Coffee: probably one of the best tools for developers!!!
This post is another experiment I did for the last month. For 30 days, I stopped drinking Coffee.
The first 3 days were hard. I had a lot of headache everyday but afterwards it was fine.
I was not a daily coffee drinker until 2007 when the job sent me to Italy for 6 months to help a team ship a DS game.
It was an amazing experience (friends, culture, cities, foods, ...).
At the office, there was a coffee machine with a special feature:
This is similar to an usb key but instead of filling data, we just need to fill it with some
Euros and we can use it later to pay for coffee. No need to carry money.
Result
I like any kind of coffee (no sugar, no milk) but I prefer espresso.
Usually, I will drink between 2-8 espressos a day during the morning until 2-4pm maximum.
Here is the result I found after 30 days without coffee:
Pros
- Better Sleep
- Less tired at the end of the day
- Same level energy across the day
Cons
- The first 3 days with a lot of headache
- I like the smell of the coffee
I heard that it needs 21 days to change a habit. After 30 days, I don't have any temptation to drink coffee anymore.
Drinking espresso is part of my pleasures of life so I will restart drinking coffee but I will limit myself to 0-4 espressos a day
and no more coffee after noon.
Caffeine life time:
"The time it takes for the caffeine level to drop by half is an average of five hours. After ten to 15 hours there is no longer enough left to have an impact."
"A half-life of five hours is the average for the population. But for some it can be as little as a half hour. Amongst those whose bodies are slower in this respect it can take up to ten hours. For them, a cup of coffee at noon could cause problems falling asleep at 10 or 11 in the evening. They have so much caffeine left in their bodies they are still being stimulated by it."
[Source]
This website thehealthytreehouse contains a lot of information about coffee:
caffeine by type of coffee, coffee beans / roasts, brewing methods, ...
Italy
When I wrote this post, I looked again at my Italy pictures (2007-2008) and I selected my 5 top pictures:
It's not the first time I stopped coffee and it will not be the last one.
I like to experiment (e.g BlockOctober) and
I'm planning to do at least another 1-2 experiments this year.
