel my best?

How to measure success: Am I making food choices based on how I want to feel rather than what the scale might say? Do I have stable energy throughout the day? Can I eat without guilt?

Stay hydrated

The weight-loss version: Water fills you up so you eat less; it's a diet hack.

The reframe: Proper hydration affects everything from your cognitive function and mood to your digestion, skin health, and energy levels. You deserve to drink water because your body literally needs it to survive and thrive.

My resolution: Drink enough water that I'm not constantly tired, headache-prone, or confusing thirst for hunger. Keep a bottle with me and actually notice the difference in how I feel when I'm properly hydrated versus when I'm running on empty.

How to measure success: Are my headaches less frequent? Is my brain fog lifting by mid-afternoon? Do I have more energy?

Build confidence through competence

The weight-loss version: I'll like myself when I'm smaller. Confidence is contingent on appearance.

The reframe: Confidence comes from doing hard things, from developing skills, from taking pride in how I'm moving my body.

My resolution: Set a goal that has nothing to do with how I look and everything to do with what I can do. Maybe it's learning to cook five new recipes, or finally achieving my lifelong dream of doing the splits.

How to measure success: Do I feel proud of myself? Am I challenging myself in ways that feel meaningful? Is my self-worth becoming less tied to my appearance?

Develop a nighttime routine that actually works for me

The weight-loss version: Eating at night makes you gain weight. It's all about willpower, baby.

The reframe: Maybe you're eating at night because you're bored, stressed, or genuinely didn't eat enough during the day. Or maybe you're staying up too late scrolling, and food is just something to do.

My resolution: Create an evening routine that actually addresses what I need—whether that's genuine hunger (in which case, I'll eat something nourishing without guilt), stress relief (maybe a bath, stretching, or reading), or better sleep hygiene (setting boundaries with screens).

How to measure success: Am I sleeping better? Do I feel more rested? Am I addressing the root cause of nighttime habits rather than just restricting them?

Feel strong and capable in my body

The weight-loss version: I need to earn the right to wear certain clothes. My body is a before photo.

The reframe: Your body is the vehicle through which you experience your entire life. What if the goal was to feel powerful, mobile, and pain-free rather than small?

My resolution: Focus on functional fitness. Can I lift my suitcase into the overhead bin? Hike without getting winded? Play with kids or pets without my back hurting? These are the markers of a body that serves me well.

How to measure success: Am I stronger than I was last month? Can I do daily activities with greater ease? Do I feel capable and comfortable in my body?

The bottom line

Perhaps the most important resolution of all is this: Stop putting your life on hold until you reach a certain size. Don't wait to buy clothes you love, try new activities, take photos, or simply exist without constant self-criticism.

What would your health goals look like if weight loss wasn't part of the equation? I'm willing to bet they'd be more interesting, more sustainable, and far more meaningful than anything a number could tell you. This year, I'm measuring success by how I feel, not how I look.

How I Use ‘Penalties’ to Actually Stick to My New Year’s Resolutions

Like everybody else, at the end of every December, I start thinking hard about what I want the next year to be like for me. You can chalk it up to all the Capricorn placements in my birth chart if you want (and I do!) or blame the cultural obsession with a "new year, new me" approach, but I take my New Year's resolutions seriously and generally try to come up with realistic, actionable plans to improve myself and my life. It's easy to identify the things I want to change and even easy to figure out how, exactly, I should do that, but that doesn't mean it's easy to stick to the new plan. Real life gets in the way no matter what year it is, but the degree to which it does that can be managed. When it comes to habit-forming, sometimes you have to play hardball. Coming off a wildly successful year of sticking to the resolutions I made 12 months ago, here's how I use penalties to succeed in my resolutions.

What do I mean by New Year's resolution "penalties?"

When you're trying to make a change, an intrinsic reward may not always cut it. Sure, you know that you'll boost your endorphins and strengthen your body if you go to the gym more often, but that takes time to play out and is easy to give up on if you're not seeing immediate results. I always recommend cleaning your home in bursts, bit by bit, too, so you won't get overwhelmed—but again, if you don't see fast progress, you can quickly lose motivation.

I've found that the solution here is to stop looking for intrinsic motivation at all and start motivating yourself with external stakes—but more elevated, urgent ones than you might think. My extrinsic motivator for the gym is, obviously, to look better in addition to feeling better, but that takes time. My extrinsic motivator for cleaning is to make my home nice in case people come over, but what if they don't for a few weeks? The stakes need to be higher and more immediate.

Sorry to say it, but you need to assign penalties to your goals, especially your New Year's resolutions. A resolution can't be as simple as, "I resolve to call my mom more often." You need an implementation strategy, like setting up a defined time for when you'll do that, plus a little extra motivation. Consider, then, "I resolve to call my mom three times per week or else I will send her a bouquet." It's easier to make three phone calls than spend over $80 on some flowers, and your mom would probably appreciate both, so the money-saving here should motivate you to get the calls done.

If you aren't already, become familiar with the concept of SMART goals, which are goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. "I resolve to work out more" is too vague. "I resolve to go to the gym for 30 or more minutes four times per week, every week, for the first six months of the year, or else I will buy a more expensive gym membership as both punishment and motivation," on the other hand...

Ideas for resolution penalties

I use penalties all the time in my daily life and have for years. I've always been a calorie counter and nutrient tracker, but a few years ago, I noticed if I ate a particularly calorie-dense meal (which is fine!) I would simply stop entering in all my nutrient totals for that day (which was less fine). I like turning all the details of my health into measurable data, so the fact that this would snowball into me getting lackadaisical about meal tracking for a few days wasn't doing much to serve my overall goals. I implemented a personal penalty system that involved getting a treat, like a pudding cup or hot chocolate, at the end of every day when I entered all my foods honestly. That worked fine for me, since I am pretty good at holding my own self accountable, but it may not be enough for you. Nothing is actually stopping you from just eating the pudding cup with no preamble. Here are some other ideas:

• Tell a few people about your resolutions and schedule periodic check-ins with them. You don't want to get asked by a friend how your money-saving resolution is going and have to tell them you forgot to stash any away this week. Choose a friend who is responsible and, ideally, one who will give you a little bit of a hard time if you don't follow through. I deputized one of my friends to bother me about my financial habits three years ago and, thanks to her commitment to being as incessantly annoying as possible, paid off a bunch of bills that were hanging over my head. It turns out that what I needed was to be a little embarrassed in front of someone I respect.

• Bet on it. There are apps out there like Forfeit that require you to put money out upfront, then prove that you're sticking to your goals. You can submit relevant materials, like proof of a workout, to stop them from holding onto your money at the end of your pre-defined timeline. It sounds intense because it is—but if you're truly struggling to stay on top of your goals, it can work.

