This year I decided to stop drinking coffee, my only source of caffeine. Anyone who knows me will recognize this as a radical step. I’ve been drinking coffee since age 10, and I’d developed quite an obsession for the perfect cup.
In the past, I’ve experimented with quitting a few times by simply going cold turkey. Each time, the physical withdrawal, basically headaches, was over within 10 days, but after a month or two I would become convinced that coffee was good for my concentration and start drinking it again.
coffee making. JPGMy reason to quit this time was the growing suspicion that coffee was causing mood swings and crashes that are bad for my overall sense of well-being. For this experiment I decided to stop very gradually. I thought that if I allowed the psychological withdrawal to occur gradually alongside the physiological, I would be able to observe my ‘coffee-desire’ without acting on it, and learn the skill I would need to avoid relapsing in future.
I made the same amount of coffee each day, using a vac-pot. Although I didn’t measure caffeine content, I did control many factors including grind, age of beans, water temperature and water/coffee contact time. From this controlled pot of coffee, I used measuring cups to discard an additional 20ml per week. I used notebook software to keep some records of my progress and I started with a 3 cup pot in mid-April ’09. Towards the end of July I wrote “I am increasingly wanting to abandon this project altogether”, but I continued and on 8th August I was down to a half shot glass per day, and decided I was done.
Over the past few days (starting around 12th Oct), I noticed myself increasingly thinking “I am having trouble concentrating and coffee might help”. These thoughts came to a crescendo on Wednesday. This time, I was armed with data.
As part of a separate experiment, I have been keeping track of the amount of time I spend working on projects. I work in 25 minute intervals which I time with a coffee timer, and I mark an X in a paper journal for each interval that I successfully complete. If I get distracted, I don’t mark the X, and if I can’t concentrate, I abandon it and don’t mark an X rather than sitting out the timer. I’ve been doing this since the end of June, so I tabulated the data and created a graph* of my hours of concentration per day, and overlaid a bar showing when I drank my last coffee.
concentration-vs-coffee-chart.pngCausality is a complex issue. 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.”
I see this as a success for self-quantification. Whether or not it provides a general insight into the effects of caffeine, it validates the utility of self-tracking for making individualized personal decisions.
I will be doing more experiments.
咖啡错觉
离开咖啡的生活会更好吗？离开咖啡的生活会更糟吗？不如亲身尝试、日日记录，让数据给你一个客观的解答。
今年我决定戒掉咖啡——我唯一的咖啡因来源。任何了解我的人都知道这得下多大决心，因为我从10岁起就开始喝了，而且对那完美的一杯还很痴迷。
过去我也戒过几次，都是直接断掉。每次身体上的反应——主要是头疼——10天内就消失了，但心理上，通常一两个月后我就会告诉自己咖啡可以集中精力，于是又喝起来。
这次戒掉的原因是我越来越怀疑咖啡会引起情绪波动和崩溃，对整体的幸福感并不好。而且这次我准备一点点戒，想看看如果让心理和身体一起逐渐适应，是不是我就可以只观察自己的“咖啡渴望”而不被它操纵，还能避免将来再犯。
每天我都用虹吸壶煮同样多的咖啡。虽然没测量咖啡因含量，但我确实控制了很多关键因素如研磨、咖啡豆的年份、水温及煮的时间。从这壶多少有数的咖啡里，每周我再用量杯倒掉20毫升（不知道是不是“每天”，可能是作者笔误。——译者注）我用记事本软件（notebook)来记录自己的进步，09年4月中旬开始，喝3杯，到了7月末我写道：“越来越觉得该放弃掉”，但我坚持下来了，到了8月8号，我减到了半小杯，这时我觉得自己成功了。
过去几天里（大概从10月12号起），我发觉自己又不断跟自己说，“我不能集中精力，咖啡可能有用。”这种想法在周三那天最强烈。但这次，我有数据做武装了！
作为一项独立实验的一部分，我一直在记录自己花在项目上的时间。我用一个咖啡定时器把时间划分成25分钟一段，如果这一段我能集中精力，我就在一个纸质的日记本上划一个X。如果走神了就不划。另外如果不能集中精力，我就直接放弃这段，不划X，而不是挨到这段时间结束。从6月末我就开始这么做了，于是我把数据收集起来，做了一幅关于我每天能集中精力时间的图，并用一条线标出了戒掉咖啡的日期。
得出因果关系并不容易。显然，这是一项n=1的实验，并且我也会刻意做些其他事，而它们可能恰会改善我的精力集中状况。但有件事很清楚：戒掉咖啡后我每天集中精力的时间并没有减少，这让我可以很容易地对“我需要咖啡来集中精力”的错觉说不。
我把这看作是一次自我量化的胜利。不管对咖啡因作用的认识是否客观，这证明了自我追踪对做个人决定的效用。
我会继续更多的实验。
