Caffeine-Based Productivity, Part 2

Voiceover Artist 0:00
Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you’ve come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:22
I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:23
I’m Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:25
And I’m Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26
Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. We are going to be continuing our conversation from last episode caffeine based productivity. And in the last episode, we really talked about the kind of foundational elements of caffeine, how it interacts with your body tips around really dealing with the different types of caffeine that you can come across, you know the many different types of caffeine. So if you have not listened to that episode, feel free to snap back to the prior episode. And listen to that. In this episode, what I wanted to do was have the ProductivityCast team here really talk about the different types of coffee based drinks that we consume, maybe some of the tea based drinks that we consume as well, that may or may not be the typical black coffee or tea, then we can talk about the ways in which we make coffee and tea. From a productivity perspective, what I want us to do is think about how we make our coffee and tea productively. That is to say, What’s the best way to make it when we want to have it made quickly and efficiently? Well, I want to talk a little bit about some of the health benefits, people should have concerns or health disadvantages that we should have concern about when it comes to coffee. And then after we talk about that research, we’ll get into really the best times to consume caffeine for being most productive. And so we’ll get into a little bit about timing our caffeination at the end of the show. So let’s kick into the different types of coffee, and other caffeine based drinks that you all have from the mundane perhaps for all of you not mundane to me, but I just like black coffee, it’s the drink I am, I am I have right now in front of me. And so I drink my coffee, black. But there are so many different types of coffee and espresso based drinks. And so those who are not aware espresso are just basically coffee beans that have been ground and then forced pressure with a small amount of boiling water. So you just basically have the the concentration of the coffee in a less water as opposed to in more water. And so based on that espresso then gets mixed in with many other drinks, and either water or the different types of milk to create different combinations. What are some of your favored or favorite mixed drinks in the caffeine world,

Augusto Pinaud 2:47
I am boring too. I drink a strong espresso, except during my weekly review on which I go for a strong Lahti usually, if if I will on the pandemic, now I do it at home. But I used to stop in a Starbucks and it was part of the part of the routine and then I get a toll quad A latte that is basically for shot of espresso, it’s a little bit of milk. And I do it through the weekly review. And there is a reason why I have not only through the wicker review is because I have over the years condition, the brain to understand Oh, there is invoking discovery, maybe with a review time. And those kinds of things help.

Francis Wade 3:29
I’m think I’m more basic than that even I am an instant coffee drinker. Take a cup every week or two weeks, somewhere in there. But I do have a little additive there that I use. It’s a condensed milk made here in Jamaica and it has cinnamon and nutmeg in it. So it’s, it’s nice. And because I drink decaf on the days I don’t take caffeinated coffee. It’s a daily that’s a part of my daily routine. But that gives it gives it a nice, a nice flavor not found. And I keep looking for other kinds of additives like that. But the convenience and the speed and the one for all kind of appealed to me. But that’s instant coffee and condensed milk flavored condoms.

