Pre-fill several glasses of water in advance, meal-prep style, to make your water visible and remind yourself to drink through the day.

noli's read

The move here (pre-filling several glasses of water in advance) taps a well-identified behavior-change lever: the most commonly cited reason people don't drink enough is simply forgetting to. A small randomized pilot (Reeves et al., 2023, Journal of Exercise and Nutrition) gave one group of women a 64oz bottle marked with time points and messages, and daily water intake rose about 29% over five weeks, with urine markers confirming better hydration in part of the group. A study in kidney-stone patients (H2OPal connected bottle, targeted reminders) found the same pattern: after three months, 'automatic' drinking increased significantly and 'forgetting to drink' dropped as a self-reported barrier. These are small pilot trials, not meta-analyses, so the evidence grade is modest — but the mechanism (making water visible and ready-to-drink cuts down on forgetting) is coherent and carries no downside. Verdict: holds up, though the evidence is still preliminary.

the sources

No named source held this one up — that absence is part of the verdict.