Recently, I bought my first “mid-luxury” watch with the council of my good friend Hunter, who I would proclaim as a “watch guy.” I had been casually looking for awhile and pulled trigger when I received his seal of approval on a Tissot PRX.

On one hand, watches are dumb. An expensive timepiece tells time no better than a basic digital one, and nowadays clocks are on all of our devices which we spend copious amounts of time looking at. From a pragmatic standpoint, luxury watches provide little utility to justify their cost and resort to storytelling about how many meters deep their watch works under water to establish their dominance.

That being said, I love the watch because I find it beautiful and it has positive influence on me. For the past year I'd "wanted to want" to dress nicer - I wanted a more put-together look, yet when I got dressed I continually defaulted to the easy comfort of athleisure. I desired the outcome of refined style without the commitment.

The watch changed that. Suddenly, wearing a t-shirt and joggers clashed with the watch I was wearing. The watch made me want to dress nicer, which is different than wanting to be someone who dresses nicely. Without reading carefully, reading that you may miss the difference.

I've come to view purchases like the Tissot as "make my goals easier" investments, which are some of the best purchases you can make. Other examples include joining a premium gym (for those that want to be fit but don't want to workout), meal prep services (for those that want to be healthy but don't want to cook clean meals), or a Macbook (for those that want to be more successful but don't want to do the work). Buying tools aligned with your desired outcomes can create a psychological incentive to actually do the work.

With the purchase of the watch, I wasn't just buying something that tells time, I was buying something that tells time AND the influence on my goals that it brings along with it.

Making "make my goals easier" investments intentionally is harder than it sounds, even though admittedly I didn't know the watch was one when I made the purchase. You really have to know yourself, a common mistake is assuming that your desires will change with the purchase. Buying a weight set to have in your house only solves your problem of not working out if the distance to the gym is your problem. If you don’t like lifting weights, then you’re probably better off finding a different way to attain your fitness goals that is inherently more enjoyable.