Jeste li se ikada zatekli da dan prolazite s mučnim glavoboljama, a zatim se sjetite da ste zaboravili popiti kavu? Ti nisi jedini. Vrlo je velik broj ljudi koji pokušavaju prestati s kavom. Jednostavna Google pretraga daje usporediv broj rezultata za "prestanite s kavom", "prestanite s alkoholom" i "ostavite drogu". Impresivan^(Impressive), zar ne? Ipak, nitko zapravo ne obraća toliko pozornosti na ovo. I dok društvo okrivljuje druge 2 navike, kava se zapravo odobrava. Zato ću u ovom članku opisati kako sam na kraju odlučila prestati piti kavu, kako to pijem i kakav je utjecaj imala na moj san i razinu energije. Budući da sam kvantificirani štreber o sebi s više od 9 mjeseci detaljnih podataka o sebi, sposoban sam povezati brojne vitalne znakove s eksperimentima koje provodim na sebi. Započnimo:

Moja povijest s ispijanjem kave

Kavu sam počela piti u 9. razredu. Sudjelovao sam na matematičkim olimpijadama i provodio sam puno noći pokušavajući istraživati ​​matematičke pojmove i rješavati probleme. Zašto sam to učinio? Iz nekoliko razloga. Kao prvo^(First) , imao sam društvo: nisam bio jedini na mreži kao noćna sova koja pokušava riješiti komplicirane matematičke probleme. Drugo^(Second) , moja srednja škola je bila u renoviranju, a trebali smo ići na nastavu poslijepodne i navečer. Bio je to savršen izgovor da ostanete budni većinu noći, zar ne?

Pred kraj mojih srednjoškolskih godina stvari su se pogoršale. U zimi svoje posljednje godine pokušavao sam se prijaviti na nekoliko američkih sveučilišta dok sam sve ostalo na okupu. Na kraju sam odradio cijeli mjesec 4-satnih noći, a trešnja na vrhu bio je 48-satni maraton da sve završim i da se prijave otpreme na vrijeme.

Zatim je došlo Sveučilište^(University) . Ostajali bismo budni do kasno čitajući stvari koje su nas zanimale, povremeno tulumarili ili pokušavali sve natrpati prije ispita. Trebali biste otići i posjetiti učionice našeg sveučilišta u noćima prije ispita. Iznenadit ćete se koliko ćete ljudi tamo zateći kako spava (err.. mislio sam na učenje). Tih dana bih bezumno pio kavu, a da se nisam ni trudio na bilo koji način prebrojati šalice. Osim toga, kava je jeftina, zar ne? Možete dobiti lijepu šalicu kave na mnogim mjestima u Bukureštu^(Bucharest) za otprilike 50 ¢ do 1 dolar.

Tijekom sveučilišnog studija počeo sam raditi sa starim prijateljem koji je upravo promoviran u vođu tima u globalnoj tvrtki. Naravno, to sam učinio u najtežem trenutku u nastavnom planu i programu, posljednjoj godini, kada su svi ostali kolege davali otkaz. Bilo je tako lijepo biti negativac, zar ne? Na kraju sam radio 90-100 sati tjedno i ponekad nisam vidio svjetlo dana. Iako je samo honorarni posao zauzimao mali dio toga.

Onda sam završio fakultet i brzo sam odlučio ići na doktorat^(PhD) . Mislio sam u sebi da bi malo plaćeno osiguralo da mogu raditi na čemu god želim, a da budem plaćen. Malo sam znao! Morao sam odraditi svoje dupe kako bih napravio prostor za istraživanje dok sam obavljao svoje druge dužnosti (uključenost u europske projekte i podučavanje). Kad god sam osjetio da više ne mogu, kava je uvijek bila tu, u blizini. Prijatelj od povjerenja!

Konačno, bio sam toliko frustriran akademijom da sam se pridružio tehnološkom startupu. Iako sam u početku htio napustiti doktorat^(PhD) , odlučio sam ga završiti i prošao 6 mjeseci neprekidnog rada, danonoćno, vikendom ili radnim danom. U ovom trenutku stvari su stvarno izmakle kontroli. Pijem 4 šalice dnevno (a ljudi, posebno iz SAD-a, više puta su mi govorili koliko je jaka rumunjska kava). I to nadopuniti s puno čokolade.

I poslije nije bilo lakše. Čim sam završio doktorat^(PhD) , završili smo s nabavom i isporukom velikog projekta u isto vrijeme. I tako dalje.

