Har du nogensinde oplevet at komme igennem en dag med voldsom hovedpine og så huske, at du glemte at drikke kaffe? Du er ikke den eneste. Der er et meget stort antal mennesker, der forsøger at holde op med kaffe. En simpel Google -søgning giver et sammenligneligt antal resultater for "stop kaffe", "stop med alkohol" og "stop med stoffer". Imponerende^(Impressive), ret? Alligevel er der ingen, der er så opmærksomme på denne. Og mens de andre 2 vaner får skylden af ​​samfundet, er kaffe faktisk godkendt. Det er derfor, jeg i denne artikel vil beskrive, hvordan jeg endte med at beslutte mig for at holde op med at drikke kaffe, min metode til at gøre det og den indflydelse, det havde på min søvn og energiniveau. Da jeg er en kvantificeret selvnørd med over 9 måneders detaljerede data om mig selv, er jeg i stand til at korrelere en række vitale tegn til de eksperimenter, jeg laver på mig selv. Lad os komme igang:

Min historie med at drikke kaffe

Jeg begyndte at drikke kaffe i 9. klasse. Jeg deltog i matematik-olympiaderne, og jeg brugte mange nætter på at prøve at undersøge matematiske begreber og løse problemer. Hvorfor gjorde jeg det? Af flere grunde. Først^(First) og fremmest havde jeg selskab: Jeg var ikke den eneste online som en natteravn, der forsøgte at løse komplicerede matematiske problemer. For det andet^(Second) var mit gymnasium i gang med nogle renoveringer, og vi var planlagt til at gå til undervisning om eftermiddagen og om aftenen. Det var den perfekte undskyldning for at holde sig vågen det meste af natten, ikke?

Mod slutningen af ​​min gymnasietid blev tingene værre. I vinteren af ​​mit sidste år forsøgte jeg at søge ind på flere amerikanske universiteter, mens jeg holdt alt andet sammen. Jeg endte med at lave en hel måned med 4-timers nætter, og kirsebæret på toppen var et 48-timers maraton for at afslutte alt og få ansøgningerne sendt til tiden.

Så kom universitetet^(University) . Vi ville blive sent oppe og læse ting, som vi var interesserede i, nogle gange festede eller prøvede at proppe alt inden en eksamen. Du bør besøge vores universitets klasseværelser om aftenen før eksamen. Du vil blive overrasket over, hvor mange mennesker du vil finde der sover (arr.. jeg mente at studere). I de dage, ville jeg drikke kaffe tankeløst uden overhovedet at bekymre mig om at tælle kopperne på nogen måde. Desuden er kaffe billigt, ikke? Du kan få en god kop kaffe mange steder i Bukarest^(Bucharest) for omkring 50¢ til $1.

Under mine universitetsstudier begyndte jeg at arbejde sammen med en gammel ven, som lige var blevet forfremmet til teamleder i en global virksomhed. Det gjorde jeg naturligvis på det hårdeste tidspunkt i læseplanen, det sidste år, hvor alle andre kolleger sagde deres job op. Det var så dejligt at være en badass, ikke? Jeg endte med at arbejde 90-100 timers arbejdsuger og nogle gange ikke se dagens lys. Også selvom deltidsjobbet i sig selv tog en lille del af det.

Så blev jeg færdig med universitetet , og jeg besluttede mig hurtigt for at tage en ph.d. Jeg tænkte ved mig selv, at det at få lidt løn ville sikre, at jeg kunne arbejde med, hvad jeg ville, samtidig med at jeg fik løn. Lidt vidste jeg! Jeg var nødt til at knokle for at give plads til forskning, mens jeg udførte mine andre opgaver (at være involveret i europæiske projekter og undervisning). Når jeg følte, at jeg ikke kunne blive ved mere, var der altid kaffe tæt på. En troværdig ven!

Endelig blev jeg så frustreret over den akademiske verden, at jeg sluttede mig til en tech startup. Mens jeg oprindeligt ønskede at droppe ud af ph.d. , besluttede jeg at afslutte det og gik igennem 6 måneder i træk med at arbejde non-stop, dag og nat, weekend eller hverdag. På dette tidspunkt var tingene virkelig ved at komme ud af kontrol. Drikker 4 kopper om dagen (og folk, især fra USA, fortalte mig gentagne gange, hvor stærk rumænsk kaffe er). Og supplere det med masser af chokolade.

