I love smoking cigarettes. The rush of sharpened concentration. The bitter stained tongue taste. The Rock’n’Roll of it all. Hell, If they weren’t addictive, I’d smoke them all the time.

These are the sort of hard-hitting insights that appear to me in the steamy mist of the bath – bubbled or otherwise. You can naturally imagine my surprise when a friend told me his university peer confessed to an absurd ablution habit. Upon being quizzed on why he was so appalling at responding to texts, the mite murmured, almost miserably, that he spent upwards of four hours tub-side a day. Why? “It’s the only place I can get any work done.”

“Outlook notifications are what comes to mind at the mention of coitus interruptus, and now I’m meant to entertain them even while loving my loofa?”

Incroyable! Mad! But there is something mesmerically memorable about the concept. For starters – is bathtub-essay-bashing some sort of insane commitment to productivity, or its inverse: an aesthete excess to agitate even Louis XIV? Rubber ducky diligence or decadence? And does it even work?

Fortunately, my current student digs have only bathtubs – which I have embraced with a 1960s hair-rolling, cigarette-smoking gusto. The lab for this experiment is primed. However, until now, my dips have been a refuge away from work – a soak of solitude. In a world where my work has wormed its way into my bedside, did I really want my laptop accompanying my lathering too? Outlook notifications are what comes to mind at the mention of coitus interruptus, and now I’m meant to entertain them even while loving my loofa?

Firstly, there are practical considerations. As biscuit-crumbed as my computer is, I doubt it would benefit from a soak, or even soggy paws woman-handling it. Hmmm. One MDF laden trip back from B&Q and I have begun to construct a work-from-bathroom contraption. It balances precariously on a wicker laundry basket. The thrill is palpable. Who says Cambridge life is a lessened university experience?

I have additionally garnished my set up with a martini. No olives haunting the gyp, so I’ve improvised with capers and a generous splash of brine. Let’s just say there’s a reason the caper martini is not a stalwart staple of the Soho scene. Further, the steam has carried the caper scent with great enthusiasm. I feel as though I’m stepping into a sardine simulator.

Let’s ignore my inadvertent Dennis the Menace-style bath bombs and get down to bubbly brass tub tax: can you focus while fricasseeing?

“Push past the anxiety that your Apple product will become a product of Atlantis and you’ll find an odd flow taking over you”

Yes! Surprisingly. Push past the anxiety that your Apple product will become a product of Atlantis and you’ll find an odd flow taking over you. I suppose it all makes sense: baths aid in de-stressing and in getting your blood circulation all excited. Legendary chess Grandmaster and World Champion Bobby Fischer was seen as unusual for a multitude of increasingly unpleasant reasons. But his commitment to athletics – despite his cerebral chess playing – attracted much press in the ’60s. In conversation with talk show titan Dick Cavett (I know) he claimed he exercised with such vigour that, during 6-hour sedentary chess matches, his cardiovascular system was primed to pump blood to his brain. Is bathing the shortcut?

The bath also forces your shot-out limbic system to calm down. Then again, the typing tizzy of essay-writing spikes whatever thing produces cortisol. So, on that front, maybe the bath is only a net-neutral space – algebraic cancellation between strain and relaxation? Either way, the sudden return of serotonin to my slovenly student body is welcome.

If you’d like to try this at home, here are some words from the wise (and washed!):

• Careful with the temp. Don’t Icarus too close to the soporific side-effects of a nice boiling bath.
• You will hit peak flow and then suddenly realise that the water has cooled. Splash back in some scalding waves, and then promptly have your computer die on you. Charge ahead!
• You’re going to want to be neurotic about wet paws on nice and expensive electric-abacuses (this is what my boomer father calls laptops). Keep your towel behind your head, as both a pillow and a tool, to occasionally dry your ever-pruning fingers.

Might I further suggest you transition from a solid hour of steamrolling work to a proper sudsy sulk? Anyone who’s ever had the displeasure of knowing me knows that I’d hate to advocate for anything even resembling hard work. Clatter at your keyboard, quaff some wine, and then allow your laptop to return to its umbilical cable to recharge – and let yourself recharge.