• Set yourself up to win or fail. I'll explain: When I need to clean my apartment but just can't find the motivation, I invite a friend over for dinner a few days in advance. (To be clear: I make a concrete plan instead of hoping someone will come over in the near future.) Then, knowing someone is going to enter my home at a set time that I can't change, I suddenly find the motivation to make sure it's clean. I do this in the gym, too, planning a sick outfit for, say, an event a month in advance, then working out every day with the outfit in mind. Even if no one knows what I'm up to, I'd feel bad if I canceled the dinner or switched the outfit just because I personally failed my own mission. I don't like being disappointed in myself.

Recall my example of the pudding cup after a day of honest nutrient tracking, too. Not getting the pudding cup is a penalty when I fail, but getting it is a reward when I do well. Play around with the system because you might be more motivated by rewards than you are punishments. I'm motivated by daily streaks on apps, for instance, which is how I've come to be on a 288-day streak on the Peloton app. Losing that streak would be like a penalty to me now, so I stick with it, but I also incorporate other little rewards into my goal-setting. Whenever I complete a perfect two weeks of workouts, for instance, I buy myself one new activewear outfit from my favorite brand. The more I think of it, the more I realize almost all of my personal goals are tied, one way or another, to a reward or penalty. I motivate myself to sell my clothes on Poshmark by strictly upholding a one-in, one-out rule and only making clothing purchases with the money I earn from getting rid of something first, for instance.

Doing it this way might seem harsh or elementary at first, but it reinforces the fact that there are consequences for every action and inaction—although, when you manufacture the consequences, they're more urgent and immediate. The long-term consequence of failing to work out consistently is poorer physical and even mental health (which might be why you've named it a New Year's resolution), but that's not immediately evident and it's harder to keep in mind on unmotivated days. Losing my Peloton streak or failing to qualify for my self-imposed rules around buying a new gym outfit are silly in comparison to decreased longevity and strength, but they're more instant, so I avoid them—and, in so doing, avoid those more serious, longer-term consequences by default.

Why Your New Year's Resolutions Need 'Cues,' According to Science

Thanks to my gig teaching spin classes, I have a front-row seat to a reliable annual phenomenon: My classes are packed for the first few weeks of the year as people make New Year's resolutions—but by mid-February, I'm back to teaching normal-sized groups of people who are grateful the "January joiners" have cleared out. I'm always sad to see the new faces go, though, because I do think it's possible to set a New Year's resolution and stick to it, even if it's not the norm.

There are plenty of self-betterment goals you can set as a new year approaches, both in and out of the gym, but no matter what you endeavor to do, it's important to have an implementation strategy that ensures you'll actually get it done. One way you can better situate yourself for success is by attaching "cues" to your resolutions. Here's why it works, and how to do it.

How to tie your New Year's resolutions to cues

The more specific your goals are, the better they'll turn out. This is true for pretty much everything, which is why I recommend SMART goals for everything from studying to mapping out your personal productivity roadmap. For the unfamiliar, a SMART goal is a well-defined goal that includes specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound elements, like, "I will meal prep four meals per week every week for the first three months of the year, then determine if I have the capacity to add more or should stay at four." Already, you can see how that's better than, "I will start meal prepping this year"—but SMART goals are just one option and we have more to explore.

If you wake up on a Saturday morning and want to tidy up your living space, you'll have more success defining a room you want to clean up than attempting to just generally "clean the house," right? When it comes to New Year's resolutions, that specificity is important, since you're planning for 12 months of change and you'll need some kind of road map. Instead of saying your resolution is to "eat healthier," you should define what your diet is missing, then drill down on it: "I want to eat 10 more grams of protein every day," for example.

This is where cues are going to become valuable. Research shows that adding a cue—literally, a set trigger for action—to your goals can help you implement them better. On a smaller scale, I've recommended this kind of approach through something called "habit stacking," which you can do when you attach a habit you want to build (like answering all of your outstanding emails every day) with one you already have down pat (like making and drinking your morning coffee). You carry out the new habit while doing the old one and, over time, the new habit becomes engrained, too.

We rely on automatic processes to do the standard stuff in our daily lives, like how we just automatically turn on the coffee pot after waking up or grab keys on the way out the door. In those cases, waking up and walking out the door are actually cues that signal to our brains it's time to fulfill the second half of the process. Building your resolutions around cues will help them become second-nature habits, too. Here are some examples:

• If your New Year's resolution is to save a certain amount of money by December, make it something like, "When I spend $X, I'll move $Y into savings."

• If you want to be more productive at work, try turning the Pomodoro technique into a resolution: "When I work for 25 minutes, I'll take a five-minute break."

• "When I sit down at my desk, I'll answer all new emails."

• "When my meetings end, I'll take five minutes for meditation."

• "When work is over, I'll put on my sneakers and head straight to the gym."

• "When the 6:00 news ends, I'll call my mom."

Doing it this way combines the specificity needed for realistic goal-setting with the tried-and-true method of habit stacking, setting you up for more success than a vague desire to "work out more" or "call home more" ever could.

Why cues work for New Year's resolutions

There are a few reasons tying your resolutions to existing cues will help you stick with them. First, you're creating those automatic processes in your brain, basically Pavlov-ing your subconscious self into taking action whenever your trigger occurs. It will take a few weeks of conscious effort, yes, but you will already know when you're supposed to act on your new habit, which is half the battle.

Operating this way also leaves less room for error. If you don't have a defined schedule and cues in place, you can easily forget to do your new task—or maybe even actively avoid it. Sticking reminders into your calendar can help here, too, since the push alert can further emphasize that it's time to get down to business—plus, seeing a visual reminder that you have something to do can stop you from double-booking. If your cue to go to the gym is clocking out at 5, it will take a few weeks for you to get into the habit of declining an invitation to go for after-work drinks, so having it blocked out on the calendar every day after work will keep you on track. You'll need to set yourself up for success by taking a few steps to make sure your cue and action are possible, though. In the example above—"When work is over, I'll put on my sneakers..."—you need to have your gym shoes packed in your commute bag for it to work. If you have to go home between the office and the gym, you might not be so easily roused into going back out to complete the workout. My goal over the past few months has been to be more of a morning exerciser. I did a lot of lifestyle restructuring to make that possible, but among the most crucial steps was laying out my activewear, sneakers, and gym accessories the night before so when I wake up, all I have to do is put them on and leave.

