While everyone who drank water died eventually, hydration is important to keep such death further away. And being an ADHDer means having tendencies to focus on things other than hydration, it’s essential to introduce some countermeasures. I’ll describe a setup, that works for me as a home-office worker. It consists of fluid source, fluid container and holder, as well as fluid intake incentive and tracking.

Obviously, this post is not a health advice, as even water can be dangerous.

Fluids that hydrate⌗

I’ll be mostly focusing on water as default fluid for hydration since it’s the thing that I drink the most, there are obviously others. They tend to be either caffeinated or have sugar in them. Neither of those are so good when ingested in too great quantities.

Examples of such are:

  • tea (for me, it’s more of a sugar problem, but some people get significant effects from caffeine in black tea),
  • yerba maté (it warrants separate post),
  • coffee (it’s far too easy to have it too much if brewed nicely),
  • energy drinks and coke-type drinks.

For caffeine, Water intake tracking section will describe the method I use to track ingestion and avoid taking too much. For sugar checks, I try to track it within dietary calories’ intake tracking app, which I may describe later. Thus, I keep my planned hydration focused mostly on water.

To make water nicer, you can do one or more of the following.

Filtering water⌗

In the country where I live, the tap water in cities is very much drinkable (and in some it’s exceptionally tasty) and there’s no strict need to filter it.

Even so, it will be much better for at least taste to filter it if you have hard water. Keep in mind that even a single city can have different water sources depending on area, and those can have vastly different hardness. Check your local water company website. You can additionally take tap water samples to a lab to confirm if your building installation is not adding hardness. Water companies usually have such service available for a reasonable price - some people absolutely have to test water from their groundwater intake if municipal network does not cover them. Real water hardness measurement is also essential for proper operation of dishwasher, and it’s ability to distribute salt and rinse aid.

I’ll skip quite long section that could describe various water filtering methods and just mention that filtering jug is a good first step.

Carbonating water⌗

I especially titled this section carbonating instead of carbonated water to emphasize that buying bottled water if you have drinkable tap water is insanity and plainly killing the planet. You can get a carbonator (soda maker device) like Sodastream or DrinkMate to get your water sparkly and only replace the CO2 cartridge/tank from time to time.

I have a Sodastream Source device (it seems to be discontinued now, but other models work the same and cartridges are universal; here’s manufacturer website listing current devices) with a couple of Fuse bottles, that are made of Tritan. Those bottles have expiration date (couple of years) as plastic degrades, and it’s slowly loosing rigidity necessary to ensure they are safe for pressure applied, but are plastic and dishwasher-safe. The only other dishwasher-safe option are glass ones, but the combination of ADHD with glass water container is not so safe. Furthermore, hand-washing requirement of such daily use object with narrow entry is a no-go for me.

Sodastream Source - official marketing photo

Making it tastier⌗

The hack I use to make water less plain is lemon and lime juice - couple of teaspoons per approximately litre of water. Free benefit is vitamin C intake secured.

One could use fresh fruits, squeeze them and add slices to water container used, such option have several disadvantages for me. First, fresh fruits even if consumed at reasonably predictable rate and stored in fridge can get forgotten and thus rot and get thrown away. Moreover, the preparation time is significantly extended, which makes it a less attractive option.

Lemon and lime juice is easily available in bottles. It stays fresh for very long in fridge and application is quick enough. Numerous local supermarkets like LIDL (from their “Italiamo” brand) and Auchan have ones widely available made from Italian fruits of decent quality.

Fluid container⌗

Unless you work from a kitchen or have a tap / water distributor next to your desk, you’ll need some fluid container - usually it’ll be a mug or a bottle.

Container itself⌗

Working from a traditional office makes it easy to have kitchen visits regular, as it is an opportunity to take a break and have a water-cooler chat - even if you are introverted. Home-office setup is quite different and very easy to skip kitchen walk every hour. Hyper-focused personal-project work after hours make it even more difficult. Hence, some tricks are necessary to have fluid container full and regularly emptied into our bodies.

With my megalomania, the obvious first step is to make the fluid container bigger. And bigger I went with Camelbak Horizon Straw Tumbler 850ml/30oz, which is a large steel mug without handle (more like a tall glass) with lid that has a straw. For people outside the USA it’s probably better to look for local retailer or marketplace like MALL (Allegro family) or Amazon (if you really have to), but here’s the manufacturer website describing it (I did Wayback Machine snapshot as well).

Camelbak Horizon Straw Tumbler - official marketing photo

What were my criteria that lead me to this particular drink-ware?

