Stalo sa vám niekedy, že ste prežili deň s neznesiteľnými bolesťami hlavy a potom ste si spomenuli, že ste zabudli vypiť kávu? Nie si sám. Existuje veľmi veľký počet ľudí, ktorí sa snažia prestať piť kávu. Jednoduché vyhľadávanie Google prináša porovnateľný počet výsledkov pre „prestaň s kávou“, „prestaň s alkoholom“ a „prestaň s drogami“. Pôsobivé^(Impressive), správny? Napriek tomu tomu nikto nevenuje toľko pozornosti. A zatiaľ čo ostatné 2 zvyky spoločnosť obviňuje, káva je v skutočnosti podporovaná. To je dôvod, prečo v tomto článku popíšem, ako som sa rozhodol prestať piť kávu, môj spôsob, ako to urobiť, a vplyv, ktorý to malo na môj spánok a energetickú hladinu. Keďže som kvantifikovaný geek s viac ako 9 mesiacmi podrobných údajov o sebe, som schopný dať do súladu množstvo životných znakov s experimentmi, ktoré na sebe robím. Začnime:

Moja história s pitím kávy

Kávu som začal piť v 9. ročníku. Zúčastňoval som sa matematických olympiád a veľa nocí som trávil skúmaním matematických pojmov a riešením problémov. Prečo som to urobil? Z viacerých dôvodov. Po prvé^(First) , mal som spoločnosť: nebol som jediný online ako nočná sova, ktorá sa snažila riešiť zložité matematické úlohy. Po druhé^(Second) , moja stredná škola prechádzala nejakými rekonštrukciami a mali sme ísť do triedy popoludní a večer. Bola to perfektná výhovorka na to, aby som väčšinu noci nespal, však?

Ku koncu mojich stredoškolských rokov sa veci zhoršili. V zime posledného ročníka som sa snažil podať prihlášku na niekoľko amerických univerzít a všetko ostatné som mal pohromade. Nakoniec som strávil jeden celý mesiac 4-hodinových nocí a čerešničkou na záver bol 48-hodinový maratón, aby som všetko dokončil a aplikácie odoslali včas.

Potom prišla Univerzita^(University) . Zdržiavali sme sa dlho hore a čítali sme si veci, ktoré nás zaujímali, príležitostne sme boli na párty alebo sme sa snažili všetko napchať pred skúškou. Mali by ste ísť a navštíviť učebne našej univerzity v noci pred skúškami. Budete prekvapení, koľko ľudí tam nájdete spať (err.. myslel som študovať). V tých časoch by som bezhlavo pil kávu bez toho, aby som sa obťažoval akýmkoľvek spôsobom počítať šálky. Okrem toho, káva je lacná, však? Na mnohých miestach v Bukurešti^(Bucharest) si môžete dať príjemnú kávu za približne 50 ¢ až 1 dolár.

Počas štúdia na vysokej škole som začal spolupracovať so starým priateľom, ktorý bol práve povýšený na tímového lídra v globálnej spoločnosti. Prirodzene, urobil som to v najťažšom momente učebných osnov, v poslednom ročníku, keď všetci ostatní kolegovia odchádzali zo zamestnania. Bolo to také pekné byť darebák, však? Nakoniec som pracoval 90-100 hodín týždenne a niekedy som nevidel svetlo sveta. Aj keď samotná práca na čiastočný úväzok z toho zaberala malú časť.

Potom som skončil univerzitu a rýchlo som sa rozhodol ísť na PhD . Myslel som si, že keď dostanem malú výplatu, zaistí mi to, že budem môcť pracovať na čomkoľvek, čo chcem, a zároveň byť platený. Málo som vedel! Musel som si odpracovať zadok, aby som uvoľnil priestor pre výskum a zároveň som si plnil svoje ostatné povinnosti (zapájanie sa do európskych projektov a vyučovanie). Vždy, keď som cítil, že už nemôžem pokračovať, káva bola vždy nablízku. Spoľahlivý priateľ!

Nakoniec ma akademická sféra tak frustrovala, že som sa pripojila k technologickému startupu. Aj keď som pôvodne chcel ukončiť doktorandské štúdium^(PhD) , rozhodol som sa ho dokončiť a prešiel som 6 mesiacmi nepretržitej práce vo dne iv noci, cez víkend alebo vo všedné dni. V tomto bode sa veci naozaj vymykali kontrole. Pitie 4 šálok denne (a ľudia, najmä z USA, mi opakovane hovorili, aká silná je rumunská káva). A doplniť to množstvom čokolády.