Stick with your cues, but give yourself some space those first few weeks. You might find that the timing you set up doesn't work well with your existing schedule. You just won't stick to the goal as well if you can't make it work. Research shows that if you're following the cue method, it will take about two months, on average, for the habit to form, so use that time to take note of what's working, what isn't, and what could be changed. If you have a goal of being more connected to friends and family, for instance, you might align your cue to call home with the time you spend doing the dishes every night, only to find you're too tired in the evening or eat out too frequently for that one to stick. Switching the cue to calling home when you get in the car to head to work in the morning might work better. Just make sure you stick to it once you figure out the best timing.

These JBL Sports Earbuds Are $40 Off Right Now

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

If exercising more is part of your New Year’s resolution and you need earbuds that won’t slip out or die mid-session, the JBL Endurance Race 2 are worth a look at their current $49.95 price. They launched at $89.95, and online price trackers confirm this is the lowest price they’ve hit so far.

JBL Endurance Race 2 ANC Sports Wireless Earbuds (Black)

$49.95 at Amazon

$89.95 Save $40.00

$49.95 at Amazon

$89.95 Save $40.00

These are unapologetically sports earbuds. The buds are large and stick out more than most, but the silicone wing design makes a real difference. You twist them into place, and they stay put through runs, weight training, and sweaty HIIT workouts.

Durability and battery life are where these earn their keep. The earbuds are rated IP68, meaning they’re dustproof and can handle heavy sweat and rain without worry. They’re not for swimming, but they’re tougher than most earbuds anywhere near this price.

The case is a different story. It’s lightweight at 1.4 ounces but bulky, and the IPX2 rating means it’s fine for gym bags, not great for wet runs. Battery life, though, is excellent. You get up to 12 hours with noise cancelling off, about 10 hours with it on, and up to 48 hours total with the case. That’s enough to get through a full week of workouts without thinking about charging. 

The trade-offs show up in sound and noise control. The sound quality is decent for workouts but lacks detail in the higher ranges, especially compared to more expensive earbuds. Active noise cancelling helps indoors, but it struggles outdoors, where footfalls and traffic still come through. Ambient mode also underperforms. It doesn’t let in enough sound for confident awareness near busy roads, and wind noise can overwhelm it. Touch controls are customizable but grouped in a way that forces compromises, and they’re unreliable with sweaty fingers or gloves. Still, for anyone sticking to a fitness resolution and wanting secure, durable earbuds with long battery life at a low price, the Endurance Race 2 makes sense, as long as top-tier sound and ANC aren’t the priority.

---

Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now

Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $148.99 (List Price $179.00)

Sony WH-1000XM5 — $248.00 (List Price $399.99)

Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 10.9" 64GB Wi-Fi Tablet (Graphite) — $149.99 (List Price $219.99)

Apple Watch Series 11 [GPS 46mm] Smartwatch with Jet Black Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band - M/L. Sleep Score, Fitness Tracker, Health Monitoring, Always-On Display, Water Resistant — $329.00 (List Price $429.00)

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus — $29.99 (List Price $49.99)

Deals are selected by our commerce team

Why Zone 3 Cardio Is Just As Good As Zone 2

There are benefits to training in heart rate zone 2, and you’ve probably heard all about them. But what happens when your heart rate spikes into zone 3, whether when you're on a run or doing cardio at the gym? Surprise: You don’t lose the benefits of zone 2 training. Zone 3 is arguably just as good for you, or maybe even better.

Remember, the reason people are excited about zone 2 training is that it helps you build your aerobic base and burn calories without incurring much fatigue. Guess what zone 3 training also does? Yep, it helps you build your aerobic base, burn even more calories, and usually only incur a tiny bit more fatigue than zone 2. So why aren’t we all doing more zone 3 cardio?

Zone 2 is overrated

There are reasons to run (or do any cardio) at lower intensities, and reasons to use higher intensities. Easy cardio is having a moment right now, so everybody is talking about doing more zone 2. Before heart rate monitors were widespread, you had to judge what was “easy” by yourself, or by comparing your speed of running to what you knew you could do in a race. Non-athletes had the “talk test": If you could hold a conversation while jogging, you knew you were at an easy, steady pace. 

But when everybody has a watch that tells them their heart rate, suddenly we’re looking at specific numbers, and our watches color code the numbers so you know when you’re in zone 2 versus zone 3. Your heart ticks up a beat? You’re out of your zone. Straight to workout jail!

But the reality is, your body isn’t getting a drastically different workout at 153 beats per minute than it was at 152. There probably isn’t even much difference between, say, 145 and 155, as long as they’re both within that conversational-ish effort level.

Zones aren’t real

The most popular heart rate zone systems use zones that are divided up for convenient measuring. They don't have any precise relationship to what's going on in your body. Your body does have some true dividing lines when it comes to exercise intensity (like the point at which you can't speak comfortably anymore, or the point at which lactate accumulates faster than you can clear it), but these don't correspond exactly to the typical five-zone system.

The five-zone system, as a refresher, is based on where your heart rate falls as a percentage of your maximum heart rate. There will be specific percentages defined as the boundaries of each zone, and the five zones are usually described something like this:

• zone 1: rest or minimal effort

• zone 2: easy breezy conversational pace

• zone 3: ??? (this is sometimes described as a "gray zone" you should avoid—I disagree!)

• zone 4: pretty hard

• zone 5: maximal effort

It's a cute idea, and many people find this system helpful, but these zones are not based on any scientific findings that prove we get such-and-such benefits at 60-70% of max heart rate, and such-and-such different benefits at 71-80%. If you aren’t convinced, just look at how different gadgets and apps define the zones differently: Your “zone 2” might be 60-70% on Apple Watch, but 65%-75% on a Peloton. At, say, 73%, the Apple Watch would say you're in zone 3 but the Peloton would say you're in zone 2. Who is right? Neither, really.

Research on the benefits of exercise doesn’t use heart rate zones, or at least not of this type. They may measure intensity in a few different ways, including whether you are above or below your ventilatory threshold (basically, whether or not you can talk while exercising) or your lactate threshold (measured through blood chemistry, but basically the highest effort you can sustain for a long time). Sometimes they’ll measure METs, which relate to how much energy you use to do work, or they'll put everything in terms of oxygen consumption (this is where the term VO2max comes from). Occasionally these studies will send participants home with heart rate-based guidelines, but those tend to be drawn from their personal scientific measurements, rather than the cookie-cutter zones you get from an app or from watching a video on youtube.

Conversational pace includes zone 2 and most of zone 3

Let’s take a closer look at that idea of the “talk test” or “conversational pace.” The guideline to keep your easy cardio at a chatty pace does come from a scientific concept: the ventilatory threshold. 

Imagine you start out at a walk, and every minute or so you increase your speed a bit. As you work harder, you’ll hit a point where your breath becomes a little ragged, and your sentences choppy. If you were conversing with a friend, you'd be grunting out a few words at a time, rather than casually telling a story. That point is your ventilatory threshold, or VT (sometimes called VT1). 

