Rethinking Productivity, One Cup at a Time

How two weeks without caffeine changed my mornings and my mindset

I gave up caffeine exactly two weeks ago today.

For the past 20+ years I’ve had two large cups of coffee every morning, followed by a mid-day tea pick-me-up. Some days more, but never less.

There were a few reasons I decided to quit cold turkey, but nothing dramatic. The older I get, the more I try to listen to my body and follow my energy rather than fight it. Mostly, I was just curious. I wanted to see if it would affect my appetite, and whether it might help or hinder my digestion.

The first two days, I had evening headaches. Pretty bad but nothing an ibuprofen couldn’t handle. But by day four, I was already feeling more stable. Sluggish, yes, but only because I wasn’t feeling that intense burst of productive energy that had defined my mornings for the entirety of my adult life.

What’s replaced it isn’t dramatic. It’s just steady.

I still feel what I could class as “sluggish”, but since that’s my new normal, I’m acclimatising to it and learning to accept it as a different kind of baseline. You might ask, why would I want to feel sluggish?

Because there’s been a tradeoff I’ll take any day of the week: I have no more anxiety.

I honestly hadn’t realised how much low-level anxiety I was living with until it disappeared. That familiar buzz I used to call “motivation” was, in hindsight, just chemical tension with a to-do list.

I used to wake up every morning already anxious. Now, I open my eyes and there’s just a sweet quietness. A kind of internal stillness I used to feel as a kid, maybe even a bit of excitement for the day.

I’m not doing less. I’m still writing, building, thinking, creating. But it no longer feels like I need to race the clock. I don’t get the same harsh peaks in the morning or the inevitable crashes in the afternoon.

My energy flows more gently throughout the day. I can do deep work at 11 a.m. or 4 p.m. I’m no longer relying on a chemical surge to push me into focus.

Also, my gut feels brand new. I keep likening it to when I was eleven or twelve. No bloat. Just a well-oiled machine.

Six years ago, I gave up alcohol. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It took me three solid years of effort. At the time, it felt like a big and obvious life change. Alcohol gave me a break, but at a cost over the next several days.

Caffeine, on the other hand, felt like the opposite. A productivity tool. A helpful habit. Socially acceptable, no downsides.

But now that I’m off it, I’ve started to notice how the two substances quietly feed the same cycle. Caffeine revs you up. It helps you do more, faster, and makes you feel like you're winning the day. Then, when you’re burnt out or overstimulated, alcohol offers the release. A reward. A way to switch off.

You repeat that enough times and it starts to feel like a normal way to live.

I didn’t plan for this to become a broader reflection, but the more I sit with it, the more I see how both caffeine and alcohol support a particular rhythm of working and living. One shaped by productivity culture.

Get more done. Be your best self. Push through. Stay on. Wind down. Do it again.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being productive. But I think caffeine kept me attached to a version of productivity that was slightly frantic, slightly performative, and often unsustainable.

Looking back, I can see how much of my online presence was driven by that same urgency. Constantly checking, posting, responding, refreshing. All powered by a kind of restless energy that no longer feels present.

I don’t really care about social media now. Not in a bitter or cynical way. It just doesn’t tug at me the same way. I think I’ve checked my platforms four times in two weeks, as opposed to four times an hour, previously.

Letting go of caffeine hasn’t been revolutionary. I haven’t become a new person. But it has reminded me that there’s another way to feel. Another pace to live at. Another way to relate to work, to energy, to value.

So while I’m not urging you to quit caffeine (literally all of my friends think I’m insane), I just wanted to let you know that this option exists.

I’m going to keep this experiment going for at least three months and see what happens to my body, my mind… and my soul.