For the behavior I chose to change, I decided to monitor how much I drank water. I don’t think I need to drink more water, but actually the opposite. Maybe it’s a funny problem, but I’ve noticed throughout my relationship that I use the bathroom *a lot* more than my partner. Drinking a lot of water isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does get annoying getting up to go to the bathroom so often… but also, I think I’m just a thirsty guy…. well, I decided to monitor it, to find out if it’s because I drink too much water, or if I just have a smaller bladder than my partner, or if my partner just doesn’t drink enough water in comparison.
I logged Friday through Sunday, so that way I would get a control day where I wasn’t with my partner, since I spent the weekend with him. I set my interval for one hour, to log what I was doing at the time. I also kept a log of how many times I used the restroom. At first, I had considered logging the habit (drinking water) itself, but I thought that explicitly observing every single time I drank water would lead to inaccurate results for a few reasons. Firstly, because drinking water is such a unnoticeable and integrated habit in my day-to-day, I expected to forget to log every occurance. Secondly, there wasn’t a good standard for each occurrence–in other words, how much water I drank each time. If I logged every occurrence, but some were sips while others were chugs, it would end up in a misrepresented data set. Thirdly, I felt like being observed that closely, even by myself, would definitely cause me to change my behavior on how often I drank.
Thus, I instead logged whenever I 1) filled my water bottle, or 2) went to the bathroom. On the weekend when I was home with my partner, I additionally logged when he filled his water bottle, and when he went to the bathroom as well, because I wanted to do a comparison at the end. A note I feel is important to add is that we have the same water bottles but in different colors, and also that we only drink water from our bottles because we’re too lazy to get up and down to fill a cup of water throughout the day.
Overall, the logging felt much easier and less intrusive because I set the interval for an hour instead of 15 minutes. I was able to go about my day without feeling constantly interrupted, and I was able to do my tasks/activities without the study constantly being on the forefront of my mind, which I had worried would overly change the behavior I was trying to study. I’m also pleased that I went with more realistic metrics to track, as I actually remembered to make note of when I filled my bottle etc, compared to every sip of water that I had over the weekend.
Examining my data brought genuinely interesting results. I had the most bottle refills / bathroom trips on Friday, followed by Saturday and then Sunday. Combining this with the log of what I was doing, I realized something pretty fascinating about my water-drinking behavior: I drink water when I’m bored. I’m a pretty fidgety person (this is relevant information I promise) and like to always feel engaged; for example, I like to color in drawings during class, which lets me do something with my hands while still keeping my attention and ears free to pay attention and listen. I suppose a more accurate description is that I get easily understimulated.
Looking at my log, I realized that I spent most of my day on Friday sitting at my desk working, and I believe that has a direct relation to drinking water because I get bored/understimulated doing my work and take a little sip of water. Write a sentence, sip. Mind drifts off, sip. Finish an assignment, sip. I was essentially constantly sipping on my water to give my mind/hands something extra to do, and to distract from the horrors of monotony (read: staring at my assignments). In contrast, on Saturday, I was at home relaxing and playing games with my partner. Although I had a similar level of physical activity as Friday, i.e. none, my attention was much better kept active by games, so I wasn’t constantly/mindlessly picking up my water bottle and sipping from it. And on Sunday, we went to do a bunch of errands, which meant we weren’t home for most of the day.
Even though I bring my bottle with me everywhere, I drank the least water on Sunday despite that day having the most physical activity (walking around the grocery store, etc). I believe this is largely due to my bottle being in my bag and out of sight, so I didn’t get to automatically pick up my bottle throughout the day. I forgot to drink water because it wasn’t right in front of me, and I had to be mentally present for our errands, which both kept my attention and prevented me from thinking of other things (like being thirsty).
Overall, I learned that I tend to drink more water when my bottle is in view in front of me, when I’m doing boring or dreaded tasks where my mind wanders a lot, and that I mindlessly sip water. I tend to not drink as much water when I’m out and about, despite the normal trend being to drink more water when one is getting more physical activity. I think if I were to do this again, I would ask my partner to help keep track of specifically when I drink water, instead of just bottle refills and bathroom trips. I still think that trying to log every instance of that would bias my water-drinking-frequency, but I think it would have been cool to have that data since It could confirm or deny my hypothesis regarding mindlessly sipping my water when I’m sitting at my desk.
(Also, I do in fact drink significantly more water than my partner.)