When athletes or coaches talk about easy pace or easy efforts, they usually want you below your VT. The way people talk about zone 2, you’d think that the VT occurs at the top of zone 2. But nope—conversational pace is closer to 80%, which is the top of zone 3. For example, here’s a study on recreational runners that found VT1 to be, on average, at 78% of the runners’ max heart rate. And they tested the runners’ max heart rate, rather than using a formula based on age. (Never trust the default formulas.) 

So if you’re trying to train at an easy pace, or if you’re using the 80/20 rule to keep 80% of your runs easy, you can do those easy runs or cardio sessions in zones 2 and 3, not just zone 3. 

Zone 3 is still aerobic and still easy

Now that I've explained why the zone 2/zone 3 distinction is arbitrary, you see why it makes more sense to look at zones 2 and 3 (or even zones 1 through 3) as a continuum. At the lower end, you’ll be running or pedaling slower, burning fewer calories, and feeling like you’re barely doing any work. (Hello, cozy cardio!) 

At the higher end (or the top of zone 3), you’re still getting a lot of aerobic work done, still benefiting your mitochondria and your capillaries and everything else, but you’re doing it in less time. If you’re interested in calorie burn per hour, zone 3 is more efficient. 

Cyclists sometimes call training in this range the “sweet spot.” It gives you some of the advantages of harder training without making you too fatigued. For runners, zone 3 may include some of your tempo runs, some of your race-pace runs, and some of your faster “easy” runs. 

So what’s the point of zone 2, if you can get all of its benefits in zone 3? That depends on your big picture: If you’re doing a lot of training, you’ll probably want some of it to be in zone 2, if only to save some energy while you’re getting more miles on your feet. But if you only run, say, three times a week, it’s unlikely that those couple of runs will wear you down much even if you do them all in zone 3. 

You shouldn’t read too much into your heart rate anyway

This brings me back to my grudge against heart rate monitors. (It’s a grudge borne of love; I track my own heart rate when I run and find it useful in many ways.) 

Your heart rate doesn’t only track with your training effort; it also responds to a lot of other factors. For example, it responds to summer heat, showing you higher numbers in hot weather. It can also show higher numbers if you’re more fatigued, or at the end of a run compared to the beginning, and it may show higher numbers if you’re a bit dehydrated. When you run a race, you may find that your heart rate is higher than expected at the start, just because you’re a bit nervous. Some medications can alter your heart rate as well—beta blockers, for example, notoriously lower your heart rate.

And then there’s the question of whether your fitness tracker's zones are set correctly (even knowing that, yes, their boundaries are made up). If you’ve never run an all-out race or series of hill sprints, your watch may have never seen your maximum heart rate. So if it says that your max must be 184 because you are 36 years old, it’s just grabbing numbers from a formula. That makes as much sense as buying shoes based on the average shoe size for a 5’6” woman, rather than actually measuring your feet (or trying on the shoes). If you go out for an easy run and find that your heart rate was in “zone 5” the whole time, I guarantee you that isn’t your zone 5. If you want to be precise, do one of these workouts to test your max heart rate.

So if your heart rate creeps into zone 3 on a “zone 2” training run, that may or may not be accurate. But even if it is, if you can still breathe and speak more or less normally, you’re getting plenty of benefits from your zone 3 cardio. 

Is zone 2 or 3 better for fat loss?

Both are good! If you can only do cardio a few times a week, and don't mind working hard, zone 3 is a great place to be. It's less fatiguing than HIIT, but packs more of a punch than zone 2.

But if you have more time, you may want to work toward the 50 to 60 minutes of exercise per day that researchers have found works the best at helping people lose weight and keep it off. (Here's one interesting study where this level of exercise worked even without dietary changes.) This is a lot of exercise! To get that amount of work in, most people would not be comfortable doing it all as zone 3 training—but zone 2 is a lot more doable. The more exercise you do, the more you'll need to include easier work, like zone 2, to give yourself a break from the harder days.

So if you're doing a ton of exercise, at least some of it should be zone 2, and some can be zone 3 or higher if you like. If you're only exercising a few days a week, zone 3 is probably better.

What is the best heart rate zone for cardio?

Every zone has a benefit, so if you're trying to increase your cardio fitness, you should spend time in all of them.

• Zone 1 is good for warmups, cooldowns, and the recovery periods between intervals.

• Zone 2 is good for long sustained efforts. It's usually OK to do zone 2 in place of a rest day.

• Zone 3 helps you adapt to harder work than zone 3. It burns more fat but incurs a little bit more fatigue than zone 2, as we've discussed. It's also the zone where you'll practice race pace if you're training for a race like a half marathon.

• Zone 4 helps you to work close to your lactate threshold, which improves your endurance when you're working hard. This is an important zone for athletes, but it's usually only done one or a few times per week, not for every workout.

• Zone 5 is a very hard zone, and is great for HIIT workouts (with zone 1 work, like walking, to recover in between those hard intervals).

In general, you'll want to spend more time in the lower zones, and sprinkle in the higher zones for variety. In the 80/20 style of running, 80% of your workout time should be spent in zone 2 and low zone 3; everything from high zone 3 on up should only make up 20% of your workout time each week. This isn't the only way to structure your training, but it's a popular one that helps runners get a good balance of work in all the zones.

Is zone 3 a "gray zone" with no benefits?

Not at all! It got this reputation from all the coaches and writers who were trying to convince people that training medium-hard shouldn't make up all their training time. Instead, they should do some sessions easier (zone 2), and some harder (zone 4 for threshold and zone 5 for shorter and harder intervals). The idea of emphasizing the highest and lowest zones is sometimes called "polarized training." But this advice somehow turned into a myth about people needing to avoid zone 3, which was never true.

Start Each Week With This Digital Decluttering Method

It’s well-established that physical clutter impairs your productivity and focus, going as far as to make you exhausted, stressed, and burnt out, which is why decluttering your workspace is key component in a lot of productivity techniques. In this day and age, though, your "workspace" isn't always (or, in some cases, even) an office or desk. Your phone and computer are your workspace. That's where you spend most of your work day looking and interacting—and when it's cluttered, you can feel discombobulated, the same as you might with a messy cubicle. It's time to stop thinking only about decluttering the physical world and make a better plan to keep the digital one in good shape.

Take stock of your desktop, your tabs, your inbox, and your home screen: How many different windows do you have open right now? They are not only bogging down your mental energy, but your device’s energy, too. Let's fix that—and find a solution that sticks.