Art Gelwicks 4:15
Yeah, I’m a variety kind of guy, I will go through the course of a day and like, make coffee, three different ways have four different types of tea just everything’s always changing, and it varies by the day. Some mornings it’s hit the curb because I’m in a hurry. Other mornings, it’s I want this to be a process. So I pull out the Chemex and, you know, boil up the water and do the pour over and sometimes I want to be overly complicated. So I’ll pull out the French press, but that’s just it extends to the teas too. Sometimes it’s a bag tea, sometimes it’s a loose tea. Sometimes it’s a really robust tea. Sometimes it’s a it’s a white tea, it doesn’t. There is no rhyme or reason for me. For me it’s more the change in the experience of each individual time.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:59
So For those of you who may not know about all the different types of coffee drinks, there are so many of them. You know, you can mix basically espresso, and or coffee and espresso with different types of combinations of water. Or as I said earlier, different types of milk or steamed milk, a foamed milk, all kinds of really fun things in order to create different drinks. And so espresso is usually a one ounce forced press of the coffee beans. And so you get that really concentrated item. And then you will usually have an eight ounce cup of coffee. And that’s the same amount of coffee bean for that eight, you know, 1012 ounces of water. And then if you do a double espresso, or known as a doppio, that’s going to be two ounces of espresso. And then you can do all kinds of other fun things like macchiatos, which are an especial shot with foam, you can do Moca which then includes steamed milk and chocolate, and I am a fan of the mochas and many different types of lattes as treats. So get familiar with the different ways in which you can combine different coffee based drinks. That’s kind of a fun way in which you can spice up you know, if you’re if you’re like art and want a little bit of variety, you can definitely do that. And what I found is on the T side, you can do many of these things. Also, I think the British are much more familiar with putting milk in tea, and putting milk based products and teas. That’s something that’s not traditionally an American thing. But there are all kinds of ways in which you can make tea lattes. And many of the same processes that you use with regard to pressing leaves and forcing water through them. You can also do with tea. And so don’t limit yourself in that there’s there’s so many different fun, tea based drinks that you can make. So when the tea world, I tend to think about them in terms of regular teas, whether they be loose or or bagged, then there are the marches, which traditionally Japanese find ground powder that you either mix directly into the drink, or some people strain them until they kind of filter through. And then there’s Mati Mati being a tea that you are placing into hot water, and then it just basically keeps steeping throughout the time you drink it. And Matei is a little bit different, because my understanding is that you keep adding more hot water to the montae. And they have like specialized mugs for Mai Tais. And so like you the the straw itself has a strainer built into it, all kinds of fun things, and you just keep adding hot water and the caffeine content actually increases as you put more hot water into the multi leaves. So there’s a concentration point and then it diminishes. So they actually recommend that you rinse your Mati before you actually steep it the first time to reduce the bitterness of the the tea leaf. And then after that, you get this really rich robust tea flavor and I’ve actually become a pretty big fan of of montae You drink it over a course of time, I am also that person who coordinates very, very slowly we talked about this in the last episode, but I I tend to drink my coffee very, very slowly over a period of time. And I do that also with with montae. So I will drink it over over a long period of time. And that really provides for me an even keel even dosage of the caffeine over that over that period of time. So definitely think about Ma Tei and yeah, all the various tea drinks. There are many herbal teas that are out there. understand those don’t have caffeine in them. There are just a whole wide variety of teas out there and sometimes people will be like I don’t get any kick out of this tea. And many times it’s because they are they are herbal teas they are not so any of the teas that are flowers. Flowers are not technically a tea, but you know you’ll see them labeled as teas. Those don’t have caffeine in them. There are decaffeinated coffees and decaffeinated teas, Francis noted drinking decaffeinated coffee and then he drinks caffeinated coffee on a schedule decaffeinated has usually a much much reduced amount of caffeine in them and so you can definitely use those for mixed drinks, but they’re not going to have the same kick as coffee.