A potom to nebolo o nič jednoduchšie. Hneď ako som dokončil doktorandské štúdium^(PhD) , skončili sme pri získaní a zároveň odoslaní obrovského projektu. A tak ďalej.

V istom momente som sa rozhodol, že môj vzťah ku káve sa musí zmeniť.

Motivácia^(Motivation) – čo vyvolalo moje rozhodnutie^{(My Decision)} prestať piť kávu^{(Drinking Coffee)} ?

Je tu veľa z nás, ktorí sme frustrovaní z toho, ako káva ovládla naše životy. Poobzerajte sa okolo seba v supermarkete alebo v nákupnom centre a začnete si uvedomovať veľkosť kávového priemyslu. Pozorne^(Pay) si všímajte sekciu produktov s kofeínom v supermarkete, či denný režim vašich blízkych. Ako sa začína ich deň? S kávou, však?

Rozhodol som sa prestať s kávou, keď som si uvedomil nasledujúce skutočnosti:

• Zabudnúť naň alebo sa ho snažiť nepiť v konkrétny deň mi dávalo naozaj zabrať. Takže buď túto látku držím v tele stále, alebo vôbec.
• Používal som ho na stíšenie signálov, ktoré sa mi pokúšalo vyslať moje telo. Vždy, keď mi povedal, že som unavený, utíšil som to kávou (a možno čokoládou).
• Môj vzťah ku káve sa rokmi zhoršil a nezlepšil sa. Nezostalo to ani konštantné. Jedna alebo dve kávy boli potrebné len na „začatie“ bez toho, aby to malo skutočný účinok.

Odvykanie od kávy, znovuobjavené

Priznám sa, neskúmal som vtedy žiadne metódy. Možno som len šialene veril, že to zvládnem sám. Keď sa na to spätne pozriem, bol som prinajlepšom naivný. Pretože neúspešný pokus dramaticky zníži vašu šancu prestať v budúcnosti. Čo sa týka jedla, znamená to: čím viac neúspešných diét, tým väčšia šanca, že nikdy neschudneš.

Všetko, čo som mal na mysli, je jeden hlavný princíp, ktorý aplikujem na väčšinu svojich životných zlepšení: robiť malé, postupné zlepšenia, ktoré sú udržateľné a zmerať ich pred tým, než začnem konať.^{(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.)}

Keď som sa rozhodol úplne s kávou skončiť, už som ju obmedzoval. Predchádzajúce mesiace boli plné koly^(Coke) a kávy a ja som sa začal báť. Začal som najprv merať a zistil som, že pijem asi 30 káv v 2-týždňových intervaloch a väčšinu z nich počas pracovných dní. Po zhliadnutí čísel bola perspektíva dostať sa na nulu dosť skľučujúca.

Kľúčom v tomto bode bolo považovať to za dlhodobý proces. Rok má 52 týždňov. Ak nájdem spôsob, ako znížiť počet káv o 1 každé 2 týždne, do roka skončím! Samozrejme, chcelo by to disciplínu pri zadávaní údajov, pretože vtedy žiadny Vessyl neexistoval^(Vessyl) . Moja osobná teória je však taká, že pri dostatočne dobrej výhode budú ľudia zadávať údaje sami namiesto toho, aby hľadali automatizovaný spôsob.

V literatúre, ktorá sa týka odvykania od fajčenia, sa to, o čo som sa snažil, nazývalo „postupné znižovanie“. Existuje viacero myšlienkových prúdov, ktoré sa delia najmä na túto metódu (alebo podobnú) a na úplné ukončenie fajčenia („studený moriak“). Postupná redukcia a jej deriváty sa v štúdiách ukázali byť oveľa účinnejšie (meraním relapsu po 6 mesiacoch alebo 1 roku).

Trvalo mi celkom 8 týždňov, kým som úplne prestal s kávou. A na konci som mal posledný test: cestovať do USA a späť o 5 dní na konferenciu - a nepiť kávu! Tento som prešiel s prehľadom, aj keď to bolo ťažké a myslím si, že sa mi podarilo prekonať jet lag ľahšie kvôli nedostatku kávy.

Moje šprinty na odvykanie od kávy

Som softvérový inžinier a takmer ku všetkému pristupujem s inžinierskym pohľadom. Učil som sa agilnou metodikou a pristúpil som k tomu, že prestanem s kávou v 2-týždňových šprintoch. Tu uvediem krátky prehľad mojich šprintov. Trvalo mi celkovo 4 šprinty od momentu, keď som sa rozhodol s tým prestať – asi 56 dní:

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) — meral iba kávu, ktorú som vypil. Výsledok: 26 šálok a obrovská bolesť hlavy posledný deň ( 27. apríla^{(April 27th)} ), pretože som zabudol vypiť kávu. Vtedy som sa naozaj rozhodol skončiť.