Og det blev ikke nemmere bagefter. Så snart jeg var færdig med min ph.d. , endte vi med at få erhvervet og sendt et massivt projekt på samme tid. Og så videre.

På et tidspunkt besluttede jeg, at mit forhold til kaffe skulle ændres.

Motivation - Hvad udløste min beslutning^{(My Decision)} om at holde op med at drikke kaffe^{(Drinking Coffee)} ?

Der er en hel flok af os derude, som er frustrerede over den måde, kaffen overtog vores liv. Tag et kig omkring dig, mens du er i supermarkedet eller i indkøbscentret, og du vil begynde at indse størrelsen af ​​kaffeindustrien. Vær^(Pay) meget opmærksom på sektionen med koffeinholdige produkter i supermarkedet, eller til dine kæres daglige rutine. Hvordan starter deres dag? Med kaffe, ikke?

Jeg besluttede at holde op med kaffen, da jeg indså følgende fakta:

• At glemme det, eller prøve ikke at drikke det på en bestemt dag, gav mig en virkelig hård tid. Så det er enten jeg holder dette stof i min krop hele tiden eller slet ikke.
• Jeg brugte den til at dæmpe de signaler, min krop forsøgte at sende mig. Når den ville fortælle mig, at den er træt, ville jeg holde kæften med noget kaffe (og måske noget chokolade).
• Mit forhold til kaffe var blevet forringet gennem årene og blev ikke bedre. Det forblev ikke engang konstant. Der skulle en eller to kaffe til bare for at "komme i gang" uden at have nogen reel effekt.

Stop med kaffe, genopfundet

Jeg indrømmer, at jeg ikke undersøgte nogen metoder på det tidspunkt. Måske havde jeg bare en skør tillid til, at jeg kan klare det selv. Når jeg ser tilbage, var jeg i bedste fald naiv. Fordi et mislykket forsøg vil dramatisk mindske din chance for at holde op i fremtiden. Med hensyn til mad betyder det: Jo flere fejlslagne diæter, jo større er chancerne for aldrig at blive tynd.

Alt, hvad jeg havde i tankerne, er et vejledende princip, som jeg anvender til de fleste af mine livsforbedringer: lav små, gradvise forbedringer, der er bæredygtige og måler, før du handler.^{(All I had in mind is one guiding principle that I apply to most of my life improvements: make small, gradual improvements that are sustainable and measure before acting.)}

Da jeg havde besluttet mig for at holde helt op med kaffen, var jeg allerede ved at skære ned på det. De foregående måneder var fyldt med cola^(Coke) og kaffe, og jeg var ved at blive bekymret. Jeg begyndte at måle først og opdagede, at jeg drak omkring 30 kaffer i et 2-ugers interval, og de fleste af dem på hverdage. Efter at have set tallene var perspektivet for at komme til nul ret skræmmende.

Nøglen på dette tidspunkt var at betragte det som en langsigtet proces. Et år har 52 uger. Hvis jeg fandt en måde at mindske antallet af kaffe med 1 hver anden uge, vil jeg være færdig inden for et år! Selvfølgelig ville det kræve disciplinen at indtaste data selv, for der var ingen Vessyl dengang. Men min personlige teori er, at givet en god nok fordel, vil folk foretage dataindtastningen selv i stedet for at lede efter en automatiseret måde.

I litteratur, der er relateret til rygestop, hedder det, jeg forsøgte at gøre, "gradvis reduktion". Der er flere tankegange, og de er hovedsageligt opdelt i denne metode (eller lignende) og stopper helt brat ("kold tyrker"). Gradvis reduktion og dens derivater har vist sig at være meget mere effektive i forsøg (ved at måle tilbagefald efter 6 måneder eller 1 år).

Det tog mig i alt 8 uger at holde op med kaffen. Og til sidst havde jeg den ultimative test: at rejse til USA og tilbage om 5 dage til en konference - og ikke drikke kaffe! Jeg bestod denne med glans, selv om den var hård, og jeg tror, ​​at det lykkedes mig at komme lettere igennem jetlag på grund af manglen på kaffe.