Art Gelwicks 9:15
Well, one of the things I want to call out with teas though is don’t confuse teas with a weak beverage. I mean there are black teas that you can get at I have some downstairs that are stronger than most of the coffee I’ll brew it’s a different flavor texture, it’s a different flavor composition but black teas can just be crazy over the top and strength and feel and taste and almost texture depending on how you brew it. I think also and I’ll probably get some heat for this. I think there’s a greater variety in flavor. When it comes to teas then there is available to coffee because I think we have a tendency to make coffee the same way. We’re shooting for a comfortable profile within coffee. Whereas teas are much more exploratory. You go and you try different things. And it’s not just like the lip the box of Lipton that you get at the grocery store. One of the things at the beginning of the pandemic, I ordered a sampler set of 80 different teas. And there was like one or two two bit tea bags each. But I went through and I tried all of them and I discovered ones I could not stand absolutely chocolate should not be a tea. Okay, and I that is a hill I will die on chocolate should not be a tea. But some of the other ones. Absolutely fantastic. I have found teas that I love now, and I’ve ordered large quantities of them, but you have an opportunity to play with it. So don’t assume what you know about a caffeinated beverage is true until you start to explore it a little bit.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 10:50
Yeah, I also want to note here that there are so many different types of ways in which you can adorn your coffee and your tea. And so I have a friend who loves these sugar free syrups that have lavender and and then there’s some honey based ones and all kinds of really fun, flavorful concoctions, you know vanilla and bergamot and other kinds of ways in which you can infuse simple syrup in order to create these different flavored syrups. And then you can put shots of them into into your tea or coffee to flavor them lattes, that kind of thing. So you are not really limited in the number and types of flavors unless you go to Starbucks, because recently, they’ve reduced the number of flavors that they were providing in the sugar free space. Certainly, either way, you do have a lot of options. They’re also keeping in mind that the different types of milk that are out there are also really amazing, like just changing for, for me, for example, changing from a dairy based milk to oat milk, I have found that I get the same texture, the same experience. But since I have a lactose sensitivity, I don’t get any of the after effects of drinking a milk based product. And I don’t particularly like almond milk and the soy milk at Starbucks for some reason, it makes my tongue tingle. And so I’m not quite sure what the allergic response is to that particular soy milk that that is that is sourced at Starbucks, but it actually like gives me a mild allergic reaction. And so I just don’t order soy based drinks at the Starbucks swapping out for oat milk has been really great for that purpose. So just like remember that you can modify these things and make them your own. And that means you can also bring them into your home. And this doesn’t have to be something that’s like special. And it can be something that is just a part of your everyday world. I did want to also note about the fact that we drink predominantly Arabica coffee beans here in the United States. And there are different kinds of roasting. So if you’ve never really looked at the various types of labels on the coffee beans, the lighter the roast, the more caffeine content, the darker the roast, the less caffeine content just by virtue of the roasting process. So if you want to have a higher caffeine content in your coffee, you want to choose the lighter roast that you’re going to have. And so actually time and we’ll talk about this a little bit later, I time, the the darkness of the roast, to the time of the day when I want more caffeine versus less. So certainly in the afternoon, I’m always going to have dark roasts, because I don’t want higher caffeine count, which will then inevitably keep me up at night.

Augusto Pinaud 13:29
Just to add something important that comes to also the tolerance. One thing that is important, you know, coming from a culture that drinks a lot of coffee is you build resistance to this caffeine and can you increase the coffee to still get some of that effect? Yes, but there is a moment where you need to stop and understand okay, how you’re going to change the game if you want to still some of these benefits because the coffee will lose that effect the caffeine will lose that alertness that emergency and you then build a dependency and you stop drinking the caffeine and you will get headaches and all that and managing between teas and coffees even though you’re getting the same amount of caffeine maybe they process different in the body so that’s one thing to look if you’re feeling like okay I’m reaching the point where caffeine is no or the caffeine I’m drinking on the same way every day is not making anything to me. Well it may be time to go maybe to what art says start getting some samples of tea sort of started looking different ways to intake this caffeine. You know I see it a lot when I’m doing project management with software development today that they are now went from one Red Bull to many and they’re not getting that because they already built the resistance to that. So it is important to pay attention to that resistance so that you can vary, what kind of caffeine and the intake and even even go to the point and said, Okay, do I really need this 10 cups of coffee to be effective? Or can I create a plan to reduce those 10 cups to five, okay, and then regain allow the body to gain some of that sensibility. Again,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:23
I want us to move along into discussing how we make our various types of coffee. There are many different methods for doing so. And it turns out, some of them have different health benefits or health disadvantages. And so I wanted to lead people to I mean, we’re not providing medical advice here. So I’m not going to give any but the idea here is to at least lead you to some resources in the show notes to just do your own research and make some determinations for yourself around some of these things. But how do you make your coffee? I know we have machines and we have different devices. And how do you make How do you make your coffees,

Augusto Pinaud 16:00
I have learned over the years that I won repeatability without big effort, that part consistency is really, really important in my world. Because of that I tend I have an espresso machine. And I drink one kind of Nespresso machine. And every time they run out of it, it’s really It’s upsetting for me. But I for me that consistency, it’s really, really important. You know, years ago, I had the fancy espresso machine. And the problem was that fancy espresso machine is sometimes espresso was out of this world. Sometimes this presser was right. So did not have that consistency when I enjoy a drink, and I don’t care, for example, my wicker review, I don’t need that consistency is fine, I just need certain things on that drink. And that’s it a little bit of cinnamon milk. And I don’t know if espresso good for my caffeine intake on my day to day work, that consistency is really, really important that by the way has been one of the issues with tea for me personally, okay, that He requires more work, I’m willing to do, there is no one button T thing that makes the same T was the same as Trank was the same flavor every time even when you buy the T bags. And maybe because I have never buy any necessarily a really good one. I cannot replicate or do it consistently. That for me, it doesn’t work. So for me, it’s simple. It’s an espresso. It’s a shot, I tend to do our arpeggio is how they call it some purple capsule. And that’s all that I do.

