GQ article - Why True Watch Heads Never Set the Time on Their Watches

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I found this GQ article pretty ridiculous but maybe it's just my opinion. The author states that he rarely sets the time on his watch and interviews other "watch heads" that do the same.

I can't imagine wearing a watch that's blatantly wrong and just using it as jewelry. The engineering in the movement is a marvel and a testament to human ingenuity. Not using for its intended purpose just feels wrong.

FYI - I'm not a normal reader of GQ. It just popped up in my Google feed.

https://www.gq.com/story/do-you-need-to-set-the-time-on-your-watch

I pasted the article below as well.

Why True Watch Heads Never Set the Time on Their Watches

By Cam Wolf January 5, 2024

I was recently confronted with the revelation that I am possibly a weirdo. Why? Because I rarely, if ever, set my watch. I spend a large chunk of my life dedicated to timepieces, documenting the complex and enchanting machinery whose raison d’etre is to accurately track the time—and yet, none of the many watches in my collection display the correct hour and minute. When I shared this quirk with two editors here at GQ last month, they were aghast, leaving one so concerned that he messaged me: “I'm afraid to ask but............can you.........tell the time?” (I can.) So I set out on a mission driven by the purest of intentions: vindication and the ability to say “I told you so.”

This whole ordeal kicked off because Mike Nouveau, a vintage watch dealer and the King of WatchTok, posted an interview with Cartier ambassador-slash-coffee empress Emma Chamberlain. Both admitted in the video that their respective Cartiers were not set to the correct time. As the Wall Street Journal documented in 2018, a certain subset of stylish guys—Andy Warhol notably among them—haven’t concerned themselves with correct timekeeping for decades. But what about more hardcore collectors like Nouveau, who don’t just see a watch as a style accessory? As I found in talking to a handful of people across the watch world, there are plenty of good reasons not to bother with a winder at all.

Design Over Functionality
It’s not unusual for Nouveau’s Cartiers to only be right twice a day, although they’re an exception to his general rule. The funny thing I found in reporting this story is that everyone has their own standards for when to set or not set a watch: some do if it’s a certain complication or brand; others won’t if it’s the exact same complication; a few will if they’re traveling or going to a dinner. It’s all completely up to personal taste.

For Nouveau, a Cartier isn’t really the type of watch that needs to be set. “If I’m wearing a vintage Cartier, I don’t care as much,” he explained. “It’s more about the case, the design, the shape rather than 100% timekeeping.” This speaks to the broader trend among even the most diehard watch lovers. There’s an acceptance that, no matter how technically proficient a piece is, its accuracy ultimately pales in comparison to our phones. Even Roger Smith, who painstakingly handmade a watch so beautiful it sold for over $1 million at auction, conceded this when I interviewed him last June. ”I do use my phone,” he said. “I'm guilty as everyone else. But a watch is just a lovely thing to own, isn't it?”

Prioritizing the watch’s design was a reason I heard a lot. “The time-telling utilitarian aspect of my watches is secondary to its beauty and design,” said Jessica Owens, founder of Daily Grail. “I’m never going to wear a watch that I don’t aesthetically love, so to be blunt, everything comes second to the design.”

Beating Father Time
Another good rationale to not set your watch? “These watches are old,” said dealer Kevin O’Dell. I reached out to O’Dell looking for counterarguments, assuming he would be a hard-nosed purist. But he, too, admitted that he rarely sets his watches. In fact, he goes one step further: “Most of my watches are manual wind and I don’t even wind them 70% of the time,” he said.

Preserving a vintage watch by avoiding its winder just makes good sense. “More wear and tear I don’t love,” O’Dell said. Sure, O’Dell’s watches can function. But as they start to push into retirement age, he saves their remaining lifeforce for when it really counts. “If I’m going out for dinner or where I need to keep track of the time I do [wind], but never for day-to-day errands.”

Some collectors have watches that are too far beyond repair but still look fantastic. One former GQ staffer, who didn’t want to be named, spent several years wearing a Rolex that looked amazing—but no longer actually worked.

Good Old-Fashioned Laziness
Oh, yeah, now we’re talking my language. Who needs a practical reason to not set their watch when I can always run into the comforting arms of laziness? “I hope this doesn’t get me kicked out of the Watch Illuminati, but in terms of any complicated watch—whether that be a perpetual calendar or a day-date—I am incredibly lazy when it comes to setting,” said Owens. (If anything, this behavior seems to only cement her Watch Illuminati status.)