When to declutter your devices

Aim to start each week with a digital decluttering. It doesn’t have to take more than 15 minutes, but you’ll be more productive when it’s done, so it’s a good investment of your time. Approaches like this work best when you actively take the time to schedule them out, so fall back on time boxing and time blocking, and consider using a specialized to-do list system like 3-3-3, then designating the weekly decluttering one of Monday's three small tasks.

How to digitally declutter (easily)

On your desktop, create folders that can store whatever you need, whether those are documents for work or screenshots for your side business. Each Monday, go through whatever docs or pics have accumulated on the desktop and stick them in their respective folders so the whole thing looks cleaner. Do the same thing with any new apps you’ve put on your phone. There’s no reason to scroll through pages and pages of apps to find the one you need when you can stash it in a folder and keep your home screen organized. Only keep the necessary, daily-use folders available on your desktop and home screen. The rest should be banished somewhere invisible, but searchable.

Close all open windows you’re not using—and all the tabs left over from your last browsing session. If you genuinely need something available, bookmark it. Get in the habit of closing tabs whenever you’re done with them. (Check for minimized browser windows, too; I always have at least two that need to be closed, but I rarely realize they're running in the background.)

Next up is email. I've recommended the “one-touch” method of inbox management before, and an adaptation of it works great here: Open every email you’ve gotten in the last week and either delete it or archive it, depending on whether you anticipate needing it later. Anything you archive, be sure to set aside time to respond to later in the day or week. (Again, time box and time block this, plus add it to your to-do list so it's a real, scheduled task, not just a good idea you may or may not get around to.)

Perhaps most importantly, delete as you go. This is the the one I struggle with most, but once you get in the habit, it's easy. If you downloaded an app for a single purpose and don’t use it anymore, delete it. If you have docs in your files from an old class or work project, delete them. Stick to doing this for the first 15 minutes every Monday (or whenever you start your week) to dramatically reduce your digital clutter and any related stress.

Use the ‘Yesterbox’ Method to Stay on Top of Your Inbox

Inbox management, like so much else, is a necessary evil in our day-to-day lives. As such, it’s best handled with the use of a strict system, but those can be tricky to implement and stick to. Also like so much else, finding the right system is time-intensive and adds a new layer of stress onto an already annoying task. Here’s a system that’s simple, doesn’t take a lot of time to start using, and can actually help you get through your unreads without overwhelming you. It’s called “yesterbox.”

What is the yesterbox inbox management system?

This technique—and its funny name—both come from late Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who described yesterbox as a way of “relieving email guilt.” The concept is simple: Today, you only deal with yesterday’s emails. It's like a slightly stricter version of the first-in, first-out (FIFO) method, and while I don't always love FIFO, I recognize it has a place in a well-rounded productivity approach—and yesterbox is a great example.

Hsieh believed that “inbox zero” is not only an elusive goal, but a nearly impossible one. As soon as you start replying to emails, responses arrive. By its very nature, email is a form of correspondence, which means you’re sending and receiving—and for it to be effective, it has to be ongoing.

The thing is, though, that you don’t know how many emails you’ll get today. The only true, finite number you can count on is the number of emails you got yesterday, so that’s where your focus should be if you want to prevent yourself from getting caught up in the back-and-forth of immediate communication.

How to use yesterbox

Start by picking a time to deal with emails every day. Ideally, this should be in the morning, so nothing too urgent from yesterday slips through the cracks. Try using timeboxing to schedule your day and blocking out a dedicated time—a half an hour or so, depending on the volume of actionable emails you usually receive and how much of your work is actually done through them—for email management every morning. Hsieh was a proponent of dedicating three hours to this task, but he was the CEO of a giant company, so be realistic about how long it will actually take you. Spend some time trying different approaches to time management and to-do list creation, like the 3-3-3 list or 1-3-5 method. Figuring out how long email management should take you, as well as how much of a resource suck it actually is, will take a little effort, but those frameworks help.

Use that time to only look at and respond to emails you got the previous day. Next, filter out the emails from the previous day that will require more effort from you, whether it’s a lengthy response or the inclusion of attachments. You can star them or move them to a folder, but focus first on the ones that require simple responses—or no response at all. You're more or less using the two-touch email management technique here, but specifically scheduling yourself so you're only applying it to yesterday's messages. Go through each before returning to the ones that will take some more serious effort. Once that’s done, don’t look again until the next morning.

This creates a finite to-do list that doesn’t go on all day. By looking at each day’s previous emails systematically, you won’t miss any, either. The only real exception to this rule should be urgent, day-of emails about tasks that are taking place in the moment. If you’re expecting any like that, add the sender to your priority list to make sure you get the notifications and, if possible, ask them to make the subject line something easily identifiable. Resist the urge to look at any emails related to anything else but pressing, immediate issues.

Use the ‘OHIO’ Method to Manage Your Endless Tasks and Messages

When you're wading through all the emails, Slack messages, and other notifications you get on an average day, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. When that happens, you can might yourself getting distracted and missing important messages—at least, that's what happens to me, unless I have some kind of plan in place.

There are a few different approaches you can consider to prevent this, but the "OHIO" technique is the one to try if you need extra help being decisive—though it's important to note that while it can ease your decision paralysis, it does have a few limitations worth considering.

What is the OHIO method of time management?

OHIO is an acronym for “Only Handle It Once” and you'll hear it crop up in a variety of productivity-based conversations, like ones around tidying up. Proponents say it helps you avoid unnecessary dawdling, delays, and indecision, as it calls for you to handle any task, email, message, or assignment just one time. It's definitely a habit you need to build up to, but it's one that pays off the longer you work at it.

You can broadly apply it to what you’re working by assessing your entire inbox, to-do list, or other group of tasks all at once. Prioritize the tasks in order of importance using a system like the Eisenhower Matrix or ABC method. (If the workload isn’t too complex, feel free to prioritize them quickly on your own without a fancy system, but I'm a big fan of customizing hyper-specific productivity techniques to meet my needs.) Then take immediate action on each, starting from the top. Either delete them, delegate them, do what they say, or defer them, using the 4D method.

The OHIO method and emails

The OHIO method works great for emails, too, but it can suck you into time-wasting if you’re not careful. Only handling each email once is a solid way not to spend too much time on it, but you have to plan what you’re going to do. Otherwise, you may end up clicking every new email that comes in and trying to manage it in real time.

Emails are harder to prioritize than a to-do list, so you may struggle to determine which one you should jump on first. Instead of implementing the OHIO method in the moment every moment, set aside time every morning and afternoon to go through your messages and, of course, only handle them once. (You can use time boxing and time blocking to make sure you do this at the same time every day, plus a 3-3-3 to-do list to make sure you have time to prioritize the task.) Try a half hour at the start of your workday, a half hour after lunch, and 15 minutes just before clocking out. If you base your approach on time, rather than a prioritized list, you’ll still be able to open each message and handle it, but won’t be swamped by having to do that every time you get a new alert.