U jednom trenutku sam odlučila da se moj odnos s kavom mora promijeniti.

Motivacija^(Motivation) - što je potaknulo moju odluku^{(My Decision)} da prestanem piti kavu^{(Drinking Coffee)} ?

Postoji dosta nas koji smo frustrirani načinom na koji je kava preuzela naše živote. Osvrnite se oko sebe, dok ste u supermarketu ili u trgovačkom centru i počet ćete shvaćati veličinu industrije kave. Obratite^(Pay) posebnu pozornost na odjeljak s kofeinskim proizvodima u supermarketu ili na dnevnu rutinu svojih najmilijih. Kako počinje njihov dan? Uz kavu, zar ne?

Odlučio sam prestati s kavom kada sam shvatio sljedeće činjenice:

• Zaboravljanje na njega ili pokušaj da ga ne pijem u određenom danu bilo mi je jako teško. Dakle, ili držim ovu tvar u svom tijelu cijelo vrijeme ili je uopće ne držim.
• Koristila sam ga da utišam signale koje mi tijelo pokušava poslati. Kad god bi mi reklo da je umorno, ušutkala bih ga uz kavu (i možda čokoladu).
• Moj odnos s kavom se tijekom godina pogoršao i nije se popravio. Nije čak ni ostao konstantan. Jedna ili dvije kave bile su potrebne samo da bi se "počelo" bez ikakvog stvarnog učinka.

Odustajanje od kave, iznova

Priznajem, tada nisam istraživao nikakve metode. Možda sam samo imao ludo samopouzdanje da to mogu učiniti sam. Gledajući unatrag, bio sam u najboljem slučaju naivan. Zato što će neuspjeli pokušaj dramatično smanjiti vaše šanse za odustajanje u budućnosti. Što se tiče hrane, to znači: što je više neuspjelih dijeta, veće su šanse da nikada nećete biti mršavi.

Sve što sam imao na umu je jedno vodeći princip koji primjenjujem na većinu svojih životnih poboljšanja: napraviti mala, postupna poboljšanja koja su održiva i mjere prije nego što djelujem.^{(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.)}

Kad sam odlučio potpuno odustati od kave, već sam je smanjio. Prethodni mjeseci bili su puni koka^(Coke) -kole i kave, a ja sam se zabrinula. Počeo sam prvo mjeriti i otkrio da pijem oko 30 kava u razmaku od 2 tjedna, a najviše u radnim danima. Nakon što smo vidjeli brojke, perspektiva dolaska na nulu bila je prilično zastrašujuća.

Ključno je u ovom trenutku bilo to smatrati dugoročnim procesom. Godina ima 52 tjedna. Ako sam našao način da smanjim broj kava za 1 svaka 2 tjedna, bit ću gotov u roku od godinu dana! Naravno, trebala bi i sama disciplina unositi podatke, jer Vessyla^(Vessyl) tada nije bilo. Međutim, moja osobna teorija je da će ljudi, s obzirom na dovoljno dobru korist, sami unositi podatke umjesto da traže automatizirani način.

U literaturi koja se odnosi na prestanak pušenja, ono što sam pokušavao učiniti je nazvano "postupno smanjenje". Postoji više škola mišljenja, a one se uglavnom dijele na ovu metodu (ili slične) i na potpuno odustajanje ("hladna purica"). Postupno smanjenje i njegovi derivati ​​pokazali su se mnogo učinkovitijim u ispitivanjima (mjerenjem relapsa nakon 6 mjeseci ili 1 godine).

Trebalo mi je ukupno 8 tjedana da potpuno odustanem od kave. I na kraju sam imao ultimativni test: putovati u SAD i natrag za 5 dana na konferenciju — i ne piti kavu! Ovaj sam prošao odlično iako je bio težak i mislim da sam lakše prošao kroz jet lag zbog nedostatka kave.

Moji sprintovi za odvikavanje od kave

Ja sam softverski inženjer i gotovo svemu pristupam iz perspektive inženjera. Učeći iz agilne metodologije, pristupio sam prestanku kave u dvotjednim sprintovima. Ovdje ću dati kratak pregled svojih sprinteva. Trebalo mi je ukupno 4 sprinta od trenutka kada sam odlučio prestati s tim - otprilike 56 dana:

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) — mjerio sam samo kavu koju sam popio. Rezultat: 26 šalica i velika glavobolja zadnji dan ( 27. travnja^{(April 27th)} ), jer sam zaboravio popiti kavu. Tada sam stvarno odlučio prestati.