Tony Traina, an editor at Hodinkee, is only able to muster slightly more energy. “I set the time, never really the date. I’ve been wearing this calendar watch that I last set in November,” he said, sending through a very pretty image of a Girard-Perregaux with the month set to November and day cycled to Wednesday (it was Tuesday). Why? “Just laziness. Even on those simple Seikos with day and date, I forget which way is day and which is date, so I don’t bother!”

Laziness is largely why I don’t bother setting my watches. My theory for why most of my fellow freaks fall into this same camp is that we typically won’t wear the same piece every day. With just one in the rotation, it might make sense to set it and let it do its thing. But it doesn’t seem worth it to me if I’m switching my watch out for a specific ocassion or part of the day. (Wow! I’m insufferable!)

Even watchmakers fall victim to incorrect settings. Etienne Malec, the founder of Baltic watches, said that he mostly gets his pieces on track, but more often than not, he finds himself with one out of order. “Recently I’ve been testing a lot of prototypes, and I keep them quite often on 10:10 to get a non-disturbed dial view and that can last for few days,” he said. “Not to mention, I wear two watches daily and only one is on the right time.”

So, When to Set a Watch?
I only spoke with one person who was adamant about keeping up the correct time: Perri Dash, founder of the Wrist Check Pod. “I definitely fall into the group that sets a watch each and every time I switch up,” Dash said. “I'm a watch romantic in that way, and I just can't wear a watch with the incorrect time or date.” I asked if it would grate at him to have it wrong. “Absolutely! I just can't do it. Even if I'm not looking at it, the thought that it is incorrect bothers me. I have to set it.”

Dash will go so far as to avoid certain watches if they’re too far off from the actual day or date. “With manually wound watches with dates—or even those automatic watches without a quickset date feature—if the date is too far off, I may wait until I get closer to that date before I wear it so that I'm not standing there, spinning my wheels, trying to get from, say, the 5th to the 25th date of the month.”

No one else was as sacrosanct as Dash, but many had their rules. Traina, as mentioned above, likes to at least have the time—if not the date—right. Nouveau felt that certain types of watches must be on time: Cartiers are about design, but others are more purpose-built. “If I am wearing a perpetual calendar, I want it to be 100% correct, including the moon phase,” he said. Others find that it’s the occasion that matters, like O’Dell if he’s going out to dinner. Owens sets her watches when she travels, she said, ”just to not be completely disoriented when I look at my wrist.”

Watches have long outlived their purpose as simply time tellers. They are keepers of stories, objects of beauty and design, great accessories, incredible feats of mechanical engineering, pickup-line delivery machines, and mega status symbols. Knowing if you’re on time to a meeting or not comes secondary to all this. As Owens put it: “If all I cared about was timekeeping, I’d get a digital watch!”
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Gah, that accursed article keeps showing up on my feed too.

I know a few people like this - including people who wear quartz fashion watches with dead batteries and don't care to get them replaced.

But I guess there are degrees. I have a few pieces without quick-set dates on which I rarely bother to set the date. But not setting the time is weird. They're jewelry and collectibles, but I also like to use them as an actual tool to keep myself organized.
 
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Reminds me of those who prefer to ogle their classic car while idle in the garage rather than to drive it…
 
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Only GQ would think that this is a serious phenomenon worth unpacking in an article.
 
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Taking a moment at the beginning of my day to accurately set the time (and date) is something I enjoy. It’s a little peaceful moment before the stressors of the workday begin.

It also reminds me that time is finite and to make the most of the time that I have here.
 
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But I guess there are degrees. I have a few pieces without quick-set dates on which I rarely bother to set the date. But not setting the time is weird. They're jewelry and collectibles, but I also like to use them as an actual tool to keep myself organized.

I sympathize with the date as well. Although personally it really irks me when the date is wrong. I either set it correctly or avoid wearing it until I get closer to that date.
 
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There are many satisfactions that I find in the wearing of my watches. I love the routine of winding my winders, of knowing that the time and date is correct in my older pieces, and listening to the rhythmic cadence of the tick as they perform as they were designed to do. To wear one as GQ suggests would be akin to me returning to my years of non-watch wearing days. I’m not going back…and their article smacks of the type of snobbery that I disdain.
 
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Taking a moment at the beginning of my day to accurately set the time (and date) is something I enjoy. It’s a little peaceful moment before the stressors of the workday begin.

It also reminds me that time is finite and to make the most of the time that I have here.