All the Different Email Addresses You Should Set Up (and What to Use Them For)

If you are still using the same email address for everything, it’s time to diversify. Don’t make the mistake I made for too long, clogging up one inbox with absolute nonsense unrelated to the things you actually want to receive and read. You likely already have separate emails for your job, school, and personal life, and many of us also have a designated “spam” email to enter into pop-up boxes in a hurry—but you might even benefit from a couple more. Here are the email addresses I advise setting up.

You need an email for logging into apps

I have a special email address just for my streaming services and random apps, so when Peacock or Hulu mysteriously log out on my TV, I can just reset the passwords using the special email address without junking up my real one.

This is great because apps and services simply love to send you emails about deals, specials, or reminders to log in, and while you could waste a bunch of time unsubscribing from them, you could also just banish them to a Gmail account you only open occasionally for that fresh log-in email, leaving the rest of the junk to rot. I'm also just hesitant to unsubscribe from emails that come from a service I sometimes do need emails from, which is the case with streamers and apps, as most of my two-factor authentication goes down in my email inbox. Separating these just makes sense.

You need an email for newsletters

In case you haven’t noticed, all your favorite news sites and even individual writers are gung-ho about newsletters. It’s great to get the information you want in your inbox, but less great when it interferes with you seeing the messages you actually need to get more important daily tasks done.

Creating a separate email inbox just for newsletters gives you a sort of curated Apple News-like experience. When you want to read the news or the musings of some great intellectual, open that inbox and scroll. When you want to tackle actual correspondence, you can just click away.

You need an email for your side hustles

This is where I fall short: I don’t actually have this, at least not in a consistent way. I use my real email for all my little adventures and money-making projects, which has become my downfall. When I used to freelance a lot, my email got added to some kind of freelancer database and now my personal inbox is absolutely brimming with PR pitches I never open or read. These come in so often that real correspondence from family members or people I am trying to work with gets lost.

If you’re smart (unlike me), you’ll set up an email address that is just for your gigging, whatever it entails. Whether you’re trying to be an influencer, a freelancer, a photographer, or a volunteer, anything that’s sort-of serious but not actually your job should end up in one place.

Do this early on when you start a project, too. I'd love to set up separate email addresses for my resale business, my fitness class teaching, and my copywriting and freelancing, but getting all my contacts in those spheres to start emailing the new address instead of the old one would cause headaches. Setting it up early precludes that, but also helps you shift into a different headspace when you're corresponding with someone like a potential client. I do feel more assertive when I'm talking to someone as "Lindsey Ellefson, MPH" or "Lindsey Ellefson, award-winning journalist" instead of just "Lindsey Ellefson." Setting up something like [your name][your title]@gmail.com can help you step into that more self-assured mindset.

Some multi-email tips

Try to designate your app-only email for free trials, too. When a trial ends, a company will stop at nothing to remind you that you can still sign up and give them money. Do not let these endless emails bother you or waste your time. Day pass at a gym? App-only email address. Free trial of a PDF editor or resume builder? App-only email address. Need to log into a public wifi that demands an email address for some unholy reason? You already know. Just make sure that for this one, you toggle off notifications, so your phone’s home screen doesn’t become overwhelmed with garbage.

I recommend using Gmail for all of this, too, because the Gmail app makes it so easy to switch between different accounts right on your phone. That way, you can even assign the addresses to different Chrome profiles on your computer, which has been a lifesaver for me as I toggle between different parts of my life. The only downside to going Gmail-only is that it's hard, at first glance, to see which address is receiving a message when you get an alert on your phone's lock screen. It shouldn't be a major issue, though, because for a lot of these, like the one for streamers, you should toggle push notifications off entirely.

What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: The Origin of Christmas Elves

Because it’s Christmas time, I’ve been digging into myths and misconceptions we have about the holiday: Yuletide misinformation is rampant, and I’m setting the record straight. Last week I dug into who Santa Claus really is, with side quests about St. Nicholas bringing children back from the dead and the religious war between Santa and Kris Kringle. One thing I didn't talk about? His elves.

Christmas elves feel like they’ve been around forever, and people have strangely consistent ideas of what they’re all about—they’re small, they wear green, they make toys out of some innate magical compulsion, they love shelves— but that variety of elf is a recent invention; “real” elves were often anything but jolly little pieceworkers. The elves' thousand-year transition from supernatural nightmare creatures to friendly factory workers is a cultural Rorschach test revealing Western culture's changing attitudes about work, wealth, and what it means to be a "useful" member of society.

The dark elves of the past

To understand how we arrived at our current vision of elves, you have to rewind past Will Ferrell vehicles, Christmas specials, and Victorian holiday frippery to the colder heart of Western culture—the old, weird world that was haunted by supernatural forces, and elves weren’t creatures you’d ever want spying on your children.

The early origin of elves can’t be pinned down exactly because the idea of elves predates the written word. Magical, man-like races were mentioned in mythology and oral traditions in cultures all over the world; but elves, specifically, were common in Norse and Germanic folklore. This variety of elf was (usually) more like Legolas than Hermey from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer—human-sized and magical, although sometimes mischievous. 

Elves in Anglo-Saxon England, though, were jerks. Old English medical texts attributed various diseases to elves. If you felt a sharp, unexplained pain, it was probably the result of an “elfshot”—an elf firing an invisible arrow at you. Elves were also associated with witchcraft, nightmares, and mental disorders.

Various elven misdeeds

Elves did all kinds of bad things. Kind of, anyway: The names and deeds of elves, fairies, hobs and other creatures were basically interchangeable and regional, so it's hard to ascribe anything specifically to elves (it could have been a nixie or brownie, after all).

In the Middle Ages, elves/fairies/other small magic folk were known to steal people's babies, replacing them with changelings—sickly imposters left in the human’s place. They could curse your livestock, spoil your milk, or lead travelers astray in the woods. Elves were blamed when infants died suddenly or when children developed unexplained illnesses. The "elf-lock" was a particularly nasty bit of mischief where elves would tangle your hair into impossible knots while you slept—the bastards! In other words, these were not the kind of people who would help make toys. They were fundamentally alien—beings that operated by rules humans couldn't understand and definitely couldn't trust—and they weren't for fun or for kids. They were deadly serious and considered very real.