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.

Kako funkcionira sprint

Prije^(First) svega, provjeravam nadzornu ploču svog sprinta (obično Google proračunsku tablicu^{(Google Spreadsheet)} ) svako jutro u svojoj svakodnevnoj rutini. Ulaznu barijeru sam učinio jako niskim tako što sam svoje podatke stavio u proračunsku tablicu, jer sam znao da se moja jutarnja rutina može vrlo lako poremetiti vikendima i putovanjima. Samo gledanje cilja i trenutnog napretka osvijestit će me do kraja dana na što moram obratiti pažnju.

Dok postupno napredujem kroz sprint, prirodno sam sklon postati ambiciozniji prema kraju kako bih postigao svoj cilj. Ovdje je stvarno važno imati manje agresivne ciljeve - lakše će se boriti za njihovo postizanje i bit će vjerojatnije da su oni dostupni.

Pred kraj sprinta počinjem razmišljati o ciljevima za sljedeći. Obično sam imao 2-3 gola za sprint, a obično bi jedan od njih bio vezan uz težinu (jer sam u tom trenutku gubio na težini).

Nakon svakog sprinta imao bih malu retrospektivu sprinta, kako bih shvatio zašto sam postigao (ili nisam uspio) svoje ciljeve i kako im treba pristupiti i dalje.

Pokušavam izbjeći više od 3 gola za jedan sprint, jer mi je teško usredotočiti se na toliko rezultata. Vjerojatno najbolje funkcionira imati samo jedan cilj, ali za to je potreban stupanj strpljenja koji mnogi ljudi (uključujući mene) nemaju.

^{(Does Quitting Coffee Improve)}Poboljšava li prestanak kave kvalitetu sna^(Sleep) ?

Bio sam prilično uzbuđen što sam iskopao svoje podatke o spavanju iz svog BodyMedia i vidio ima li dugoročnih poboljšanja u kvaliteti sna nakon prestanka kave. Moj zaključak je da ih ima, ali ih je poremetilo moje druge važne životne promjene (poput promjene karijere). Također, imam "samo" oko 8 mjeseci podataka o sebi. I to se može činiti puno, ali kada ga pokušate zgnječiti, primijetit ćete da vam treba puno više.

U tu svrhu sam za sebe izmislio ocjenu spavanja koja je prosjek sljedeća 4 metrika, koju nazivam "kompozitni rezultat spavanja":

• Ocjena spavanja^(Sleep) za cijelu noć (postotak vremena ležanja u krevetu u kojem sam zapravo spavao).
• Rezultat spavanja^(Sleep) prvih sat vremena (to je zato što sam imao problema sa zaspati; ja sam hiperaktivna osoba i ni ispijanje kave nije pomoglo).
• Vrijeme za spavanje (broj minuta potrebnih da se zaspi). Ovo nije točno jer senzor ne može napraviti razliku između mene dok gledam film ili pokušavam zaspati. U budućnosti ću smisliti način da to izmjerim.
• Broj^(Number) intervala spavanja koje je detektirao BodyMedia (ili, u govoru o spavanju - broj bacanja i okretanja).

Svaki od ovih pokazatelja je normaliziran na 0-100 i prosječen. Isto sam učinio i za broj kava (pomnožen s 33, jer dok sam ih bilježio nisam pio više od 3 kave dnevno), a usporedio sam ih na sljedećem grafikonu:

Grafikon pokazuje povećanje kvalitete sna (crveni grafikon) prema srpnju^(July) i početku kolovoza^(August) . Slijedi očiti pad, jer sam mijenjao posao, što je za svakoga stresno. Kao što vidite, sada je moj rezultat spavanja mnogo stabilniji i sve je češće iznad 75.

Za spavanje koristio sam pomični prosjek (matematičku formulu u kojoj su starije vrijednosti manje važne od novijih vrijednosti), jer sam pokušavao bolje vidjeti dugoročne trendove. U početku sam bio razočaran što nije bilo jasnog poboljšanja naviše. Ali pretpostavljam da sam krivo postavio svoja očekivanja na dva načina:

• Nijedan senzor ne može izmjeriti koliko ste ujutro odmorni. To je ono što se zapravo poboljšalo nakon prestanka kave. Smislit ću način da izmjerim nuspojave toga na duži rok, kako bih izveo više eksperimenata.
• Čak i poboljšanje od 10% nije tako uvjerljivo; to bi značilo da ću za godinu-dvije, s obzirom na dovoljno ambicija, moći postići gotovo savršen san.

