Lucy Reminds Me to Drink
I didn’t think I’d ever be the kind of person who needed a water bottle to remind me to drink. But here we are.
Dehydration makes everything harder: thinking, moving, even staying patient. Miss a few glasses, and I feel it. The problem is, on a busy day, water is the first thing I forget. I’ll sit down with good intentions, get buried in work or family stuff, and suddenly it’s three in the afternoon and my bottle is still full.
That’s why I started using the Waterdrop LUCY Smart Cap. It’s a little device that screws onto the top of a bottle, and it does three things: it cleans the water with UV-C light, it tracks how much I drink, and it blinks gently to remind me when it’s been too long since my last sip. (No one paid me to write this. Lucy just invoices me in blinks whenever I slack off.)
How it works for me
Maybe the reminder light sounds silly, but it helps. That blink has saved me from more than one dehydration headache. I’ve caught myself mid-task thinking “let me just finish this paragraph first” only to notice the cap flashing and realize I’ve ignored my body for too long.
The tracking is surprisingly motivating, too. I like seeing the app show me exactly how much water I’ve had. Sometimes I’m ahead of my goal without realizing it, and sometimes it’s a reality check that a few sips don’t add up to a liter.
And the UV cleaning? It feels like an insurance policy. I mostly fill my bottle from filtered water at home, but it’s reassuring to know that if I’m traveling or out somewhere, I can trust what I’m drinking. Also, I hate the smell of an icky water bottle. (It won’t get rid of debris or anything though, you have to start with drinkable water.)
What I’ve noticed
The cap isn’t perfect, it won’t magically make you want to drink water if you hate it. You have to charge it regularly, and it only works with certain bottles. If you don’t like pairing things with apps, you’ll get annoyed fast. But the tradeoff is worth it for me. I also love that I can adjust for things like activity levels and high levels of heat.
Lucy, in her quiet blinking way, holds me to a standard I’d otherwise let slip.
Why it matters
Here’s where it connects to more than just water. In the same way I forget to drink, teams forget training. Leaders forget to pause before making a call. Parents forget to give themselves the same care they give their kids. None of us mean to, it just happens.
Resilience isn’t built in grand gestures. It’s built in small, repeated reinforcements. Lucy is a bottle that doesn’t let me get away with forgetting the basics, and that is exactly what keeps me steady.
The last sip
I don’t think everyone needs a smart cap on their water bottle. But I do think everyone needs some version of Lucy… a nudge, a reminder, a light blinking in the corner of your vision that says, “hey, take care of yourself before you crash.”
