Thoughts on Coffee

First of all, this is a highly unscientific post. It's about my experiences with coffee during the last three years, and how I believe it affects me.

When I started university three years ago, I basically quit coffee without even thinking about it. There was no free flow (as compared to working in an office), you had to pay for it yourself, and it was at least $1.5. So during my first year, I drank water, and everything was fine. But I didn't quit completely, I would still drink at home sometimes, and with friends and family.

I started drinking coffee daily again in my second year though. I'm not sure why, but I guess the cold climate and temptation for a hot beverage could have played a part. It could also be the massive workload I had during my second year. Or maybe some weird programmer-coffee relation pressure? I honestly don't know. But coffee made me alert, awake and gave me a feeling of being productive.

This is the feeling I'm reflecting on now. This feeling of being so productive and awake. This is great when you know where you are heading, just go full speed and get there already, right? Not sleepy, but instead fully awake and fired up. But the problem is when you don't really know where you're heading. When you have to stop and think about what you're doing and if you're even heading the right direction? Coffee gives you speed but speed isn't always a good thing.

Imagine if you where to navigate in a new city by car. You're looking for a narrow alley where you are about to pick up a friend. Would you rather go around in full speed or take it slow and be observant? In contrast, if you're going through a 200 km tunnel, what would you prefer?

Full speed is how I feel with coffee, slow and observant is how I feel without. And to be honest, most task I do nowadays requires quite a bit of navigation, rather than full speed. I'm not going to quit coffee though. But I will definitely reduce my intake and superdefinitely not feed some addiction with expensive lattes from Starbucks. That's where I am now at least. Let's see where I am in another three years 😊 ☕️.

And if you got some advice on places to work from except for cafes and cowork spaces, I'd love to hear it 😄.