Budući da sam prije prestanka kave imao ukupno 7 sprintova (oko 100 dana), a nakon toga otprilike toliko podataka o spavanju, odlučio sam usporediti ocjenu spavanja za dan D i dan D+100 , nacrtati ga i akumulirati. To bi mi govorilo jesam li doista bolje spavao ili ne.

I evo ga. Veliki plavi grafikon koji vidite je povećanje kvalitete sna koje sam dobio tijekom razdoblja od 3 mjeseca (kad god je iznad osnovne linije, to znači da sam kumulativno spavao bolje nego u prethodnom razdoblju).

Ovaj grafikon je prilično vjerojatan. Odmah nakon prestanka kave prošla sam kroz stabilnije razdoblje, gdje sam se pokušala malo više odmoriti i napuniti baterije. A nedavno sam počeo jako intenzivno raditi na nizu osobnih projekata (uključujući ove članke), što objašnjava povratak kvalitete sna. Međutim, postoje dvije zaista važne točke:

• Veliko uzlazno brdo kumulativnog rezultata spavanja znači da sam stalno bolje spavao nego prije tijekom dugog vremenskog razdoblja.
• Činjenica da se, iako sam prošla kroz teško razdoblje, trenutno oporavljam pokazuje da se moja sposobnost prolaska kroz teška razdoblja nije promijenila zbog prestanka kave. Što^(Which) je samo po sebi veliko postignuće.

Ostale prednosti odvikavanja od kave

Prije^(First) svega, brže počinjem dan. Svaki dan sam dobivao dodatnih 5 do 10 minuta koje su bile potrebne za pripremu kave i ispijanje.

Budim se odmorniji, čak i nakon manje sati sna. I više se odmaram kad god mi tijelo kaže da je vrijeme. Zbog toga se moja produktivnost znatno poboljšala i više sam usredotočen na ono što radim.

Odlazak na spavanje sada je mnogo lakši. Budući da također prakticiram povremeni post (IF)^{(intermittent fasting (IF))} , do kasnih večernjih sati sam stvarno umoran i nekoliko minuta čitanja na mom Kindleu^(Kindle) je sasvim dovoljno da brzo i učinkovito zaspim.

Što je najvažnije, bolje poznajem svoje tijelo. Znam koja ga hrana hrani ispravno, a koja ne i kako mogu utjecati na njegovu razinu energije. Sad mogu bježati, ali se ne mogu sakriti. Nema kave koja bi potisnula signale koje mi pokušava poslati.

Zaključak

Prije^(First) svega, sjajan je osjećaj imati kavu izvan svog sustava. Ali to je duboko ukorijenjena navika i društveni događaj, osobito u uredskim poslovima, i vrlo ga se teško riješiti. Nedostaje mi jutarnja kava sa suprugom, ili s kolegama.

Koncept inkrementalnih dobitaka pokazao se vrlo uspješnim u odustajanju od kave – a nagrada je bila to što sam mogao organizirati svoju aktivnost kao softverski inženjer (koristeći sprintove). Još jednom, postoji čvrst dokaz da je proces važniji od rezultata.

Bio sam vrlo zadovoljan vidjeti da se status quo može osporiti. Trebam li stvarno kavu? Možda ne. Šteti li vam to? Kod mene je to definitivno bio slučaj. Imate li slične priče? Volio bih čuti vaše!

Andrei Ismail je iskusni softverski inženjer s iskustvom u pokretanju i doktoratom iz umjetne inteligencije. Izgubio je 50 funti u 6 mjeseci i trenutno radi na programu fitness coachinga za štreberke, koji je dostupan na stranici MRŠAVLJENJE ZA INŽENJERE^{(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 уourself getting through а day with excruciating headaches and then remembering that you forgot to drink coffеe? You're not the only one. There is a very large number of people trying to quit coffee. A simple Google search yields a comparable number of results for "quit coffee", "quit alcohol" and "quit drugs". Impressive, right? Yet, nobodу really pays attention to this one that much. And while the othеr 2 habits are blamed by society, cоffeе is actually endorsed. That's why, in this article I am going to descrіbе how I ended up deciding to quit drinking coffee, my mеthоd for doing it and the impact іt had on my sleep аnd energy levels. Being a quantified self geek with over 9 months of detаiled data about myself, I am able to correlate a number of vital signs to the expеrіments that І 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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