Art Gelwicks 17:39
Yeah, for me the brewing process. It’s either, as I mentioned, the Keurig for like instant, you know, I just want some coffee right now, just because I want the coffee flavor. I know it’s not exceptionally good coffee. Matter of fact, in many cases, it’s pretty bad coffee. But at least it’s something that I can have in the next minute, 30 seconds, whatever. The other option I primarily use is my Chemex pourover, which is which uses a brown paper filter. It’s a longer process. I mean, that process can take a good 10 minutes to make a cup of coffee from beginning to end water boiling and everything. But what I found is that’s one of the ones that I can have a truly repeatable process. I use it a kitchen scale, I measure out the number of grams of coffee, I measure out the number of fluid ounces of water, I have that consistency in the execution. So the only variance is the coffee itself, how it was roasted, what its flavor is and I know that when I have that I’m like I could do this again. And I could get the same result with this particular coffee and allows me to judge those coffees. But that really is that kind of experience process for teas. teas that are very similar bag teas are if you have a consistent brew time, you’re going to get a fairly consistent flavor not not all the time, like Agusta said, there is quite a bit of variability. But a steeped tea a loose tea is a completely different conversation. Different flavor profile, it doesn’t have the ground up tea leaves, you don’t pick up the bitterness that you get, you get a much more open flavor, but it does require effort. It’s also the one time that in many cases, you can use tea twice. A lot of you know a lot of us were raised that you have it you use a tea bag, and then you throw it out. But with loose teas often you can brew twice, three times and get different flavor profiles and get a different experience. And it’s still very good. So those are the two, whether it’s coffee or whether it’s tea. Those are the two main ways I do it. And again, it’s really depending on urgency versus experience.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 19:50
I’ve gone through different versions of my regular coffee drinking. Again, I picked up coffee drinking only about a decade ago and so I’m not as long term of a coffee drinker. And so I found myself picking it up purely for the caffeination, I really had no other. I didn’t have the Oh, I really want this flavor profile. And this kind of whatever it grew on me. I think that today I now enjoy the flavor and enjoy the different types of coffee. And I know I mentioned earlier also that Arabica is the most common beans that we’re usually consuming in the United States, but also understand that there’s the Robusta. And the robust actually has a higher caffeine content, it has, as its name would imply, a little bit of a stronger flavor. So definitely stronger. And it is usually less expensive, at least here in the States. So people should know that you have Arabica and Robusta and, and those two Beans are probably the most common and easily accessible, but you’re going to get a cheaper and stronger buzz from proposta coffee than you are from the Arabica. So get a light roast Robusta, and you’re going to get a high caffeine, inexpensive cup of coffee, I have long been a French press user, for me has been the longest term coffee method of brewing. Also in that category of making coffee, I moved to doing a pour over for a little while. But again, just because of the length of time and the amount of effort to go into making the pour overs, I kind of fell fell out of favor with it. So it’s either French roast, and now I’ve stuck to the Keurig to make the coffee just because of efficiency and consistency of that particular making of the coffee, we actually use a reusable cup in order to be able to make the coffee. So we buy our own coffees, and I usually cycle through different types of coffees. So I’m particular to hazelnut coffee, and or french vanilla flavored coffee. And so I will get those in either a light roast or a dark roast, I usually don’t get medium roasts, I really try to lean into either light or dark roast just because I want one or the other not necessarily in the middle. It’s just my my particular flavors. And then on the T side, those are usually in the loose tea category, I tend to favor the loose teas. I know some people like to filter them into into their water, but I tend to just dump the loose tea into the cup. And just keep refilling. And so just putting the hot water directly onto the loose teas in the cup. And I think this is just like a family cultural thing. But we just don’t, we don’t strain our teas, we sip from the top and call it a day. So you use your lips to strain I suppose if if the tea leaves get close to your lips, you just you just strain it out. But I can see how people can even use a pour over technique to be able to do T’s if they wanted to, to have a very light flavor tea, or you could just leave it in a pot and do it that way as well.

