I wear my Apple Watch 7 every day. Why? Because, like many Apple Watch users, I feel the need to close the ring on my Apple Watch on a daily basis. And while I know that nothing bad can happen if I leave the ring incomplete, the lack of recovery tools on the Apple Watch makes it difficult for me to give myself a break.

It's no secret that the Apple Watch is a nag: unless you know how to use it and have opted out of activity notifications, the smartwatch nudges you to check your goal status or get up after sitting for a while . Normally, I don't mind this encouragement. But sometimes I really need a break and don't want to drop my activity level to do so.

I wish my Apple Watch had an option to take the day off, free from reminders and rings, and not rely on a completely closed circle for serotonin. Ideally, this so-called day off would not undermine my badge progress or destroy my chances of winning a competition. Instead, it would make it easier to take time off to recover.

Any trainer or fitness expert will tell you that recovery days are an important part of the workout. After a day (or multiple days) of strenuous exercise, the body benefits from dedicated recovery time. This is especially true if you are injured, have trouble sleeping or eating well, are traveling, or are under a lot of stress.

Even when I don't hydrate enough or my social life makes me sleep late, I actively try to recover with stretching, yoga, and light walking. However, grinding the ring often makes me want to close the ring and prevent me from getting the true recovery I need.

Apple should take a lesson from its competitors. The best fitness trackers and the best smartwatches encourage recovery; the WHOOP strap mainstreams recovery scores, takes into account rest and workout intensity, and determines when to relax; Fitbit's new Daily Readiness Score is based on your health data workouts suggested based on an overall overview, which appears to prevent overtraining.

I'm currently testing the newest Oura Ring, which is a newer version of Fitbit's Oura Ring, and I've been using it for a few months now. However, the Oura Ring not only promotes recovery based on sleep quality and heart rate variability (HRV), it also reads your body temperature. If it detects a trend in body temperature that may indicate illness, it prompts you to activate "rest mode." You can also manually enter rest mode whenever you like.

It does not matter whether the Apple Watch introduces rest mode or provides a way to justify taking a day off. A physical recovery tool is clearly lacking, and after seeing the versions on the best Fitbit trackers and the activity tracking smart ring Oura, I'd like to see it on the Apple Watch.

Fortunately, it appears that this update can be done on the software side, so it won't require an Apple Watch 8 or any other future Apple Watch to benefit from Apple's planned recovery feature.