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Drink Water on Pace

Around three in the afternoon, I used to get a light headache. I could not focus. I felt tired and a bit sleepy, and I blamed my work, my sleep or the weather.

Most of the time, it was water. I simply had not drunk enough.

A daily target only tells you at night

My target is 2000 ml a day. The problem is that a daily target is a number for the whole day, so you only see that you missed it at the end of the day. At 20:00 you notice you are at 600 ml. You cannot drink 1400 ml before bed, and the headache already happened at three.

A daily total is the wrong question. The useful question is: am I on pace right now?

Drink on a pace line

Spread the target over your waking day. Clarity uses 06:00 to 21:00. Draw a straight line from 0 ml at 06:00 to 2000 ml at 21:00. At any moment, that line tells you where you should be:

  • 09:00: 400 ml
  • 12:00: 800 ml
  • 15:00: 1200 ml
  • 18:00: 1600 ml

If you are a little under the line, that is fine. If you are far under it, you know at noon, not at night. You still have time to catch up with a glass or two, before the headache starts.

A chart of the drinking day from 06:00 to 21:00. A dashed pace line goes from 0 ml to 2000 ml. Under it are four bands: green for on pace, yellow for a bit behind, light red for behind and red for far behind, each with a matching face. At 12:00 the line is at 800 ml and an example point is at 500 ml, in the yellow band.
The further under the line, the angrier the face.

The face follows your pace

In Clarity, a water habit has its own little bot, like every habit (I wrote about why that face works on me in The Angry Little Face That Fixed My Habits). On the Habit page, the water bot does not look at the clock alone. It compares what you drank with the pace line:

  • Less than 10% of the target behind: calm and happy.
  • 10% to 25% behind: annoyed.
  • 25% to 40% behind: angry.
  • 40% or more behind: furious.

With a 2000 ml target, 10% is 200 ml. So at noon, 750 ml is fine, 500 ml gets an annoyed look, and an empty morning gets a furious one. Before 06:00 the bot sleeps. When you reach the target, it turns green and beams.

The water bot at 12:00 for five amounts: calm at 750 ml, annoyed at 500 ml, angry at 250 ml, furious at 0 ml, and green and proud at 2000 ml.

The pace line moves all day, so the face changes even when you do nothing. Forget your water for two hours and the face gets angrier. Drink a glass and it calms down at once.

The reminder brings the face to you

A face on the Habit page only helps when you look at it. That is why the reminder matters. At each reminder time, the water bot comes to the corner of your screen with "Drink water" in a speech bubble. It stays there until you reach your target, dismiss it, or the day ends. Each time you log a glass it cheers up, and if you then forget it again, it starts to sulk again.

Click it and you get the day's water as a row of steps: 250, 500, 750 and so on up to 2000. Tap the amount you are at now. No typing, no math.

The water bot in the corner with a 'Drink water' bubble, at 14:00. Next to it, its window: the face, 'Drink water, Due at 14:00', eight steps from 250 to 2000 ml with the first three filled and 1000 highlighted, '750/2000 ml today', and the buttons Dismiss, Working on it and Close.

For me, the two together are what made it work. The reminder makes sure I see the face. The face makes sure I do not swipe the reminder away.

Set it up

  1. Open Preferences → Features and turn on Habit.
  2. On the Habit page, click New habit and pick Water Intake.
  3. In Measure in, choose glasses, ml or oz. I use ml, with a daily target of 2000 and a step of 250.
  4. Save. A new water habit gets reminders every two hours from 08:00 to 18:00. To change them, open Schedule. There are quick choices for every 1, 2 or 3 hours, or you can set your own times.
Two steps. First, the Configure Water Intake window for 'Drink water': Measure in set to ml, Daily target 2000 ml, Step 250 ml, '8 steps: 0, 250, 500 … 2000 ml'. Second, the Set Reminder box, switched on, with quick choices Every 2h, Every 3h and Every 1h, and times 08:00, 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00 and 18:00.

Drink before the headache

If you also get that afternoon headache, the low focus, the sleepy feeling, try this for a week: do not count your water at the end of the day. Check it against the pace line, a few times a day, and catch up before you fall far behind.

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