Mine spurter for at stoppe med kaffe

Jeg er softwareingeniør og nærmer mig næsten alt med et ingeniørperspektiv. Ved at lære af den agile metodik nærmede jeg mig at holde op med kaffe i 2-ugers spurter. Her vil jeg give et kort overblik over mine spurter. Det tog mig i alt 4 spurter fra det øjeblik, jeg besluttede mig for at holde op til det - omkring 56 dage:

Sprint #1 (March 17th - March 30th) — only measured the coffee I drank. Result: 28 cups.

Sprint #2 (March 31st - April 13th) — only measured the coffee I drank. Result: 26 cups.

Sprint #3 (April 14th - April 27th) — målte kun den kaffe, jeg drak. Resultat: 26 kopper og en kæmpe hovedpine på den sidste dag ( 27. april^{(April 27th)} ), fordi jeg havde glemt at drikke kaffe. Det var her, jeg virkelig besluttede at holde op.

Sprint #4 (April 28th - May 11th) — added the goal of drinking a maximum of 20 coffees. I was helped by the fact that I visited London between May 1st-May 4th, so I did not really have to wake up to an alarm clock during a few of those days. I ended up getting by on one coffee per day during my London visit, and on 2 daily coffees for most of the other days.

Sprint #5 (May 12th - May 25th) — I realised that my previous goal was too aggressive and highly dependent on context. I decided to improve my previous goal only by a little and set it to a maximum of 17 coffees. In the first week I drank my coffee only during weekdays, and I was struck by a nasty cold in the second week. That prompted me to rest more in order to get through it, and I barely reached my goal. This proved to be context-dependent again.

Sprint #6 (May 26th - June 8th) — changed my goal again to drinking only 14 coffees and I ended drinking only 10. I was away at the seaside with my wife and friends in the June 7th-June 9th period, so that helped a bit with my mental dependency as well. I was very encouraged by the fact that I was managing to be productive during the day even without coffee, as my comment from May 28th reads: "productive workday with 0 coffee. YAY!".

Sprint #7 (June 9th - June 22nd) — during this sprint I drank my last coffee in the first day (June 9th), and decided to go cold turkey at this point. I had gathered enough momentum and I had a very good test coming up in the next week, so I took the plunge. The most difficult part of this sprint was that while at the conference in USA, I was feeling groggy all the time and they only had black tea or green tea at best, which I tried to avoid at all costs. However, I over-compensated for my tiredness (an average of about 4 hours of sleep a night, including sleeping on a plane) with eating a lot of junk food. Even though I successfully reached my coffee goal at the end of the sprint, I did it at the cost of other health-related aspects: gained 2 kg (4.4 lbs) and was unable to find the mental energy to log my food.

Sådan fungerer en sprint

Først^(First) og fremmest tjekker jeg min sprints dashboard (normalt et Google-regneark^{(Google Spreadsheet)} ) hver morgen i min daglige rutine. Jeg lavede adgangsbarrieren virkelig lav ved at placere mine data i et regneark, fordi jeg vidste, at min morgenrutine meget nemt kan blive forstyrret af weekender og ture. Bare det at se på målet og den aktuelle fremgang vil gøre mig bevidst resten af ​​dagen om, hvad jeg skal være opmærksom på.

Mens jeg gradvist går videre gennem spurten, har jeg naturligvis en tendens til at blive mere ambitiøs mod slutningen for at nå mit mål. Det er her, det er virkelig vigtigt at have mindre aggressive mål – det bliver nemmere at kæmpe for at nå dem, og det vil være mere sandsynligt, at de kan nås.

Mod slutningen af ​​spurten begynder jeg at tænke over målene for den næste. Jeg havde normalt 2-3 mål for en sprint, og normalt ville et af dem være relateret til vægt (fordi jeg tabte mig på det tidspunkt).

Efter hver sprint ville jeg have et lille sprint tilbageblik, for at forstå, hvorfor jeg nåede (eller undlod at nå) mine mål, og hvordan de skulle gribes an for at gå videre.

