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Comment by fruitbatsh | Hacker News Reader

addiction or not, my code is more composed and creative under the influence of coffee

Have you taken two week breaks without any coffee to compare? If the article is correct, after two weeks you should have kicked off the addiction. If you're comparing day 1 with coffee vs day 2 without coffee, you might be falling into a trap.

I was not drinking coffee until half a year ago. I completed my assignments, but it was slow process, i had trouble concentrating, got often distracted from the task. Staying awake during most of the days was the hardest "work". Then, after reading some articles on tea and coffee effects decided to try it out. The result was impressive. I was like 4x more productive, could solve complicated tasks and not get distracted by anything during whole day, only drinking 1 cup in the morning. Then I thought maybe I just got better, and tried it without coffee again. Result - similar performance as before coffee, except some improvements in the fields I was able to make while under the influence of coffee.

How interesting! I don't drink coffee but the few times I've tried it, I perform much worse than otherwise. The results are often like the stay-up-late-and-code results. I have to correct and redo loads of work when I come off the coffee.

Interesting. Probably the effect differs from person to person.

This works for a period but eventually fades to the point where you take in caffeine just to reach the level of performance you had before you used it.

The quality of work is often different as well, in my case it's more of a pushing to get things done at any costs, without refinement or nuance.

BTW- If you google "caffiene brain blood flow" you'll find out that it reduces blood flow to the brain by 20%. That can't be good...

> you'll find out that it reduces blood flow to the brain by 20%

... if you're a preterm infant

Actually it applies to everyone who consumes it, and the body has a limited ability to compensate for it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19219847

Firstly: One personal anecdote means nothing.

But what I really want to say is that what you're saying doesn't work in the long run. If you never drink coffee, it can be used as drug to help concentrate. But when drinking it daily, as the article states, your body will adjust and now you need coffee just to get to the old level without coffee.

>Firstly: One personal anecdote means nothing

It's the only thing that matters to the person in question.

If you mean "matters" as in allows them to share their emotional experience then sure, of course.

If you mean "matters" as in allows you to gain knowledge about what actually happened to you? Then it means nothing, from whichever perspective you care to choose.

I've noticed similar but more subdued effects when going on and off coffee. I don't feel any physical effects from coffee (as long as I stay below about 3 cups), so I often take long breaks from it when it simply isn't convenient for me to drink it. I've noticed that when I don't drink coffee, not only do I have trouble focusing, but I'm less likely to exert the effort to try new things or put the effort into understanding difficult subjects. I also feel the same trouble even staying awake that you noted. I get significantly more done when I incorporate coffee into my day.

Another thing that works for me is formulating a plan of action before I have any coffee, and then drinking it when I start. The caffeine and the ritual put me in the right mindset to get real work done.

Up until you start to phosphoresce...then it's time to cut back.

Perhaps your addiction is influencing your perception of your coding performance. The best way to test this is to find an impartial third party to compare your caffeine-code to code you wrote before you started drinking coffee (as in, not the code on day you DIDN'T drink coffee).

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