A Simple Productivity Tip
February 24th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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If you drink a lot of water during your workday like I do, you probably find yourself getting up from your desk several times during the day to get more water. I hate it when I’m working in a productive flow, getting thirstier and thirstier as I periodically glance at my empty cup to see if it’s magically refilled itself yet.
While it’s fine to take an intentional break, thirst can nag for an otherwise unneeded break. And if you work in a busy office, a short trip to the water cooler can become a long distraction if you get stuck in idle socializing, especially if it breaks your previous flow state.
You can put a small refrigerator or your own water cooler in your office or cubicle if you have room. Or you can get a really large cup or drink from a 2L bottle. But a simple solution I use is to buy a case of small water bottles and stock a file drawer with them. I can fit 24 half-liter bottles in the file drawer of my desk, which is within arms reach. Whenever I finish a bottle, I return it to the drawer and grab a new one. I usually pour the water from the bottles into a cup or glass, so the bottles stay clean and don’t accumulate mouth mud. When all 24 are empty, I pull out the whole drawer and carry it to the water cooler to refill them all. I drink about 2L of water per day (4 bottles), so the case lasts me a week.
If you don’t have a drawer handy, you could put a stash of water bottles on a shelf, on a table, or even stuffed in a corner, as long as they’re within close reach. And of course you can generalize this tip to stock whatever liquid you prefer.
Maybe my net time savings is only about 20 minutes per week, but that adds up to 17 hours per year, about one waking day. Almost anything is a better use of a day than walking back and forth from the water cooler. Plus I don’t have to worry about breaking my flow state due to thirst.
Now if I could just get myself one of these, I’ll be all set.
February 24th, 2005 at 8:06 am
You should read this article:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1041/is_8_81/ai_105163668
And you’ll stop reusing those water bottles!
February 24th, 2005 at 8:53 am
But going for water might be a good way how to remember yourself to stretch body. It isn’t good to sit in the same position for a long time. What time will you save, if you’ll have all your necessary things within arms reach and your backbone will go bad by the time and you will spend all your time with doctors. Just another point of view
February 24th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Eek. I think that article was written by a germaphobe.
It seemed to be about reusing water bottles you drink out of instead of what happens if you just use them for storage and pour the water into a glass to drink from. I also don’t think grabbing used bottles from school children is a good standard to draw conclusions for adults. If those kids are anything like my daughter (who just turned 5 today), I could analyze anything they touched during a meal and find bacteria on it hours later.
I also doubt this is significant enough to be of any practical concern. The average American meal contains about 1,000,000,000 pathogenic microorganisms (the average vegan plant-based meal contains about 500). So unless the level of contaminants in used water bottles is absolutely phenomenal, it would be of little significance for most people who literally eat toxins for breakfast. 5000 Americans die from food poisoning each year, and direct medical expenses related to food poisoning are $5-6 billion per year. I’m not sure if the medical impact of reusing water bottles would even register.
I can only imagine what kind of bacteria must be growing on my PC mouse right now. My wristwatch. My TV remote. My XBox controller… blech. But before calling a Golgafrinchan telephone sanitizer, if someone was really concerned about microbial toxins, the first thing to do would be to stop voluntarily eating billions of them each day. Unless that step is taken, I’d think everything else would be essentially irrelevant by comparison.
February 24th, 2005 at 9:49 am
The suggestion of putting key supplies out of reach, so you have to get up and stretch more often while you work is very common. There’s only one problem though… Ish schtupid!
If you need to stretch or take a break, then stretch or take a break. Set an alarm if you need to be reminded to do so, or use a program like Stretch Break. It isn’t necessary to put key supplies out of reach to force yourself to get up — that just ends up being distracting at the wrong times. I know it’s a common recommendation to get people to move more, but there are better ways to exercise than by organizing your workspace inefficiently. That’s like failing to buy key food items at the grocery store in order to motivate yourself to go out more often. Yeah, it will work, but if you need a trick like that to get out of the house, you have bigger problems to address. And if this sort of recommendation keeps proliferating, we’re going to end up with bigger problems than just the QWERTY keyboard design.
Sorry for being so ornery today. Both my parents and my in-laws are coming up from L.A. to visit us in Las Vegas this weekend for my daughter’s 5th birthday party. This means I won’t be able to work as much the next few days, which makes me batty sometimes.
If you haven’t seen the movie Murder By Death yet (which is where the “ish schtupid” reference comes from), you haven’t really lived.
February 24th, 2005 at 10:03 am
I do similarly with a 35pack of water bottles from the local superstore.
I’ve always been both intriqued and a little frightened of the Stadium Pal…
February 24th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
I just drink straight from 2-litre bottles. Uncouth, moi?!
February 24th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Sounds like a plausible strategy, but knowing my own body as I do, I’d probably wind up drinking more water than usual and then making more trips to the restroom!
February 24th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Or if you want to be even more efficient, you can wear a beverage hat while sitting at your desk. You won’t even have to take your hands off the keyboard.
March 2nd, 2005 at 11:09 pm
Ice. Don’t forget ice. I’ve got to have a cool drink, even when its only 58F down in my basement.
http://dwoolstar.blogspot.com/2004/12/staying-cool.html
March 16th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
The water bottle storage is a good idea. Now what about those frequent bathroom breaks. As a heavy water and tea drinker myself, I find I need to go to the bathroom around every two hours.