Jeg forsøger at undgå at have mere end 3 mål for en spurt, fordi jeg har svært ved at fokusere på så mange resultater. Det, der virker bedst, er sandsynligvis kun at have ét mål, men det kræver en grad af tålmodighed, som mange mennesker (inklusive mig selv) ikke har.

Forbedrer det^{(Does Quitting Coffee Improve)} din søvnkvalitet^(Sleep) at stoppe med kaffe ?

Jeg var ret spændt på at grave mine søvndata frem fra min BodyMedia og se, om der er nogen længerevarende forbedringer i min søvnkvalitet efter at have holdt op med kaffen. Min konklusion er, at der er, men de blev forstyrret af, at jeg lavede andre vigtige livsændringer (som at ændre karrierevejen). Desuden har jeg "kun" omkring 8 måneders data om mig selv. Og det kan virke som meget, men når du vil prøve at knuse det, vil du bemærke, at du har brug for meget mere.

Til dette formål opfandt jeg en søvnscore for mig selv, der er gennemsnittet af følgende 4 målinger, som jeg kalder "sammensat søvnscore":

• Søvnresultat^(Sleep) for hele natten (procentdel af den tid, jeg lå i sengen, hvor jeg faktisk sov).
• Søvnresultat^(Sleep) for den første time (det skyldes, at jeg plejede at have problemer med at falde i søvn; jeg er en hyperaktiv person, og det hjalp heller ikke at drikke kaffe).
• Tid til at falde i søvn (antal minutter det tager at falde i søvn). Dette er ikke nøjagtigt, fordi sensoren ikke kan skelne mellem, om jeg ser en film, eller om jeg kæmper for at falde i søvn. I fremtiden vil jeg tænke på en måde at måle det på.
• Antal^(Number) søvnintervaller registreret af BodyMedia (eller i søvnsprog - antallet af kast og vendinger).

Hver af disse metrics blev normaliseret til 0-100, og de blev beregnet som gennemsnit. Jeg gjorde det samme for antallet af kaffe (multipliceret med 33, for mens jeg loggede dem, drak jeg ikke mere end 3 kaffe om dagen), og jeg sammenlignede dem i følgende graf:

Grafen viser en stigning i søvnkvaliteten (den røde graf) frem mod juli^(July) og begyndelsen af ​​august . Det efterfølges af et åbenlyst dyk, fordi jeg skiftede job, hvilket er stressende for alle. Som du kan se, er min søvnscore nu meget mere stabil, og den er oftere og oftere over 75.

Til søvn brugte jeg det glidende gennemsnit (en matematisk formel, hvor de ældre værdier betyder mindre end de nyere værdier), fordi jeg prøvede bedre at se de langsigtede tendenser. Først var jeg skuffet over, at der ikke var nogen klar forbedring opad. Men jeg gætter på, at jeg havde sat mine forventninger forkert på 2 måder:

• Ingen sensor kan måle, hvor veludhvilet du er om morgenen. Dette er, hvad der rent faktisk blev forbedret efter at have holdt op med kaffe. Jeg vil tænke på en måde at måle bivirkninger af det på længere sigt for at udføre flere eksperimenter.
• Selv en forbedring på 10 % er ikke så plausibel; det ville betyde, at om et år eller to, givet nok ambitioner, vil jeg være i stand til at nå en næsten perfekt søvn.

Da jeg havde i alt 7 spurter (ca. 100 dage) før jeg stoppede med kaffen, og omtrent lige så mange data om søvn bagefter, besluttede jeg mig for at sammenligne søvnscore for dag D og dag D+100 , tegne grafen for den og akkumulere den. Dette ville fortælle mig, om jeg virkelig sov bedre eller ej.

Og her er det. Den store blå graf, du ser, er stigningen i søvnkvalitet, som jeg fik over en periode på 3 måneder (når den er over jordlinjen, betyder det, at jeg kumulativt sov bedre end den foregående periode).