The rise of transitional helper-elves

So how did we get from disease-causing, child-stealing nightmare creatures to Santa’s personal toy-making proletariat? By the medieval and early modern period in Britain, there is widespread belief in what I call “transitional elves.” These were household spirits that came out at night to perform chores while families slept. Useful, for sure, but these elves were mercurial and easily offended. They would leave forever if they felt insulted or taken advantage of. You couldn’t even do something nice for them—if you made them clothes, they might decide to quit forever, shouting, “Gie Brownie a coat, gie Brownie a sark, Ye'se get nae mair o' Brownie's wark."

These “household helper” folk beliefs often cast elves as craftsmen, one step closer to toy-makers. These stories inspired the text that laid the foundation for Christmas Elves: the Brothers Grimm fairytale “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” In that story, a shoemaker is down to his last piece of leather, but he wakes up to find a pair of elf-crafted shoes. He sells them, and continues to get free shoemaking labor until he grows wealthy. Then he makes the fateful mistake of rewarding his unpaid laborers with clothing and shoes of their own. They elves are so impressed with their classy new fits, they leave forever, seemingly because they now regard themselves as too good for a working class life. The moral: Don’t treat your employees very well, lest they think they’re your equal. 

How Elves became associated with Christmas

Along with establishing much of Santa’s mythology, Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (better known as "The Night Before Christmas") described Santa Claus himself as "a right jolly old elf,” This line laid the foundation for the association of elves with Christmas. An 1857 poem called “The Wonders of Santa Claus” spelled it out clearly. Santa, the poem says, “keeps a great many elves at work,” making “a million of pretty things” like “cakes, sugar-plums, and toys.” 

In a reflection of the industrial revolution that was happening far from the North Pole, elves weren't household spirits helping one family, they were a workforce, mass-producing toys in a factory. And in what can be seen as an expression of sentimental Victorian ideas about class, the elves loved working in a sweatshop; it's what they were born to do!

Here’s the first picture of Santa’s Workshop, from Godey's Lady's Book in 1873. At the time, Godey’s had a huge circulation in the United States, and this image cemented the modern idea of Santa’s Workshop.

Credit: Public Domain

Modern Christmas elves

The 1964 Rankin/Bass TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer put the finishing touches on Christmas elf lore by presenting a deeper look at how the North Pole workshop operates. Perhaps fueled by growing cultural misgivings about modernization and capitalism, Santa's workshop in Rudolph is rife with vicious interoffice politics, forced conformity, workers whose dreams and ambitions are crushed (He just wanted to be a dentist, Santa!), and a boss man who is woefully out-of-touch with his employees. The only major innovation in Elf-lore since Rudolph is the "Elf on the Shelf," but he's a damn snitch, so we won't talk about him.

The next time you see a green-suited helper in a Christmas movie, remember, that the jolly little toymaker was cobbled together from medieval folklore, German fairy tales, and 19th-century magazine illustrations, and shaped by the rise of industrialization. The modern elf is the domesticated, sanitized, capitalist-approved descendant of supernatural creatures that stole babies, drove people mad, and shot invisible arrows at your ancestors. Merry Christmas! 

Use the RAFT Technique to Quickly Sort Emails

To manage your inbox, you need dedication. You need a plan. You need acronyms. One such acronym is RAFT, which will literally keep you afloat in the sea of emails you receive every day. You can combine it with others, like LIFO and 4D to maximize its benefits, but first you need to know what to do with it on its own.

What is RAFT email management?

RAFT stands for the following:

• Read

• Act

• File

• Trash.

Easy! With this management system, you take the time to read an email first, then act on it however you need to—if you need to, that is—before either filing it away somewhere or deleting it. That’s basically all there is to it, but it works because it requires you to focus on each individual email and make an assessment right away, so you don’t miss anything.

Like the one- and two-touch rules, this one does require you to open your emails as they come in. For me, that's the hardest part because it's a habit you need to build. This approach reminds me of a more broadly-applicable productivity technique I use often, which is the two-minute rule. When you think of something or are prompted to deal with it, handle it right away. Again, it's a habit that needs to be built up, but I like this approach for all kinds of productivity needs—and with RAFT, you have a clearly outlined series of next steps after you open it up.

How to get the most out of RAFT

To maximize the benefits, you should combine this with another system or two. For instance, combine RAFT with the LIFO—last in, first out—method, which calls for you to answer your most recent emails before older ones. If you do this, you’ll always be acting on the most urgent needs instead of playing endless catch-up with things that you let slip by. If something from the past is truly important, you’ll get a follow-up email and you can RAFT then. Otherwise, stick with your most pressing, recent messages and read them, act on them, and file or trash them after that.

When it comes to the acting part, you can call on the trusty 4D method to help you out. The four Ds are delete, do, delegate, or defer, and they refer to the four things you can do with any email. (Delete here is redundant, since “trash” is part of RAFT, but it’s good to reinforce the notion that useless emails should be nuked.) Either do what the email says or delegate it to someone who can, but keep the process moving swiftly. If you don’t end up forwarding it to someone else, delete it or defer (file) it. The main rule of RAFT is you have to do something with every message, not ignore it.

As for the filing component of RAFT, make sure you have a great file system in place in advance. If you use Gmail, consider using labels as a more organized archive system, to make whatever you choose to file away more easily accessible. You can label these mini-archives by date, by project, or by whatever makes sense for your retrieval, but be consistent about it so you’re not just banishing all your dealt-with messages to an email limbo.

This Is the Easiest Way to Filter Junk Out of Your Gmail Inbox

No matter how dedicated you are to responding to and archiving all your emails, there will always be one thing preventing you from hitting true inbox zero: all of those mailing lists you're subscribed to. These horrors will visit you at all hours of the day, making it harder to spot the truly important messages in your inbox—and it gets worse once you've gotten fed up enough to disable push notifications and they start to really pile up.

It’s time to banish these buggers. And, if you're using Gmail, there’s an easy way to do it.

Use filters to manage mailing list emails in Gmail

You can use a third-party add-on to go through your mailing lists and unsubscribe, saying goodbye to newsletters and e-blasts. But you know what’s easier and less expensive? Setting a filter in Gmail.

Open up one of your mailing list emails and click the three dots in the menu bar. You’ll see “Mark as unread,” “Mark as important,” and a few other options, but the one you want is “Filter messages like these.”

Credit: Gmail

From there, you’ll see a dialog box asking how you want to filter your messages. You can filter by sender, recipients, and subjects, but also by anything that “has the words…” In the “has the words” row, type “unsubscribe.”

Now, any email containing the word “unsubscribe”—which reputable email blasts almost always do—can be filtered out of your inbox without you having to do anything. Once you type “unsubscribe” there, hit the “create filter” button. The following dialog box will ask how you want these filtered. You can choose to have them archived, marked as read, starred, forwarded, or immediately deleted.

