Day 2. Wrestling with notifications.

For several years, some techies have argued that the best way to separate us from our phones is to add some new device to our lives, preferably something attached to our bodies. This was the main justification for Google Glass, and in the last few weeks it has become one of the major arguments in favor of the Apple Watch. The theory goes like this: Because it is fixed on your wrist, and because its interface is tuned for quick interaction rather than complex tasks, a smartwatch can let you take care of digital demands faster than your phone.

This idea is nice, but to get it to work, you’ve got to decide which notifications you want to get on your watch, and which you don’t. When you first set it up, the watch generally mirrors the notifications you’ve set for your phone: If you now get an iPhone alert when a friend changes her Facebook profile photo, you’ll get one on your Apple Watch. (The system is smart enough to alert you in just one place — it doesn’t buzz your watch if you’re looking at your phone.) But because the phone and the watch are such different devices, mirroring notifications between them often makes little sense.

For instance, since there’s isn’t (yet) a Facebook app for the Apple Watch, notifications for Facebook on the watch are essentially useless — your wrist buzzes with a note that your friend has changed her profile photo, but when you tap the Facebook notification, nothing happens.

Even for apps that are available for the watch, mirroring the phone’s notifications is not necessarily the best decision. Do you want every email to buzz your wrist, or just those from your VIPs? How about social apps like Twitter — when should you let them ring your watch?

I spent many hours pondering such questions, and there was a lot of fine-tuning in the notification screen on my phone. In other words, it didn’t just work.

Day 3. Nobody notices this watch.

On your wrist, the Apple Watch feels like any other watch. It isn’t too big, it isn’t too heavy, and it is handsomely elegant without being flashy. The shiny Milanese band was my favorite of the three I tried, even though its magnetic clasp periodically loosens up during the course of the day, requiring adjustment. Like anything you wear for the first time, you’ll notice the watch in the early hours after you put it on, but you’ll quickly forget it’s there until you need it.

I was surprised to discover that the Apple Watch didn’t command much notice from others, either. I used it in public in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Manhattan for a week, and only a handful of people asked what it was.