Denne graf er ret plausibel. Jeg gennemgik en mere stabil periode umiddelbart efter at have holdt op med kaffen, hvor jeg prøvede at få lidt mere hvile og lade batterierne op. Og for nylig er jeg begyndt at arbejde på et sæt personlige projekter virkelig intenst (inklusive disse artikler), hvilket forklarer tilbagefaldet i søvnkvalitet. Der er dog to virkelig vigtige punkter:

• Den store opadgående bakke af den kumulative søvnscore betyder, at jeg konstant fik bedre søvn, end jeg fik før i en god periode.
• Det faktum, at selvom jeg har været igennem en hård periode, så er jeg ved at komme mig lige nu, viser, at min evne til at gå igennem hårde perioder ikke har ændret sig på grund af at jeg stoppede med kaffe. Hvilket^(Which) er en stor bedrift i sig selv.

Andre fordele ved at stoppe med kaffe

Først^(First) og fremmest starter jeg min dag hurtigere. Jeg fik 5 til 10 ekstra minutter hver dag, som gik med at tilberede kaffen og drikke den.

Jeg vågner mere udhvilet, selv efter færre timers søvn. Og jeg har en tendens til at hvile mere, når min krop fortæller mig, at det er tid. Min produktivitet er forbedret betydeligt på grund af dette, og jeg har en tendens til at være mere fokuseret på det, jeg laver.

At gå i seng er meget nemmere nu. Fordi jeg også praktiserer intermittent fasting (IF) , er jeg ved de sene timer om aftenen virkelig træt, og et par minutters læsning på min Kindle er lige nok til at få mig til at sove hurtigt og effektivt.

Det vigtigste er, at jeg kender min krop bedre. Jeg ved, hvilke fødevarer den fodrer korrekt, og hvilke der ikke gør, og hvordan jeg kan påvirke dens energiniveauer. Nu kan jeg løbe, men jeg kan ikke gemme mig. Der er ingen kaffe til at undertrykke de signaler, den prøver at sende mig.

Konklusion

Først^(First) og fremmest føles det fantastisk at have kaffe ud af mit system. Men det er en dybt indgroet vane og social begivenhed, især i kontorjob, og det er meget svært at slippe af med det. Jeg savner min morgenkaffe med min kone eller med mine kollegaer.

Konceptet med inkrementelle gevinster har vist sig at være meget succesfuldt til at holde op med kaffe - og det givende var, at jeg kunne organisere min aktivitet som softwareingeniør (ved hjælp af sprints). Endnu en gang er der et solidt bevis på, at processen er vigtigere end resultatet.

Jeg var ret glad for at se, at status quo kan udfordres. Har jeg virkelig brug for kaffe? Måske ikke. Skader det dig? Det var bestemt tilfældet for mig. Har du lignende historier? Jeg ville elske at høre din!

Andrei Ismail er en erfaren softwareingeniør med opstartserfaring under bælte og en ph.d. i kunstig intelligens. Han har tabt 50 pund på 6 måneder og arbejder i øjeblikket på et fitness-coaching-program for nørder, tilgængeligt på VÆGTTAB FOR INGENIØRER^{(WEIGHT LOSS FOR ENGINEERS)} .^{(Andrei Ismail is an experienced software engineer with startup experience under his belt and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. He has lost 50 pounds in 6 months and is currently working on a fitness coaching program for geeks, available at WEIGHT LOSS FOR ENGINEERS.)}

A Geek's Quest To Quitting Coffee - How I Managed To Pull It Off

Have yоu ever found yourself getting through a day with excruciating headaches and then remembering that you forgot to drink coffee? You're not the only one. There is a very large numbеr of pеoplе trying to quit coffee. A simрle Google search yields a comparable number of results fоr "quit coffee", "qυit alcоhol" and "quit drugs". Impressive, right? Yet, nobody really pays attеntion to this one that much. And while the other 2 habits аre blamed by society, coffee is actually endorsed. Τhat's why, in this article I am going to describe how I ended up deciding to quіt drinking cоffee, my method for doing it and the impact it had on my sleep and energy levels. Being a quantified self geek with over 9 months of detailed data about mysеlf, I am able to correlate a number of vital signs to the experiments that I do on myself. Let's get started:

My History With Drinking Coffee

I started drinking coffee in the 9th grade. I was taking part in the math olympiads and I was spending a lot of nights trying to research math concepts and solving problems. Why did I do that? For several reasons. First off, I had company: I was not the only one online as a night owl trying to solve complicated math problems. Second, my high school was going through some renovations, and we were scheduled to go to class in the afternoon and in the evening. It was the perfect excuse to stay awake most of the night, right?