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.

Ako funguje šprint

V prvom^(First) rade každé ráno v každodennej rutine kontrolujem dashboard môjho šprintu (zvyčajne tabuľku Google ). ^{(Google Spreadsheet)}Vstupnú bariéru som urobil naozaj nízko umiestnením svojich údajov do tabuľky, pretože som vedel, že moju rannú rutinu môžu veľmi ľahko narušiť víkendy a výlety. Už len pohľad na cieľ a na aktuálny progres mi po zvyšok dňa dá najavo, čomu musím venovať pozornosť.

Kým postupne postupujem cez šprint, prirodzene mám tendenciu byť ku koncu ambicióznejší, aby som dosiahol svoj cieľ. Tu je skutočne dôležité mať menej agresívne ciele – ľahšie sa ich budete snažiť splniť a bude pravdepodobnejšie, že sú dosiahnuteľné.

Ku koncu šprintu začínam premýšľať o cieľoch do ďalšieho. Zvyčajne som mal 2-3 ciele pre šprint a zvyčajne jeden z nich súvisel s hmotnosťou (pretože som vtedy chudol).

Po každom sprinte by som mal malú retrospektívu sprintu, aby som pochopil, prečo som dosiahol (alebo sa mi nepodarilo dosiahnuť) svoje ciele a ako by sa k nim malo pristupovať.

Snažím sa vyhnúť tomu, aby som mal v jednom šprinte viac ako 3 ciele, pretože je pre mňa ťažké sústrediť svoju myseľ na toľko výsledkov. Pravdepodobne najlepšie funguje mať len jeden cieľ, ale to si vyžaduje určitý stupeň trpezlivosti, ktorý mnoho ľudí (vrátane mňa) nemá.

Zlepší vynechanie kávy^{(Does Quitting Coffee Improve)} kvalitu spánku ?^(Sleep)

Bol som celkom nadšený, keď som vykopal údaje o svojom spánku z môjho BodyMedia a zistil, či po vysadení kávy došlo k nejakému dlhodobejšiemu zlepšeniu kvality spánku. Môj záver je, že existujú, ale boli narušené tým, že som urobil iné dôležité životné zmeny (napríklad zmena kariéry). Tiez mam o sebe "len" asi 8 mesiacov dat. A to sa môže zdať veľa, ale keď sa ho pokúsite pochrumkať, zistíte, že potrebujete oveľa viac.

Na tento účel som pre seba vymyslel skóre spánku, ktoré je priemerom nasledujúcich 4 metrík, ktoré nazývam „zložené skóre spánku“:

• Skóre spánku^(Sleep) za celú noc (percento času ležiaceho v posteli, v ktorom som skutočne spal).
• Skóre spánku^(Sleep) za prvú hodinu (to preto, lebo som mal problémy so zaspávaním, som hyperaktívny človek a nepomáhalo ani pitie kávy).
• Čas na zaspávanie (počet minút potrebných na zaspávanie). Nie je to presné, pretože snímač nedokáže rozlíšiť, či pozerám film alebo či sa snažím zaspať. V budúcnosti vymyslím spôsob, ako to merať.
• Počet^(Number) intervalov spánku zistených aplikáciou BodyMedia^(BodyMedia) (alebo v reči spánku – počet prehodení a otočení).

Každá z týchto metrík bola normalizovaná na 0-100 a boli spriemerované. To isté som urobil pre počet káv (vynásobený 33, pretože počas ich zaznamenávania som nevypil viac ako 3 kávy denne) a porovnal som ich v nasledujúcom grafe:

Graf ukazuje nárast kvality spánku (červený graf) smerom k júlu^(July) a začiatku augusta^(August) . Nasleduje zjavný pád, pretože som menil prácu, čo je pre každého stresujúce. Ako môžete vidieť, teraz je moje skóre spánku oveľa stabilnejšie a stále častejšie je nad 75.

Na spánok som použil kĺzavý priemer (matematický vzorec, kde na starších hodnotách záleží menej ako na novších hodnotách), pretože som sa snažil lepšie vidieť dlhodobejšie trendy. Najprv som bol sklamaný, že nedošlo k žiadnemu jasnému zlepšeniu smerom nahor. Ale myslím, že som zle nastavil svoje očakávania dvoma spôsobmi:

• Žiadny senzor nedokáže zmerať, ako dobre ste ráno oddýchnutí. To je to, čo sa skutočne zlepšilo po vysadení kávy. Vymyslím spôsob, ako zmerať vedľajšie účinky z dlhodobého hľadiska, aby som mohol vykonať viac experimentov.
• Ani 10 % zlepšenie nie je také pravdepodobné; to by znamenalo, že o rok alebo dva, ak budem mať dostatok ambícií, budem schopný dosiahnuť takmer dokonalý spánok.

