I bought a Fitbit when I was in the US last weekend and I'm utterly addicted to it. It seems that to capture my attention all you need to do is to wrap some technology around a problem and I'm hooked. In much the same way as I meticulously ripped, titled and album-arted every CD, DVD and MP3 music file I own through the process of loading them into what is now a 400GB+ personal media library in iTunes. For someone who would systematically lose, damage, mispace or permanently loan out his CD collection, this was an unlikely and remarkable turnaround.

Now, I've struggled with maintaining a healthy level of fitness and weight for some time, after spending most of my twenties mountain biking every weekend which was ample compensation for my dietary dysfunctions. I hail from the country that relishes in its consitent splendour of having the highest rate of heart disease in Europe and, doubling down on that fact, specifically the city in that country where the deep fried Mars Bar was invented.

But in the three days since I started using my fitbit, I'm literally foaming at the mouth in the quest for more activities I can do to make my daily calorific goals. Whether this is a short-lived fad or something more permanent, I don't yet know.

But I might posit a theory that there's possibly a connection between contextualising effort and its resulting acheivements in software with the same sort of satisfaction that some people (probably many people) get from videogames.

As a 30 year fully signed-up member of the videogamer generation, I suspect we've become addicted to that little endorphine release we get whenever we complete a challenge, set a new high score or defeat the undefeatable boss. I regularly read of Xero customers on Twitter bemoaning the fact they've run out of bank transactions to reconcile, such is the rush of satisfaction they get doing what should be a tedious, boring task but in a context they enjoy. I doubt they'd ever feel the same way doing it on paper.