Art Gelwicks 22:53
Just out of curiosity, I was looking up the variance in caffeine based on brewing time for teas. And just as an example, Earl Grey, which is probably one of the most common ones. I mean, everybody, if you’ve watched Star Trek, you know what Earl Grey is, but stache Earl Grey, for one minute of brewing is 24 milligrams of caffeine, for five minutes of brewing, it’s 47 milligrams, that’s a level of control over the caffeine that honestly you can’t get out of coffee because coffee has just it goes through and whatever comes out comes out. So the control you can get by varying your steeping time with a tea gives you a lot of granularity. Now. Again, caution though, by changing those times, you’re changing the flavor profile too. So you’ll get a different T experience. But it’s one of those things that if you’re a coffee drinker, again, I highly encourage you experiment with teas, you will be very surprised that you can get something that will satisfy you as a coffee drinker, and also give you control if you’re especially trying to reduce your caffeine intake.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 23:58
I’ll note here that there is a debate currently going in the scientific community around two different chemicals, butchering the second one but the name of the pronunciation of the second one, but the first one is cafestol. And the other one is I think carryall. And both of those things are are chemicals that somehow interact with your liver, be mindful. And I’ve put some links in the show notes here so that you can go and do your own research here. But my understanding is that when you’re using metal filters, they’re not filtering out as much cafestol as the paper based filters, and so those who are doing French press or other kinds of like for example, our reusable K cup is a metal filter. So it’s not paper filtering the coffee and so therefore it’s putting more cafestol and Kawi all into the coffee. And that means that if you have say a propensity or you know genetic leaning into having cholesterol issues, your LDL levels are going to of course increase because of these particular chemicals. So definitely talk to your doctor. Definitely do some research and make sure that You know, the amount of coffee you’re drinking is not going to be impacting your health in that sense. And I think otherwise, drinking coffee is so far from my experience and research, there hasn’t really been any major health effects for drinking casually throughout the day, anyone who’s drinking a great deal of caffeine, as we talked about in the last episode, you can start to poison yourself at having a gram or more a day of pure caffeine, you’re going to start causing problems. With that. Let’s talk a little bit about timing for consuming caffeine. And how do you how do you actually time your caffeine for effectiveness throughout the day, we’ve talked about all of these various ways in which we’ve, you know, we drink coffee, we’ve lightly touched on the various ways in which we consume caffeine and even produce caffeine drinks for efficiency, as we were talking, and this came to mind, there are brewing machines that have timers built in their Wi Fi connected ones now that are out there also. So you can actually set up your coffee the night before, or you just basically put your coffee beans, whole beans into the machine, and it will actually grind and brew your coffee and have it ready for you at a particular time. Every day. You have this technology now available to you to be able to make that kind of thing happen. How do you all actually caffeinate throughout your days or weeks, for greatest efficiency and effectiveness,

Augusto Pinaud 26:28
I may be the worst case because I drink as I said, I have a high tolerance for coffee as I would I don’t know when I had my first cup of coffee. But I was I don’t think I was 12 or 13 when we coffee was already a normal thing on my household. So because of that I have drink enough coffee plus, it used to work so used to be was good. Mine, again is espresso in the last two weeks. Actually, since we record the first episode of the caffeine, the first part, I’ve been considering that resistance that I have for coffee. And I’ve been playing with a couple of ideas. One of the ideas that I again, for me, the consistency is so important that instead of go for tea, I decided to just go for boiling water because I have a kettle that I can set give me 160 degrees, and it will make it perfectly at 160 degrees. So that consistency is so important for my productivity. So I’ve been drinking espresso and boiling water, but trying to drink more water than espresso. And I’ve been reducing my caffeine, my espresso intake by 50%. So in the last few weeks without headaches or or stuff, so I’m going to continue evaluating this and see where it’s going to take me or I will start getting headaches and increase the amount of coffee,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 27:57
the rehydration of your body is actually what’s counteracting any of the effects of what would be coming off of the caffeine. So it’s actually a really good practice to mediate any of the effects with the hot water. That’s great.