I hear you. I really enjoy my manual wind watches.
 
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I generally set mine to "mostly right" - I often find my watches gain or lose a little time and if I wear them over a few days it might end up a minute or so out. I can't imagine having the time not set and someone asking you the time (I don't think I have been asked for the time in the last 10 years, but still)

I guess there are many different types of collectors - I guess if the item is purchased "to look good" as priority one I could imagine not setting it. If you're an engineering nerd it doesn't really make sense to not have it ticking along with you each day
 
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Expensive watch and uses phone 🤨
Funny as I like the disconnect of not having a phone a fair bit.
If I’m going out to lunch with the Mrs I don’t need the phone as she is there. (Only one that rings usually) Shops, she wrote the list 😉
Fishing No service
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WTF, I have had 3 whiskeys and that article just has too many words!
When I wear a watch it is set to the second every time,.
I own a phone, well that is to say on paper I own a phone but my high end Xiaomi phone is so good that my wife, a committed iPhone user has ditched hers and I no longer get a look in with my Android phone, I am a phone orphan 🙁.

let my post stand as a testament as to why you should never post while 3 whiskies down!
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Why True Watch Heads Never Set the Time on Their Watches

. . . There’s an acceptance that, no matter how technically proficient a piece is, its accuracy ultimately pales in comparison to our phones. Even Roger Smith, who painstakingly handmade a watch so beautiful it sold for over $1 million at auction, conceded this when I interviewed him last June. ”I do use my phone,” he said. “I'm guilty as everyone else. But a watch is just a lovely thing to own, isn't it?”

Traina: “I set the time, never really the date. I’ve been wearing this calendar watch that I last set in November.”
Malec: “Recently I’ve been testing a lot of prototypes, and I keep them quite often on 10:10 to get a non-disturbed dial view and that can last for few days. . . . I wear two watches daily and only one is on the right time.”

Dash: “With manually wound watches with dates—or even those automatic watches without a quickset date feature—if the date is too far off, I may wait until I get closer to that date before I wear it . . .”
Owens sets her watches when she travels, she said, ”just to not be completely disoriented when I look at my wrist.”
Owens: “If all I cared about was timekeeping, I’d get a digital watch!”
I wonder if any of the people quoted in the article were upset to see that the reporter was assuming they were, like him, idiots. It really looks like most if not all of them thought they were conceding to a journalist, for the thousandth time, that high-end luxury and even high-precision watches are not comparable in accuracy to digital timekeeping, not admitting that they don’t set their watches to the correct time. Not a single one of the quotes I highlighted say that. It’s not even clear how serious Nouveau and Chamberlin were about not having set their watches in the original link. All indications are that this GQ article is exactly what it appears to be, mindless clickbait.
 
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Wow, maybe I'm one of the anal ones, since I even set/correct the date if it's off! As some have said, I take pleasure in getting to interact with my watch when winding/setting it, but then again, I don't have (young) kids, so perhaps I have more time to be fussing with things like that in the morning? But for automatic watches, why not just keep them on winders - is the constant "wear and tear" really a concern that keeps a lot of people from using them?
 
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When I visited Audemars Piguet a few years ago our AP host was wearing an AP perpetual calendar and it was only set for the time. We asked him about it and he said when he picks that watch he just winds it up a few turns, sets the time and carries on. It would be dead easy for him to ask any of the watch people at the factory to just set it for him, but it wasn't important to him. We live in a strange world with quirky people.
 
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I'm far too OCD not to have the correct time on my watch🙄. I also like the process of choosing the watch I want to wear for the day and then taking the time to set it correctly, time and date.
Guess I'm not a "true watch head"😀
 
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Weird article. Why on earth wouldn't you set the time, not as if it's a hardship. Just seems a typical nonsense trendy/edgy type article to me.

Date I can understand on certain watches. My vintage air-king for instance is a right ball ache to set the date, but even then I can't wea it with wrong date set so I just get it done or wear another watch.
 
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Expensive watch and uses phone 🤨
Funny as I like the disconnect of not having a phone a fair bit.
If I’m going out to lunch with the Mrs I don’t need the phone as she is there. (Only one that rings usually) Shops, she wrote the list 😉
Fishing No service
You have reminded me that I need to fish more in 2024.
 
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This lad needs a real job is he has time to write s..t like this.
 
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Utter bollocks!
I don’t obsess over the time set on any watch in the collection, that I’m not wearing, but I always check the one I’m about to put on!