Keďže som mal pred vysadením kávy celkovo 7 šprintov (asi 100 dní) a následne asi toľko údajov o spánku, rozhodol som sa porovnať skóre spánku za deň D a deň D+100 , vykresliť ho do grafu a nahromadiť. To by mi povedalo, či skutočne spím lepšie alebo nie.

A je to tu. Veľký modrý graf, ktorý vidíte, je nárast kvality spánku, ktorý som dosiahol za obdobie 3 mesiacov (kedykoľvek je to nad základnou čiarou, znamená to, že kumulatívne som spal lepšie ako predchádzajúce obdobie).

Tento graf je celkom vierohodný. Bezprostredne po vysadení kávy som prešiel stabilnejším obdobím, kde som sa snažil trochu viac oddychovať a nabiť si baterky. A nedávno som začal naozaj intenzívne pracovať na súbore osobných projektov (vrátane týchto článkov), čo vysvetľuje recidívu kvality spánku. Existujú však dva skutočne dôležité body:

• Veľký stúpajúci kopec kumulatívneho skóre spánku znamená, že som neustále mal lepší spánok ako predtým počas dlhého obdobia.
• Skutočnosť, že aj keď som prešla ťažkým obdobím, práve teraz sa zotavujem, ukazuje, že moja schopnosť prejsť ťažkými obdobiami sa nezmenila ani vďaka tomu, že som prestala s kávou. Čo^(Which) je samo o sebe veľký úspech.

Ďalšie výhody pri odvykaní od kávy

V prvom^(First) rade začínam svoj deň rýchlejšie. Každý deň som získal 5 až 10 minút navyše, ktoré sa týkali prípravy kávy a jej pitia.

Vstávam oddýchnutý aj po menej hodinách spánku. A mám tendenciu viac odpočívať vždy, keď mi moje telo povie, že je čas. Moja produktivita sa vďaka tomu značne zlepšila a zvyknem sa viac sústrediť na to, čo robím.

Chodenie spať je teraz oveľa jednoduchšie. Keďže praktizujem aj prerušovaný pôst (IF)^{(intermittent fasting (IF))} , v neskorých večerných hodinách som naozaj unavený a pár minút čítania na Kindle mi stačí na rýchly a efektívny spánok.

Najdôležitejšie je, že lepšie poznám svoje telo. Viem, ktoré potraviny ho kŕmia správne a ktoré nie a ako môžem ovplyvniť jeho energetickú hladinu. Teraz môžem utiecť, ale nemôžem sa skryť. Neexistuje žiadna káva na potlačenie signálov, ktoré sa mi snaží poslať.

Záver

Po prvé^(First) , je to skvelý pocit, keď mám kávu mimo môjho systému. Je to však hlboko zakorenený zvyk a spoločenská udalosť, najmä v kancelárskych zamestnaniach, a je veľmi ťažké sa ho zbaviť. Chýba mi ranná káva s manželkou alebo s kolegami.

Koncept prírastkových ziskov sa ukázal ako veľmi úspešný pri odvykaní od kávy – a odmenou bolo, že som si mohol organizovať svoju činnosť ako softvérový inžinier (pomocou šprintov). Opäť je tu jasný dôkaz, že proces je dôležitejší ako výsledok.

Celkom ma potešilo, že status quo možno spochybniť. Naozaj potrebujem kávu? Možno nie. Škodí ti to? To bol určite môj prípad. Máte podobné príbehy? Rád by som počul váš!

Andrei Ismail je skúsený softvérový inžinier so skúsenosťami so spustením a doktorandom z umelej inteligencie. Za 6 mesiacov schudol 50 kíl a momentálne pracuje na programe fitness koučingu pre geekov, ktorý je dostupný na 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 you ever found yourself getting through a day with excruсiating hеadaches and then remеmbering that you forgot to drink coffee? You're not the only one. There is a very large number of people trying to quit cоffee. A simple Google search уields a comparable number of results for "quit coffee", "quit alcohol" and "qυit drugs". Imрressive, right? Yet, nobody really pays attention to this one that much. And whilе the other 2 habits are blаmed by society, coffee is actually endorsed. That's why, in this article I am going to desсribе how I ended up deciding to quit drinking coffеe, my method for dоing it and the impact it had on my sleep and energy levels. Bеing a quantified self geek with over 9 months of detailed data about myself, I am able to сorrelate a number оf vital signs to the experimentѕ that I do on myself. Let'ѕ 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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