Towards the end of my high-school years, things got worse. In the winter of my final year, I was trying to apply to several US universities while keeping everything else together. I ended up doing one whole month of 4-hour nights, and the cherry on the top was a 48-hour marathon to finish everything and have the applications shipped in time.

Then came the University. We would stay up late reading stuff that we were interested in, occasionally partying or trying to cram everything before an exam. You should go and visit our university's classrooms in the nights before the exams. You'll be surprised how many people you will find there sleeping (err.. I meant studying). In those days, I would drink coffee mindlessly without even bothering to count the cups in any way. Besides, coffee is cheap, right? You can get a nice cup of coffee in many places in Bucharest for about 50¢ to $1.

During my university studies, I started to work with an old friend who had just been promoted to team leader in a global company. Naturally, I did this at the toughest moment in the curriculum, the final year, when all other colleagues were quitting their jobs. It was so nice to be a badass, right? I ended up working 90-100 hour workweeks and sometimes not seeing the light of day. Even though the part-time job itself was taking up a small proportion of that.

Then I finished university and I quickly decided to go towards a PhD. I thought to myself that getting paid a little would ensure that I could work on whatever I wanted to, while getting paid. Little did I know! I had to work my ass off to make room for research while performing my other duties (being involved in European projects and teaching). Whenever I felt I could not go on anymore, coffee was always there, close by. A trustworthy friend!

Finally, I got so frustrated with academia, that I joined a tech startup. While initially wanting to drop out of PhD, I decided to finish it and went through 6 months straight of working non-stop, day and night, weekend or weekday. At this point, things were really getting out of control. Drinking 4 cups a day (and people, especially from the US, repeatedly told me how strong Romanian coffee is). And supplementing that with plenty of chocolate.

And it did not get any easier afterwards. As soon as I finished my PhD, we ended up getting acquired and shipping a massive project at the same time. And so on.

At one point I decided that my relationship with coffee had to change.

Motivation - What Triggered My Decision To Quit Drinking Coffee?

There's quite a bunch of us out there who are frustrated with the way coffee took over our lives. Take a look around you, while in the supermarket or in the shopping mall and you'll start realising the size of the coffee industry. Pay close attention to the caffeinated products section in the supermarket, or to the daily routine of your loved ones. How does their day start? With coffee, right?

I decided to quit coffee once I realised the following facts:

• Forgetting about it, or trying not to drink it in a particular day was giving me a really hard time. So it's either I keep this substance in my body all the time or not at all.
• I was using it to silence the signals my body was trying to send me. Whenever it would tell me it's tired, I would shut it up with some coffee (and maybe some chocolate).
• My relationship with coffee had degraded over the years, and did not improve. It did not even remain constant. One or two coffees were required just to "get started" without having any real effect.

Quitting Coffee, Reinvented

I admit, I did not research any methods at the time. Maybe I just had a crazy confidence that I can do it by myself. Looking back, I was naive at best. Because a failed attempt will dramatically decrease your chance of quitting in the future. In terms of food, that translates to: the more failed diets, the more chances of not ever being thin.

All I had in mind is one guiding principle that I apply to most of my life improvements: make small, gradual improvements that are sustainable and measure before acting.

When I had decided to quit coffee completely, I was already cutting down on it. The previous months were filled with Coke and coffee, and I was getting worried. I started measuring first, and discovered that I was drinking about 30 coffees in a 2-weeks interval, and most of them during weekdays. After seeing the numbers, the perspective of getting to zero was pretty daunting.

The key at this point was to regard it as a long term process. A year has 52 weeks. If I found a way to diminish the number of coffees by 1 every 2 weeks, I will be done within a year! Of course, it would take the discipline of entering data myself, because there was no Vessyl back then. However, my personal theory is that given a good enough benefit, people will do the data entry themselves instead of looking for an automated way.

In literature that is related to quitting smoking, what I was trying to do is named "gradual reduction". There are multiple schools of thought, and they are mainly divided among this method (or similar) and quitting altogether abruptly ("cold turkey"). Gradual reduction and its derivatives have proven to be much more effective in trials (by measuring relapse after 6 months or 1 year).