Francis Wade 28:14
So okay, so I shared my once a two weeks schedule, but on a daily bit by do it, take it in the day, I read somewhere that the it’s not a good idea to ticket first thing in the morning, like six o’clock, because your cortisol, the cortisol is already high. And the best time is somewhere around, I think the third or fourth or after getting up, which for me equates to somewhere around between nine and 11. And I kind of tried to time it around an energy dip. Because I’m doing the nap, the coffee nap. So I’m trying to get the ball stalled of the dip in my energy after first both of work, take the coffee, take the nap and then kind of hope that they all come together in some way and give me a nice bolts. So somewhere around 90 level. That’s the one the one cup and I don’t think I could if I took if I took one of them later on like well probably ruin my sleep because I’m intolerant. Yes, I’m intolerant of coffee, this point of caffeine

Raymond Sidney-Smith 29:21
to Francis’s point about cortisol levels. Remember that when you are increasing your cortisol levels, your immune system is being impacted positively and then potentially negatively if it’s over a prolonged period of time, which is why the suggestion is is that your cortisol levels what wakes you up in the morning. It’s a fear based response, but it also is what wakes us cortisol, you know what kind of interacts with our body when we are in worry, anxiety, fear, those kinds of things. But it’s also what helps us start to get alert in the morning. Well, if we consistently have coffee, say at 630 in the morning when we wake up, then we’re consistently spiking are cortisol levels. And so that can increase all kinds of anxiety, potentially for folks who are sensitive to those things. And that can of course, impact your immune health. So be mindful of when you’re taking them, as you noted between two to three hours after your wakeup is when your cortisol levels start to come down a little bit, and therefore having coffee will then re increase them, but not spike them beyond their their high levels when you do wake up. So you want to keep that kind of in mind that you’re balancing out a bunch of chemical interactions in your body when you’re putting any nutrients into your body. And coffee is a chemical that’s interacting with all of those various nutrients.

Art Gelwicks 30:40
Yeah, I’ve been trying to adjust the types of beverage consumption around the caffeine. So in the morning, it’ll be regular coffee or black tea. And I’ll do that, probably up until around lunchtime. And at that point, I transitioned over to either herbal teas or white teas or something along that line that doesn’t have the caffeine in it, excuse me, because I found that I’ve really had to tie this in to how I sleep. And there are there’s massive impacts as to how I sleep. And being consistent with that has helped quite a bit. So that’s my transition point. I know I have better control at that point. Over the the caffeine if I make that switch, and I fight that instinct to have coffee. Now, I will admit I have a way I cheat every so often. I do like the flavor of coffee. So I have a bag of these little candies that I bought at a local Asian market that are no coffee flavored candies. And they have a little bit of sugar in it. There’s basically no caffeine in them. There’s there’s a little bit but negligible amount, but it gives me the flavor of coffee without consuming an actual cup. So that’s kind of the the, like the smokers version of a caffeine pill.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 31:57
When I have the urge I actually will have Werther’s for some reason Werther’s Originals, that flavor of candy is for me, like not the same as coffee but it gives me the same smoothness of say, drinking coffee that that will actually abate my like desire to have coffee. So I will frequently use that in my in my travels if I’m if I’m like, Oh, why would I want coffee but don’t want to have coffee late in the evening, a Werther’s Original, only the thing that

Augusto Pinaud 32:31
that’s one of the few advantages of being completely tolerant to coffee is I can have espresso shot at 10:30pm and go to bed at 1031. No problem.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:42
We’ll have a we’ll have a talk about your sleep quality at another time against. That does concern

