My attempt to track my water bottle refills went off the rails

I decided to log every time I filled my Hydro Flask last month to hit 8 cups a day. But I kept forgetting to mark it down, so I ended up estimating, which made my whole spread look like a mess. After 3 days of this nonsense, I realized I'd spent more time fixing the layout than actually drinking water. Has anyone else given up on a tracker that seemed simple at first?

3 comments

3 Comments

verawhite10d ago

Ditched my bottle tracking after week one and did what cameronf88 did with the timer approach. I set a vibration alarm on my watch for every 90 minutes and just drink when it buzzes. No log, no spreadsheet, no guessing whether I hit some number. Works way better than chasing data points all day.

mila_brown1010d ago

Your full spreadsheet approach was doomed from the start because nobody logs every single refill without it becoming a second job. You could have just set a repeating alarm on your phone every two hours and drank whenever it went off. That's way simpler than wrestling with layouts and it keeps you actually hydrated.

cameronf8810d ago

Figured it out the hard way myself. I started tracking my coffee intake thinking I'd uncover some deep pattern, but after a week I had a half-baked spreadsheet with half of my morning cups just "guessed" and the rest blank. Ended up spending way more time fixing color-coded cells than actually drinking coffee. But then I set a simple recurring timer on my watch and it changed everything. No logging, no format wars, just three beeps a day and I drink. Your mileage may vary but for me, that gentle nudge works way better than any rigid system ever did.