Running a business without caffeine

I don’t recommend it

When I think about my old job, I often think about the coffee. Upon arrival at the office every morning, I’d drop my bag at my desk and head straight to the kitchen for a hot cup of java. (Eventually, we were blessed with a cold brew keg.) Only then could I face the next 9 hours of attempting to “STAY FOCUSED” amidst the absolute hell of an open-floor office plan. I didn’t even drink that much coffee—one, maybe two cups per day. But it sure did feel like the solution to everything. Hungover? Uninspired? Bored? A little jaunt across the office to fetch another cup of lowkey-meth made everything better. I bet the 30 yards of ambulatory movement didn’t hurt either.

I’ve been off caffeine for almost a year now. This wasn’t my choice. At the end of last summer, I began experiencing some mysterious health symptoms. Despite the Delta variant running rampant, my doctor refused to test me for COVID and instead concluded that there was something wrong with my 30-year-old liver. She advised me to cut out alcohol, caffeine, and all things herbal while more tests and ultrasounds were ordered. Hypochondriacs make excellent patients, and I was more than happy to obey. My unexplained fatigue, mental fog, and lightheadedness (I’m now 90% sure this was COVID) were thus compounded by the headaches and sluggishness of cold-turkey caffeine withdrawal. [That being said, if you’re looking to quit caffeine, I do recommend doing it while you’re already sick. Lean into feeling awful!]

Long story, short: my liver and I are fine. Even though I’m no longer afraid of alcohol, I never really liked it and am now (California) sober for the most part. But while I still love coffee, I never want to be dependent on it again. These days, I drink caffeinated beverages sparingly—only when I really need to get boosted back to baseline, like after a sleepless night. I probably have some form of caffeine maaaaybe once a week—most often because I need to purchase something to work at a coffee shop, and they don’t always serve decaf. [While it has its moments, I’ll never be a daily decaf drinker. Without the buzz, decaf coffee is just a dehydrating diuretic that stains my teeth. Not worth it, in my opinion.] As far as recreational use goes, I’ll sometimes decide to “do caffeine” when I’m particularly bored or blue and I just want to FEEL SOMETHING GODDAMNIT.

For the most part, it’s downright magical to wake up and not require a stimulant to start my day. By prioritizing good sleep, hydration, and proper nutrition—groundbreaking, I know—I actually feel quite refreshed most mornings! The struggle is when there’s work to be done and I have little to motivate me aside from my own sheer willpower. For example, I’ve been “working on” my new company’s website for… weeks (ok, months). Without caffeine, it’s pretty hard to get over the “but I don’t wanna” hump. Stone cold sober, I need to be “inspired” or “in the mood” to accomplish most tasks. Even writing this entirely voluntary essay has taken way longer than I would have liked. 

But with coffee, anything’s possible. With that high-octane elixir flowing through my veins, it’s actually hard to sit around and do nothing. Nursing a cup of the-closest-I’ve-come-to-cocaine, the fire beneath my ass is lit and I’m down to get shit done. Sure, sometimes I’m so wired and focused that I forget to consume any food or water, but that can be worth it if I’m able to check a few hundred things off my to-do list in what would normally take my calm, hydrated self days to accomplish the same. I can, of course, tap into flow-state focus without caffeine, but I typically can’t predict when those sporadic windows of motivation will occur. With caffeine, I can at least manufacture a somewhat reliable—albeit tweaked-out—productivity streak, if not pure creativity itself. (See slide #3)

When it comes to running my own business (something I never intended to do, but alas, here we are), there’s an endless buffet of things to procrastinate. Like… instead of writing this, I should really be writing my website copy. I’m so good at procrastinating, I conjured a *~writing practice~* to distract me from the tasks that could actually make me money. Without caffeine to keep me on track, I’m at the whim of my unpredictable bursts of inspiration. (She’s an artist!) It’s therefore dawning on me that I might actually need caffeine to effectively run my business. Aren’t I at a competitive disadvantage without it? After all, America does run on Dunkin’—although I don’t understand how, considering that’s the weakest coffee in the game.

Maybe a day of coffee-fueled efficiency every now and then is simply what’s necessary for sustained professional growth. What’s caffeine if not the most sanctioned performance-enhancing drug in all the land? I just need to make sure I don’t make a habit of it. That I don’t need it to start my day every morning. Yea, one cup won’t hurt. I can stop anytime I want.