PRODUCTIVITY ROAD TEST
Upping your liquid intake to boost your brainpower
When it comes to imbibing liquid treats through the working day, there surely is an internationally accepted excitement ranking. Coffee rates highly before 8am; juice feels like a healthy alternative at almost any time; and beer o'clock is so entrenched at the tail end of the week it's almost earned its own time zone. While water, well, it's hard to be overly enthusiastic about good old H₂O as a tool for getting one's self through a long "to do" list more efficiently.
But the rub is: we all should be welcoming water into our workday with a bit more excitement. Many scientists say we'd experience at least marginal levels of cognitive improvement if we'd only just drink the right levels of water. By simply upping my water intake, I should see improvements to my short-term and long-term memory, give the kidneys a flush (always nice when one's feeling sluggish – usually around a Wednesday), and feel like a more virtuous adult who's not letting the need to sit at a desk negatively impact my health and wellbeing. Admittedly, the latter hasn't been proven in randomised controlled trials, but my own experiments have found a strong correlation.
The problem is, despite the best intentions, each year as the weather warms up I'm faced with the same reality. The volume of water that kept my brain functioning optimally throughout winter needs to be upped substantially for me to work equally efficiently during the warmer months.
It's clear that improving my water intake at work requires a plan. Just like some workers factor in smokos, and others can't live without Facebook breaks, I begin trialling water breaks.
Given a lack of agreement about just how much water one needs, I decide to stick to the old (possibly unproven) eight glasses a day.
But, as I soon find out, the hard part is boosting my brainpower with more water isn't reliant only on what I'm putting in, but what beverages I chose to decline between 9 and 5.
Faced with a day in front of a computer, my heart skips at the idea of a steaming cuppa but remains stubbornly disinterested in the idea of a cold glass of water.
The answer seems to be "make it difficult not to drink it", so I start by focusing on visual cues.
A full, clear glass bottle and a cup, positioned in an annoyingly inconvenient place on my desk, quickly become utilised much more frequently than my initial strategy of saying, "Hmm, I should get up and grab a drink now".
Still, it's not enough. Turns out I need more robust strategies. Inspired by drinking days of old, I up the stakes and turn my workplace into a private, clean-living drinking game. Boss wants something done on an unrealistic timeframe? Skull one glass of water. Computer crashes? Down another glass. Phone rings at the point when I'm on an almost certain breakthrough on a task? Drink up. Within days, I've turned the impossible into the inevitable and it's true, my brain seems to be better off for it. The only question now is, how much water is too much?
Sue White is a freelance writer who sees the value in choosing water over almost any other beverage. Almost. @suewhitewriter