Things to consider when creating Gmail filters

I recommend archiving over deleting in case you ever want to find them again, but if you are sure you’ll never want to open another mailing list, newsletter, or sales blast, feel free to check the box next to “delete.” Note that if you choose to archive but later want to delete them, you’ll have to do so manually. Personally, I am happy to pay for extra Google storage to keep a record of messages instead of inadvertently lose something I need, but I know that's needlessly neurotic.

If you do end up archiving those, the next step needs to be actually unsubscribing from the messages you truly don't want to receive. Gmail has recently made this a lot easier: You can usually click an unsubscribe button up at the top of the offending email. The Google-run email service also rolled out a Manage Subscriptions service this past summer, so once you take a gander at the archive full of junk and notice what you're not exactly needing or opening up, you can head over there and nuke your subscriptions quickly and easily.

Will Your Smart Vacuum Still Work After It Stops Being Supported?

My Neato D5 Connected was once a willing workhorse, but, today, things aren't looking so good. I recently caught an email from the company alerting me that it shut down my vacuum's cloud servers. Now, my once capable Neato is just a LiDAR-equipped vacuum with a soul that's been deprecated. Without cloud servers, the "smart" is gone.

This could be the lobotomized future awaiting Roomba users. Earlier this month, the company behind the pioneering smart vacuum, iRobot, filed for bankruptcy. The remainder of the business will go to its primary manufacturing partner—the one it owes all that money to—Shenzhen Picea Robotics. It's a stark reminder that the longevity of a connected smart device depends entirely on the financial health of the company that made it.

I'm not giving up, however. I'm now attempting to get the Neato D5 back into business. Whether you have a Neato, a Roomba, or another robot vacuum approaching the end of its connected, you can mirror my steps to keep your device cleaning.

Switch your robot vacuum to manual

The email that Neato sent out during Thanksgiving week letting me know my robot vacuum was done for. Credit: Florence Ion/Lifehacker

Following the above email, I tried earnestly to get the Neato back online and back into a routine. I ended up reviving my original account by some miracle, though I have absolutely no access to the vacuum via the app as it currently is.

Luckily, there is already a community of folks working to restore the cloud service that once enabled Neato's robot vacuums to schedule themselves. Neato-connected lets you use Home Assistant to manage the brand's devices without the cloud. This is the best choice for experts if the goal is to revive the robot vacuum to its full capacities.

Neato has already said that the robots will continue to work manually. The D5 has LiDAR, so it can still physically "see" its way around a floor plan. And although you can't schedule the device or remotely control it, you can still get up and push a button to start a cleaning session. If you want to be super extra, Switchbot makes an affordable button-pushing gadget you can install near the vacuum dock to trigger it from your phone, essentially "hacking" a remote start.

The other headache of trying to keep old hardware from going extinct is figuring out if its parts and mechanics still work. My Neato D5, for example, still hasn't successfully managed a manual cleaning session. After some troubleshooting, which involved several factory resets, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, and cleaning debris from all the sensors, it turns out that one of the LiDAR turrets—the hat on top—needs a fix. The vacuum won't start until that's addressed, since it literally can't navigate without that system spinning at a precise speed.

The Neato D5 is going to require some surgery. I am either going to fix it by stabilizing a band, or buy a replacement part from eBay and have someone more tech-savvy help with the install. There's always the option to donate it to a better cause, too. Rather than hold on to an eight pound paperweight rotting away in the utility closet, it can get a second life with a local robotics group, since Neato vacuums have a reputation for being highly scrappable due to their laser sensors.

Until I get the Neato D5 serviced, it will not manually clean. Credit: Florence Ion/Lifehacker

Even cheaper robot vacuums, like an Ecovacs, can find a second life this way. While they aren't as easily "hackable" as Neato (or a Roomba), there are plenty of high school robotics teams that can disassemble the devices to retrieve motors and wheels.

Never throw a robot vacuum into the trash. If the device is truly dead and unusable for parts, look into responsibly recycling the Lithium-ion battery as well as the plastic and metal shell with an e-waste recycler.  

Preparing for the end of Roomba

If you own a Roomba, you aren't offline yet. iRobot is currently undergoing a restructuring, and the company has stated that app functionality and firmware updates will continue as usual. But inevitable change is coming if Neato's trajectory is any indication. We don't know exactly how Roomba's business will go now that it has changed ownership. Existing Roombas rely on the cloud for much of their flagship functionality, like Smart Maps, which help with specific room targeting. Losing the ability would be a major blow to the hardware's legacy.

You should prepare for what's to come, even if it involves a little over-preparing. Stockpile replacement parts now, while they're still available. Although Roomba's manufacturer has taken over the business, older models will fall by the wayside as a new generation of robot vacuums is introduced. If you want to get a few more lives out of your Roomba, buy at least a two-year supply of authentic, first-party brushes, rollers, and HEPA filters. Skip the third-party stuff.

You'll also want to invest in Roomba's dual-mode virtual wall barriers. Buy them used on eBay. These will come in handy if Roomba's servers ever go offline, since they act as infrared lighthouses to help direct the Roomba's path. You'll be able to use these with Roomba's "Clean" button, its manual mode that doesn't require the internet to start. You'll also want to look into downloading your Smart Maps, in case you can integrate them later.

If that isn't enough for you, there is a vibrant community of tinkerers who have long been dedicated to liberating Roombas from the clutches of the cloud. Projects like rest980 and dorita980 let tech-savvy users host their own local control servers, though this often involves a third-party device such as a Home Assistant hub.

Ending the e-waste cycle

History tends to repeat itself in the gadget world. You can at least future-proof your buying decision by recognizing that obsolescence is a possibility down the line. This applies to any connected gadget, from big-name brands to small ones.

Matter, the smart home specification that's been quietly rolling out over the past few years, will be more helpful for aging smart gadgets like this, especially since its latest release. It now enables local smart-home control for robot vacuums, so you don't need a cloud service to connect. The vacuum talks directly to your phone or smart hub instead. There are also brands like Roborock that advertise that their robot vacuums have local-only modes. You can even install another community-managed project, Valetudo, on those brands and go completely corporate-free.

Or, you could go offline. Most connected home gadgets have variants that use a physical remote control instead. Eufy still makes versions of its robot vacuums without wifi, with no cloud features to worry about going extinct.

I'm waiting before I buy eBay parts for the Neato D5 Connected. I need to see if I can fix what's broken with some finagling. It's a bummer I didn't think of preparing for the end of the device's life earlier—like when Neato's parent company announced its eventual shutdown two years ago—to give it a second life and save it from abject hardware failure. If all else fails, I can find it a good home with a robotics team or educational program that can put its parts to good use. I will have considered that a well-lived life for a connected gadget.