Clocking in with caffeine - how your coffee habit could be hijacking your time
My journey with caffeine
Prompted by some posts by @suzyreading on Instagram the other week, where she reflected on boundaries with caffeine and is experimenting with removing it from her diet, I thought it might be interesting to explore in a bit more detail and share my story. As an ex-pharmacist, caffeine is something that I will have studied at university… but given that was over 20 years ago now, I had to do a little research for this blog post!!
I grew up drinking tea - predominately Earl Grey (with milk!!), from around age 7 or 8 years. My sister and I, along with our best friend Emma would often be found at the kitchen table in our house, after hours of being outside climbing trees, drinking cups of tea! Fast forward to my twenties, and I can remember serving my boyfriend a cup, and he hated the floweriness of it! And so when I ended up moving in with him, I switched to Tetley!
I can vividly remember drinking my first cup of coffee too. I had gone to a pharmaceutical manufacturer in England for an interview; I was hoping that they would sponsor my pharmacy pre-registration year. I didn’t even get asked if I drank coffee, they just poured me a cup… and I felt I needed to drink it. So I put in a few sugars, then some milk and did my best to look like I was enjoying it (I didn’t!).
It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I had my first barista-made coffee. I remember going into work to tell my colleagues about it, and they laughed at me when I said my first ‘proper coffee’ was a white chocolate mocha! Seemingly it didn’t count.
I graduated from white chocolate mocha to regular mocha to cappuccinos… and I finally felt like an adult. It’s interesting that by this point I had been married, had two children, divorced, was able to drive, owned a house and so on… and yet, drinking coffee made me feel like an adult!
I never drank loads of coffee; I had colleagues who would have multiple cups a day… I would only have 1 or 2 coffees although I did drink lots, and lots of (caffeinated) tea. I never really experienced the jittery feeling that I’ve heard friends talk about when they’ve had too much caffeine. Aside from one occasion in the US when I was travelling with work and I did drink around 4 or 5 cups of coffee to beat the jet lag, and I was a mess!! Never again!
Caffeine didn’t always agree with my gut either; I suppose I was always a bit careful due to my Crohn’s Disease.
Nowadays I don’t drink caffeinated tea or coffee. I do still eat chocolate, and very occasionally I’ll have a Diet Coke… but for the most part I’ll be on the decaf.
What is caffeine, and how does it impact our time?
Caffeine is a stimulant. We all know that caffeine can make us feel more awake and alert. It can help with focus and concentration, as it stimulates your nervous system and increases brain activity (although it’s likely to be short-lived… more on this below).
You’ll find caffeine in coffee, tea, energy drinks, some fizzy drinks and chocolate. Coffee is one of the most widely consumed drinks in the world. In 2021/2022, nearly 176 million 60 kilogram bags of coffee were consumed worldwide (source).
It was once believed that coffee caused heart disease, and cancer too. However, it’s been shown now that this isn’t the case. Coffee actually has protective properties on the heart, and is a source of dietary fibre (source).
The impact of caffeine on sleep
However, what a lot of people don’t realise is the half-life of caffeine.
A half-life of a drug is the time it takes for your body to metabolise the drug and eliminate half of the dose that you consumed. Caffeine has a half-life of about five to six hours for the average adult. So if you were to drink a cup of coffee at midday, then 6 hours later, at around 6pm, there will still be half of the caffeine from that cup of coffee in your system. Another 6 hours later, at midnight, the dose will have halved again, so you will have a quarter of the caffeine from your midday cup of coffee still in your system.
I’ve found that if I have a cup of caffeinated coffee at 10am, it does in fact impact my getting to sleep at 10pm that night. Which might seem crazy to some, but it’s true. So I find it much more beneficial to stick with decaf coffee, because I typically will fall asleep without any issues (although my current bout of tinnitus is hampering my getting to sleep a little!).
Not only does caffeine affect your ability to get to sleep, it can also impact your sleep quality. so you might think that you don’t have an issue with caffeine because you can get to sleep ok, but it’s very possible you won’t be as restored by sleep as you would without the caffeine. If you have a smart watches it will likely tell you what sort of sleep you’ve had, so you can start to look at the data as you perhaps experiment with the timings of coffee in relation to your bedtime.
“It’s important to understand that even if you are able to fall asleep after recently consuming caffeine, you may not be sleeping as deeply or getting as much high-quality sleep as you would otherwise.”
-Dr. Dustin Cotliar, Sleep Physician (source)
A caffeine crash
As well as the impact on sleep, there’s the potential energy crash that you might experience after that initial hit of caffeine.
Signs of an energy crash can be headaches, difficulty concentrating or irritability.
It becomes a vicious cycle… you’re tired and so you have a coffee, then you experience a crash and so you drink more coffee… and then it impacts your sleep (even though you think it doesn’t), and so you wake tired and sluggish… and drink more coffee to counteract it.
As a time management coach, I believe that how we are fuelling our bodies, and what we consume is really important when it comes to our energy… which in turn impacts our time. It’s one of my 8 P’s of conscious time management - P for Plate - which is mindful consumption (nutrition, caffeine, alcohol, media + tech).
Decaf coffee
Decaffeination removes around 97% of the caffeine, so there’s still some caffeine that remains. There are a few ways that the caffeine can be removed, one of which involves the use of chemicals, which I’ve read is deemed safe by the FDA (source). There aren’t any regulations specifying the maximum amount of caffeine coffee can contain in order to be classed as decaffeinated (source). Whereas with decaffeinated tea, by law, tea that’s been labelled as being decaffeinated should contain less than 2.5% of its original caffeine level (source).
Most of the data suggests that decaffeinated coffee has the same health benefits as caffeinated (source).
Caffeine alternatives to boost your energy
If you’re not having caffeine to boost your energy, what are the alternatives?
Drinking plenty of water (something I need to do better at myself!)
Exercise regularly
Fuel your body with nutritious foods
Practice deep breathing
Take regular breaks
Prioritise good quality sleep
Listen to some upbeat music
Try mindfulness to reduce stress and increase focus
Let me know in the comments if you’re going to experiment with your caffeine intake. I’d love to hear from you.
And if you’d like some support making sustainable changes in your life, please do reach out. I’ve got space for 1-to-1 time management coaching clients right now, and I will be opening the doors again for my signature group coaching programme at the end of summer.