I don’t have a Fitbit, but I know enough people who do to understand the drive towards getting in your daily steps. It’s a big deal to beat your friends or even beat yourself. It’s a fun easy way to motivate you to be more active. It’s a genius idea.

I found myself applying that logic lazily when I thought about reaching my social activity levels. The other morning I talked to my hairdresser while getting a cut, talked to a stranger in line for 30 minutes at the social security office, and I went and ate lunch with my mom. I had this brief image of a empty bar filling right up. I felt like I reached my mandatory social needs for the day, and that even if I did nothing else for the day I wouldn’t feel isolated.

We need to be active. We need to be social. These are parts of a healthy life. We also need to drink a certain amount of water, consume a certain amount of vitamins, earn a certain amount of money, do enough positive actions, and think enough positive thoughts. We have all these daily bars to fill, and we hardly ever think about it in those terms, but maybe we should.

I don’t think it’s healthy to track everything in your life like your Fitbit tracks your steps. I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that you look at the things in your life that you struggle to meet the daily or weekly requirements and you start tracking those bars. If you struggle with doing it you can set a count and write things down, but sometimes the mere idea of having to meet your requirements can get you motivated enough to do so.

It takes a little bit of work to figure out how much of something you need, and sometimes, with things like a social life, those numbers change, but if you keep that in mind and let your goals reflect that there is no reason you can’t tackle the things you struggle with like the Fitbit company tackled an inactive country.