It's drink-o'clock

A fellow coach related to me this week that she met an executive client who avoids drinking water at work because she ‘doesn’t have time to go to the toilet’.

What on earth? I simply do not accept that any job is too important to take precedence over basic human functioning. I’m sure that even the remarkable neurosurgeons Wirginia Maixner and Alison Wray, who worked for over 27 hours to perform the miraculous separation of conjoined twins Trishna and Krishna in Melbourne last week would have factored this into their schedule. (I can tell you now that if someone was operating on my brain, and needed to go to the toilet, I’d rather they take a break and avail themselves of the facilities in order to concentrate!)

We occasionally read stories about employers timing toilet breaks, or asking workers to clock off to use the bathroom, and thankfully such Dickensian employment practices are rare. When a policy like this is self-inflicted, though – when workers choose to deprive themselves of hydration because they ‘haven’t got time’ for the process of cleansing their system, regulating their body temperature and providing the means for nutrients to travel to their organs - there is something seriously amiss, either with their workload, their time management and productivity or their perspective.

Start today:

• Drink 6 – 8 glasses of water today – not just for what it provides your body, but as a reminder to take regular breaks. Rather than having a bottle of water on your desk, set an alarm to remind you to get up and go and refill your glass every hour. If your job is sedentary, this will get your circulation going and give you a break from screen-based work.

• Have lunch! If you’re ‘in meetings all day’, ask yourself why you accepted this schedule, knowing that it did not provide time for lunch. Be responsible for your health at work and assertive in protecting the provisions that you establish in this regard.