Hourly activity for Night Shift

[Fitstacey]

Tried to change the hrs of the hourly activity feature to 7pm- 7am since I work night shift. It won't let me. Waste of a feature if it doesn't cater to all work schedules.

[Soldiergirl]

I think all us night shifters should be able to put together a challenge. So unhelpful with every challenge geared towards day walkers.

[roamingangel71]

I agree, I am trying to squeeze in to meet challenges at 11:45pm at work, which isn't always feasible.

[dorvisbunn]

I wanted to set mine for active hours between 3PM and 4 AM.  I see that it's not allowed.  Come on fitbit.  I keep getting frowny faces for not being active at 11Am.   Well no **ahem**.  I'm sleeping until 2pm!

[Soldiergirl]

I hate that I can't get the hrly activity to cross over midnight as well. Hopefully, Fitbit will eventually notice not everyone works dayshift or Monday through Friday.

[curtmcgirt]

The hourly goal thing is definitely a little simplistic. Not unlike a "schedulable" thermostat that doesn't know what a weekend is. but the "night shift" issue is not exactly the easiest fix in the world, because you are spanning two separate calendar days. Fitbit would have to allow "split" schedules, which seems a bit too advanced for their software engineers. From a calendar's perspective, a "day" is midnight to midnight, so what a human sees as a simple "4pm to 4am Monday night" schedule is really "4pm to 11.59pm Monday night, and 12.00am to 4am Tuesday morning." and then you start over, 4pm to 11.59pm later on Tuesday. So which of your activities during those schedules belong on Monday, and which belong on Tuesday? Calculating your daily stats for what I just said might cause fitbit's datacenter to melt from confusion. They can't please everyone.

Having said that, even dumb little Nintendo Wii Fit (A toy. A toy!) from like 8 years ago at least let me shift to a "night owl" mode, so Monday didn't turn into Tuesday until 3am, instead of at midnight. (note the timestamp of this post--I'm on your side.)

[acade29]

They could use a 24 hour schedule just like the regular steps and not require a 14 hour consequtive time frame for the hourly activity. Just have it work like regular step counting. That doesn't seem like it would be too difficult. 

[curtmcgirt]

Yes. I agree with that. And make it goal-based.
"if I get 250 steps in at least X hours per day, turn green like every other goal does."

This hourly thing is broken in a few ways. I would guess they set it up this way because

- they expect the vast majority of their users to be asleep for 8ish hours a day, but this hourly activity feature has no communication with any sleep tracking functions, so they need you to manually tell them when you are "active."

-they expect the vast majority of their users to be asleep when the calendar day changes, so they aren't investing development $$ in fancy customizable calendar calculators

-they like this useless "longest inactive period" piece they put into the active hours feature--which is not *supposed* to report inactive periods outside of your active hours-- so, again, they need you to manually tell them what hours you are "active." but this is currently broken anyway, and it *does* report inactive periods outside of your active hours. (I want to get 250 steps from 7a to 7p, please don't tell me about an inactive period after 8pm, or use that period to calculate my monthly inactive period statistics).

[roamingangel71]

I was able to do 12am to 7am for the hourly activity goal. So th a ts at least 7 hrs worth. But the Blaze doesn't seem to have motivation reminders. I wish they would include those in all FitBit.

[caro2864]

The fitbit should log how many hours in a 24 hour period 250 steps per hour were completed.

[MsSpammy]

Exactly @caro2864 it shouldn't be that hard should it.

[Emberly]

I'm about to return my fitbit Charge. I work nightshift as well and if I can't record this for overnight it is pointless! Please fix!

[MsSpammy]

And now they've added the sleep target with regular sleep and wake up times! Another thing is shift workers can't use

[ErickFitbit]

Everyone -- Thanks for your feedback around the Hourly Activity Goals, I also think it would be cool if this was customizable for night shift workers as well and recommend that you all vote for this existing idea within our Feature Request board. The more votes the idea gets, the more likely it is to be considered for implementation in future releases.

@MsSpammy Thanks for your feedback around the new Sleep Schedule feature. Can you clarify what part of the feature you can't use as a night shift worker?

[MsSpammy]

@ErickFitbit my shift rota is two earlies, four nights and four days off, so in effect my working week is ten days. This wants you to set something to get up regularly at a set time each day, so I can't see it working for me... although, I can't see how they could make it work for people with working hours like me either.
I'll vote for the other. Thanks.

[ErickFitbit]

@MsSpammy Since your sleep schedule is not a set schedule, I recommend adjusting your sleep schedule every week that your work schedule changes. The sleep schedule can be adjusted at anytime you prefer.

[Emberly]

The only way I could fix this was to set my clock 12 hours ahead. I'm CST so I set it to Ho Chi Min city which is exactly 12 hours ahead. That way my first 5 hours at work in the evenings don't reset at midnight. Hopes this helps someone. Seems like an easy coding fix for Fitbit if they cared enough about their shift workers that still would like to log their activity.

[roamingangel71]

I was able to set hourly goals from 12am to 8am. But I get done work at 6am, and not always awake at 8am, but better than not having the hourly reminder

[pinkie639]

A 24-hour tracker would be best but it would be nice if they are going to make us choose only 14 hours that we could customize each day instead of changing previous days for those days we are up "normal" hours.

[Babynurse]

Me too. 7p-7a. I think fitbit makers forgot about us night shift workers!

[Fishanhunt]

Cone on Fitbit. There's all kinds of threads on here about shift workers needing to be able to pick a start of day time. I work an alternating 12 hour schedule.  Changing my time zone defeats the reason I got a fitbit watch. It can't be that hard to offer a 24 hour option. 

I wanted a Fitbit with a watch for a long time. My wife bought me one for Christmas and I was so happy until I found out it was pretty useless for me since I work shift work. 

Come on Fitbit.