It took me a total of 8 weeks to quit coffee altogether. And at the end I had the ultimate test: travelling to the US and back in 5 days for a conference — and not drinking coffee! I passed this one with flying colors although it was hard and I think I managed to get through jet lag more easily because of the lack of coffee.

My Sprints For Quitting Coffee

I am a software engineer and I approach almost everything with an engineer's perspective. Learning from the agile methodology, I approached quitting coffee in 2-week sprints. Here I will give a short overview of my sprints. It took me a total of 4 sprints from the moment I decided to quit to doing it - about 56 days:

Sprint #1 (March 17th - March 30th) — only measured the coffee I drank. Result: 28 cups.

Sprint #2 (March 31st - April 13th) — only measured the coffee I drank. Result: 26 cups.

Sprint #3 (April 14th - April 27th) — only measured the coffee I drank. Result: 26 cups and a huge headache on the last day (April 27th), because I had forgotten to drink coffee. This is when I really decided to quit.

Sprint #4 (April 28th - May 11th) — added the goal of drinking a maximum of 20 coffees. I was helped by the fact that I visited London between May 1st-May 4th, so I did not really have to wake up to an alarm clock during a few of those days. I ended up getting by on one coffee per day during my London visit, and on 2 daily coffees for most of the other days.

Sprint #5 (May 12th - May 25th) — I realised that my previous goal was too aggressive and highly dependent on context. I decided to improve my previous goal only by a little and set it to a maximum of 17 coffees. In the first week I drank my coffee only during weekdays, and I was struck by a nasty cold in the second week. That prompted me to rest more in order to get through it, and I barely reached my goal. This proved to be context-dependent again.

Sprint #6 (May 26th - June 8th) — changed my goal again to drinking only 14 coffees and I ended drinking only 10. I was away at the seaside with my wife and friends in the June 7th-June 9th period, so that helped a bit with my mental dependency as well. I was very encouraged by the fact that I was managing to be productive during the day even without coffee, as my comment from May 28th reads: "productive workday with 0 coffee. YAY!".

Sprint #7 (June 9th - June 22nd) — during this sprint I drank my last coffee in the first day (June 9th), and decided to go cold turkey at this point. I had gathered enough momentum and I had a very good test coming up in the next week, so I took the plunge. The most difficult part of this sprint was that while at the conference in USA, I was feeling groggy all the time and they only had black tea or green tea at best, which I tried to avoid at all costs. However, I over-compensated for my tiredness (an average of about 4 hours of sleep a night, including sleeping on a plane) with eating a lot of junk food. Even though I successfully reached my coffee goal at the end of the sprint, I did it at the cost of other health-related aspects: gained 2 kg (4.4 lbs) and was unable to find the mental energy to log my food.

How A Sprint Works

First of all, I check my sprint's dashboard (usually a Google Spreadsheet) each morning in my daily routine. I made the entry barrier really low by placing my data in a spreadsheet, because I knew that my morning routine can be disrupted very easily by weekends and trips. Just looking at the target and at the current progress will make me aware for the rest of the day of what I have to pay attention to.

While I gradually progress through the sprint, I naturally tend to become more ambitious towards the end to achieve my goal. This is where it's really important to have less aggressive goals - it will be easier to scramble to meet them and it will be more plausible that they are reachable.

Towards the end of the sprint, I start to think about the goals for the next one. I usually had 2-3 goals for a sprint, and usually one of them would be related to weight (because I was losing weight at that point).

After each sprint I would have a small sprint retrospective, to understand why I achieved (or failed to achieve) my goals, and how they should be approached going further.

I try to avoid having more than 3 goals for one sprint, because I find it difficult to focus my mind on so many results. Probably, what works best is having only one goal, but that takes a degree of patience that a lot of people (including myself) don't have.

Does Quitting Coffee Improve Your Sleep Quality?

I was quite excited to dig up my sleep data from my BodyMedia and to see whether there are any longer term improvements in my sleep quality after quitting coffee. My conclusion is that there are, but they were disrupted by my making other important life changes (like changing the career path). Also, I "only" have about 8 months of data about myself. And that might seem like a lot, but when you will try to crunch it, you will notice that you need much more.

