How to make drinking water a habit at your desk

The way to drink more water at your desk is to stop relying on remembering. Tie drinking to things that already happen in your day, like a sip when a meeting ends and a refill every time you get up. Keep a glass you like within reach and in sight. Make the water pleasant enough that you want it. Do that and the habit mostly runs itself.

You also don't need to count glasses. A couple of simple signals tell you whether you're drinking enough, and an occasional nudge catches the days your routine falls apart.

Start with cues, not willpower

A habit is a behavior that runs off a cue. The best cues at a desk are the ones you already have: the end of a call, getting up, starting a new task. Attaching a new habit to one of these is often called habit stacking, and it works because you are not adding a new thing to remember. You're adding one step to something that happens anyway.

Some anchors that work well at a desk:

• After every meeting or call ends, drink before you open the next thing.
• Every time you get up, the glass comes with you and comes back full.
• With every coffee, a glass of water goes next to it.
• When something is uploading, exporting or building, take a few sips while you wait.
• When you sit back down after lunch, finish a glass before you check messages.

Pick two, not five. Write each one as a plain sentence, "After I end a call, I drink some water", and put it on a sticky note by your screen for the first week if that helps. Two anchors that actually happen beat a long list you forget by Wednesday. If you want to know why the habit falls apart in the first place, the causes are laid out in why you forget to drink water at your desk.

Pick the right glass or bottle

What you drink from changes how much you drink. There is no single best choice, only trade-offs.

Two rules of thumb. First, choose something you actually like holding, because a glass you like gets used. Second, if it lives near your Mac, give it a lid. A spill on a MacBook keyboard is a bad afternoon, and keeping water on your desk without spilling it on your Mac has the details, including what to do if it happens.

A smaller glass that you refill often has one hidden benefit: every refill is a short walk. If you also struggle to get up from your desk, that's two habits in one trip.

Keep it in sight and within reach

People tend to eat and drink more of whatever is in view and within easy reach. With snacks, that works against you. With water, it can work for you.

• Put it where your eyes land. At the edge of your view when you look at the screen, on the side away from your mouse hand, so you don't have to reach over the keyboard or the trackpad.
• Give it a home. A coaster or a particular corner of the desk means the glass always goes back to the same place, and an empty spot looks wrong.
• Keep a refill nearby if getting up is hard. A jug or a big bottle on a side table saves trips on days full of calls. On other days, walk to the tap instead.
• Take it with you. Moving to the couch or a meeting room? The bottle goes too. Out of sight is where the habit usually breaks.

Make water worth drinking, without sugar

Plain water is ideal, but it is only ideal if you drink it. If it bores you, change the taste rather than giving up.

• Add fruit or herbs. Slices of lemon, lime, orange or cucumber, a few berries, a sprig of mint, a thin slice of ginger. Make a jug in the morning and the flavor builds through the day.
• Try sparkling water. Plain sparkling water counts the same as still. Some people drink far more of it because it feels like a treat.
• Make it cold. Keep a bottle in the fridge, or add ice. For many people, cold water simply tastes better.
• Drink herbal tea. Hot or iced, it counts toward your water like any other drink, and most kinds have no caffeine.

Skip the sweet options as a daily habit: sweetened drink mixes, soft drinks and juice add up fast if you sip them all day. One thing to know about citrus: if you sip lemon water or citrus-flavored sparkling water constantly, dentists often suggest plain water in between, since a steady supply of acid is hard on tooth enamel.

Track without obsessing

You don't need to log every glass. Most people do fine by checking two things now and then:

• Thirst. If you rarely feel thirsty, you're probably drinking enough.
• The color of your urine. Pale straw is a good sign. Dark yellow by mid-afternoon often means you're behind.

If you like a bit of structure, keep it coarse. "One bottle by lunch, one by the end of the day" is easier to follow than a milliliter count. Some people put two rubber bands on the bottle and move one down at each refill. If you really want numbers, Health on iPhone can log water, though for most people a week of logging is enough to learn their pattern. And for a rough idea of the target, see how much water to drink at work.

Drinking far more than you are thirsty for doesn't bring extra benefits. The goal is a steady, ordinary amount through the day, not a high score.

Let a reminder catch the gaps

Cues work on normal days. They fail on the days your normal disappears: a long stretch of focused work with no meetings, a day off your usual desk, a deadline. That's where a well-timed nudge helps, as long as it doesn't become noise.

Being that nudge is the job of the Water characters in Notchpals. With Melo or Puddle in your crew, a first-glass visit comes once in the morning, a regular water reminder turns up now and then between 9 AM and 8 PM, and one more visit lands in the afternoon, between 2 and 5 PM. The regular one draws on an allowance your whole crew shares, picked in Settings: Calm, Normal (the default) or Chatty. On days full of meetings and breaks to hang a sip on, Calm is plenty. If your days rarely have natural pauses, Chatty fills more of the gaps.

MeloA glass of water, please. Big sips, little sips, all sips count!

Press Done when you have had a drink. Press Later if you are busy and it tries once more 20 minutes later; say Later a second time and it lets that reminder go rather than pestering you. Notchpals doesn't log what you drink or know whether you drank. It trusts your Done.

A one-week starting plan

1. Today: put a glass or a lidded bottle on your desk, on the side away from your mouse hand.
2. Pick two anchors from the list above and write them down.
3. Make the first one easy: a full glass waiting on the desk when you sit down.
4. Add flavor if plain water isn't getting drunk.
5. At the end of the week, check thirst and color, and keep whatever worked.

If an anchor hasn't stuck by then, swap it for another one from the list rather than adding a third.