  • large capacity which make hydration possible for longer
  • insulation that in this case makes cold water cold long enough to be usable in hot summers
  • lid that is spill resistant, which makes my desk and especially keyboard safer from incidents
  • really nice straw that reaches the bottom but can be positioned a couple of millimetres above it, so constant fluid suction is possible in a way that does not obstruct the computer screen, so work is not paused; for a long, I wasn’t a fan of drinking straws, but apparently I didn’t use proper ones before
  • dishwasher-safety (see previous section for reasoning)
  • spare parts availability - rubber lid insulation can get worn out, spare lids are available

While not the cheapest, after long research and trial it turned out to be superb drink-ware. So good, I bought Horizon Camp Mug for coffee (350ml/12oz and fits Aeropress!) and Horizon Tall Mug for tea (710ml/24oz, requires larger infuser for non-bagged tea). And after 6 months, I can truly recommend them. Obviously, other options are available given local availability.

Container placement and holder⌗

As stated before when mentioning disadvantages of glass drink-ware, momentary losses of focus which are everyday ADHD reality are a thing. And fluid-filled containers near workstation - paper or electronic ones are dangerous and costly. A tumbler with straw is obviously not water-tight, and even insulated cups are not - every drink-ware that is opened for a second to drink from is a spill risk. Moreover, keeping the mug on your desk makes it messier. Therefore, some solution is needed.

My attempt at that is a desk-attached (screwable) cupholder, IKEA LÅNESPELARE in particular, which fits all Camelbak mugs I have mentioned. Since IKEA is randomly changing local availability of their products, I’ll mention product code 905.078.44 and link to Wayback Machine snapshot of the USA website.

IKEA LÅNESPELARE cupholder - official marketing photo

My main requirement was detachability as I was not sure where I’d like to put it and I know one day I’ll rearrange it. As far I know, it’s compatible with all IKEA desks and most of regular ones (flat tabletop from top and bottom required).

With 140cm wide standing desk, I ended up with two of them - one for water and one for coffee or tea mug. And there’s still place for left/right movement, so it’s perfect.

Water intake tracking⌗

OK, now we have nice drink and drink-ware - so how to make ourselves drink it? In spirit of ADHDer thriving on data gathering and gamification which are free dopamine sources - there are apps for that :)

Being a heavy Apple-devices user with iPhone and Apple Watch, I found Waterllama to be best as of now. It’s available from App Store, but their website does them more justice, hence linking it instead - waterllama.com.

Waterllama app screen from iPhone

I found it accidentally while looking for caffeine tracker app that stores data in HealthKit. HealthKit bit is crucial for me as it’s centralized platform for all health data and allows app switching and data extraction - the data is on your device and independent of some rouge app developers forcing you to pay. And it tracks both caffeine and water intake simultaneously - that is, you just drink coffee and both water and caffeine is logged.

It’s light-heart themed with different animals every day that you fill up with water (and collect new ones after reaching daily goals). It offers notifications you can disable (especially needed if you sometimes wake up in the afternoon), some challenges which can be ignored if you have different day patterns, ability to backtrack data and customize drink types that is not US-centric. The last means you can use millilitres and your favourite local energy drink filling in caffeine contents and hydration. Later on, such drinks can be logged as full ones or partial in easy way.

And most importantly, it works because it’s easy to log water intake - just use the app from iPhone (either via icon or nice 2x2 widget) or from Apple Watch (there are face complications available, but I keep it as an app in the dock).

The only thing that is a little irritating is inability to adjust day start/end time - that is if you go to bed at 2AM day ends at midnight anyway. And while it makes sense for tracking in HealthKit as every entry is logged with a given hour, your cute animal resets at midnight as well. But you can later backfill a day, and you are not punished for that.

Oh, and for OpSec paranoid - it’s completely offline: no account required, sync to HealthKit and if you need using CloudKit (native iCloud) if you have more than one phone (Apple Watch sync is different thing).

Effects, summary, and alternatives⌗

My setup to keep hydration makes me regularly (for days that cover 14-18 hours of activity preceded and followed by similar days) drink 2-3 litres of water daily, which is really nice! It can be summed up as insulated tumbler with lid and straw, cupholder for desk and water tracking app.

I’ve seen numerous alternatives to the system I described - including a Tamagotchi hanged of straw tumbler replacing water tracking app and smart water bottles that track water intake live. Apple sells some 3rd party smart bottles on their online store, but those are not dishwasher-safe and cover only part of the problem. Whatever works for you at a given moment - it’s good. Take care of yourself and do regular health checkups!

And now take a break and stay hydrated!

Cover photo⌗

Cover photo copyrights by DS, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.