To this end, I invented a sleep score for myself that is the average of the following 4 metrics, that I call "composite sleep score":

• Sleep score for the whole night (percentage of the time lying in bed in which I was actually sleeping).
• Sleep score for the first hour (this is because I used to have problems falling asleep; I am a hyperactive person and drinking coffee did not help either).
• Time to fall asleep (number of minutes it takes to fall asleep). This is not accurate because the sensor cannot distinguish between me watching a movie or me struggling to fall asleep. In the future, I will think of a way to measure that.
• Number of sleep intervals detected by BodyMedia (or, in sleep parlance — the number of toss & turns).

Each of these metrics was normalized to 0-100 and they were averaged. I did the same for the number of coffees (multiplied by 33, because while I was logging them I did not drink more than 3 coffees a day), and I compared them in the following graph:

The graph shows an increase in sleep quality (the red graph) towards July and the beginning of August. It's followed by an obvious plunge, because I was changing jobs, which is stressful for anyone. As you can see, now my sleep score is much more stable and it is more and more often above 75.

For sleep, I used the moving average (a mathematical formula where the older values matter less than the newer values), because I was trying to better see the longer term trends. At first, I was disappointed that there was no clear upwards improvement. But I guess I had set my expectations wrong in 2 ways:

• No sensor can measure how well rested you are in the morning. This is what actually improved after quitting coffee. I will think of a way to measure side effects of that on the longer term, in order to perform more experiments.
• Even a 10% improvement is not that plausible; that would mean that in a year or two, given enough ambition, I will be able to reach a near-perfect sleep.

Since I had a total of 7 sprints (about 100 days) before quitting coffee, and about as much data about sleep afterwards, I decided to compare the sleep score for day D and day D+100, graph it and accumulate it. This would tell me if I was indeed sleeping better or not.

And here it is. The big blue graph you see is the increase in sleep quality that I got over a period of 3 months (whenever it's above the groundline, it means that cumulatively I was sleeping better than the previous period of time).

This graph is quite plausible. I went through a more stable period immediately after quitting coffee, where I tried to get a bit more rest and charge my batteries. And recently, I've started to work on a set of personal projects really intensely (including these articles), which explains the relapse in sleep quality. However, there are two really important points:

• The big upward hill of the cumulative sleep score means that I was constantly getting better sleep than I was getting before for a good period of time.
• The fact that even though I went through a rough period, I am recovering right now shows that my ability to go through rough periods has not changed due to quitting coffee. Which is a major accomplishment in itself.

Other Benefits for Quitting Coffee

First of all, I start my day quicker. I gained 5 to 10 extra minutes each day which went into preparing the coffee and drinking it.

I wake up more rested, even after fewer hours of sleep. And I tend to rest more whenever my body tells me that it's time. My productivity has improved considerably because of this, and I tend to be more focused on what I do.

Going to sleep is much easier now. Because I also practice intermittent fasting (IF), by the late hours of the evening I am really tired and a few minutes of reading on my Kindle is just enough to get me to sleep quickly and efficiently.

Most importantly, I know my body better. I know which foods feed it correctly, and which don't, and how I can influence its energy levels. Now I can run, but I can't hide. There is no coffee to suppress the signals it's trying to send me.

Conclusion

First of all, it feels great to have coffee out of my system. But it's a deeply ingrained habit and social event, especially in office jobs, and it is very hard to get rid of it. I miss my morning coffee with my wife, or with my colleagues.

The concept of incremental gains has proven very successful in quitting coffee - and the rewarding thing was that I could organize my activity as a software engineer (using sprints). Once more, there is solid proof that the process is more important than the result.

I was quite pleased to see that the status quo can be challenged. Do I really need coffee? Maybe not. Does it harm you? That was definitely the case for me. Do you have similar stories? I would love to hear yours!

Andrei Ismail is an experienced software engineer with startup experience under his belt and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. He has lost 50 pounds in 6 months and is currently working on a fitness coaching program for geeks, available at WEIGHT LOSS FOR ENGINEERS.

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