For most of us the morning begins and ends with coffee -- it is the drink that signals our animal brain that it's time to wake up. But what would happen if you gave up coffee -- especially if you'd been drinking it since the age of 10.
That was the question asked by Robin Barooah, a coffee addict who had attempted to go "cold turkey" on several previous occasions but always succumbed to the withdrawal symptoms and pervasive belief that he needed coffee to concentrate.
But over concerns that mood swings and crashes were becoming a problem, this time he took a scientific approach, slowly weaning himself off coffee in small increments between April and July of this year. He would eliminate coffee altogether when he got down to half a shot glass each morning.
And as Barooah worked to eliminate variables in coffee -- the grind,
age of beans and water temperature -- he was also busy measuring his productivity before and after the start of the experiment. What he found is that coffee might not be the key to getting things done around
the office:
Causality is a complex issue.Barooah has promised more research in an attempt to identify whether his ability to maintain concentration is related to something else or just a factor of his existence sans coffee. So if you were able to focus throughout this entire post, give yourself some credit because it apparently wasn't the coffee.Obviously this is an n=1 experiment and I am intentionally doing other
things that may well be improving my concentration, but one thing is
very clear; the amount of time I spend concentrating has not
deteriorated since I quit coffee, so I can easily reject the hypothesis
"I need coffee to help me concentrate."
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I drink about 6-8 cups of coffee every morning and pretty much have every day for 3-4 years. There are still some days where due to severe laziness, I don't get any coffee at all. On those days, I feel sluggish until after lunch, but I wouldn't say it affects my concentration or ability to get things done at work.. So I guess for me, it is (psuedo?) energy not concentration. That and I just love coffee and one would have to pry it from my cold, dead hands to get me to stop drinking it.
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