Augusto Pinaud 32:49
I’m BC for that episode. I’m bc I don’t know you can schedule any time. But I’m really busy,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 32:54
we will definitely be circling back to sleep quality at some point in the future. I am very methodical about my caffeine consumption. And I’m trying to determine whether or not I am feeling the cortisol in my system, you can tell just based on where you are, over time, you can start to feel where you are in terms of alertness at any given time, and I try to pay attention and you know, I’m a data tracker. So I like to pay attention to when I feel peak alertness residing in my morning routine. And that’s about the time when I want to be able to create the initial coffee so that it can cool because I don’t like my coffee that hot and then and then be able to have it and have it start to get into my system as quickly as possible so that you know 15 To 20 minutes when it first really hits your system. So my goal is to make sure that I am timing my first cup of coffee of the day to give me that level of boost. And then in the mid day I’m usually going to move to a tea or some other caffeine based product that could be a cola or that could be something else just depends on you know my mood but I’m I’m going to go to that I had do have caffeine pills and as I talked about before these caffeine patches, I’m running out of those I’m not quite sure if I’ll get any more of them just because I don’t feel like they have as great efficacy as maybe just drinking the coffee. So the caffeine pills with with L theanine helped to really give you that slow, even focus throughout the day. And so that’s been really helpful for me as well so I can drink a non caffeinated drink but have that with the caffeine plus L theanine and have a really good midday and I’m again timing those to be post lunch. I want to have another caffeine boost so that my body is going through. Its typical, you know breaking down the food and doing all of that stuff. But on the other side Giving me the mental boost that otherwise I would have a little bit of dip in focus coming back from the lunch timeframe. So I tried to really work through both circadian and ultradian rhythms, but really working with where your body is at any given time. So you really have to time your caffeine consumption based on what you’re feeling from any given day to day. Again, I’m a tracker. So I’m going to always recommend this. But I really recommend that you track your alertness throughout the day for a given week, or maybe two weeks, and see how your body interacts with caffeine. Throughout those days, that may mean going cold turkey for a period of time, so that you can just feel how your body is naturally. And then caffeinate experimentally over the course of time to see when you need that little bit of a push to be able to become more alert at particular times. This has been a lot of fun talking about caffeine based productivity. We’re really curious from you all what your favorite caffeinated beverage is, and how you consume caffeine. So feel free to let us know in the comments. While we’ve reached the end of our recorded discussion. The conversation, of course doesn’t have to stop here, you have a question or comment about something we’ve discussed in this cast, feel free to visit the episode page on ProductivityCast dotnet. And you can go ahead and leave your thoughts there in the comments section. Also, on the episode page, you’ll find our show notes. And so those are those contain and in this particular episode, they’re pretty hefty, they contain links to things that we discussed. So you can go ahead and jump to them there. I’ve included a really great article from I think it’s tasty, serious eats.com, I guess it is, and that one provides a great method for pourover. So there’s some really good stuff there if you’re doing a pour over coffee method, and then taste of home comm also has an article about the different types of coffee and coffee makers and all kinds of fun information chucked into that particular article. So I would definitely check out those pieces. There’s some you know, research from the science side to check out in the notes as well. So definitely check those pieces out in the show notes. The show notes also contain text transcripts. One is a readable one right there on the page. So if you hit play in order to listen to the podcast, right below that, you can click the Read More link at the bottom of the show notes. And it’ll expand it so you can go ahead and read right along. The other is a PDF link. And if you click on that PDF link, it will go ahead and download that PDF for you to be able to take offline and so you can listen on the go and read along on the go as well. Feel free to leave a rating or review in your favorite podcast application Apple podcast, Google podcasts, Stitcher, wherever you can leave reviews. I don’t think you can leave reviews on Google podcasts yet, but you can certainly go ahead and leave reviews in lots of different places. So feel free to leave those reviews that helps us to grow our personal productivity listening community. And so thank you for doing that. If you have a topic about personal productivity you’d like us to discuss on a future cast, visit productivity cast dotnet forward slash contact, you can leave a voice recorded message or you can type us a message and maybe we’ll have you in a future episode. And so thank you for sending those along. As always, I want to express my thanks to Augusto Pinaud Francis Wade and art Gelwicks for joining me here on ProductivityCast Each week, you can learn more about them and their work by visiting productivitycast.net and clicking on the about page. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith and on behalf of all of us here at ProductivityCast Here’s your productive life.

Voiceover Artist 38:33
And that’s it for this ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things productivity, with your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.