Give willpower a fighting chance when deleting caffeine
Attention all caffeine addicts—this blog is for you. Over the last 30 days, I managed to cut caffeine out of my life and lived to tell the tale.
If the idea of this abhors you… If you just projectile spat coffee over your shiny MacBook, I can assure you, it’s not that bad! And in homage to the title of this piece, I can give you some strategies to make this dream a reality, in becoming both caffeine free and tackling any challenge that you might find a struggle.
If you want the science part, head straight to the last section.
Quick background
How much coffee was I into each day? Minimum two. Maximum four. But we’re not just talking plain old filter coffee here—the WeWork in Santa Monica LA had a cold brew tap! So we’re talking high octane, shaking at your keyboard type stuff.
Why give it up? It felt like an addiction amplified by my circumstance. Working in LA for a UK company meant that I was at my laptop by 6.30 am, clutching a delicious pint of coffee and almond milk protein shake. After that home stint, I’d get to the WeWork circa 9.30 am to nail a cold brew. Then I’d crash at midday and top up with a flat white after lunch. I also heard that drinking coffee too early in the day interferes with your natural cortisol production—essentially there is evidence to say that it’s best to drink your first coffee after 9.30 am when your body has tried to wake up naturally.
What’s this ‘Day 53’ business in the photo? This challenge was actually a mini challenge within my annual ‘100 days no drinking’—I felt that killing coffee in the absence of hangovers was a smart move.
Positioning yourself for success
In a previous blog, I have written about accountability and committing to a cause, as two effective ways to bolster willpower. While I didn’t feel that this challenge was charity-donation worthy, I did put it on the wall at work and invite the Qubit marketing team to join me.
Luckily for me, someone else decided to opt-in, and ticking off a day became a ritual. I also made the challenge public on Facebook for added effect.
The path to decaf
I took a very gradual descent, mainly to avoid the caffeine headaches that I had read about. The sequence looked like:
— 2 coffees a day for 4 days
— 1 coffee & 1 decaf for 4 days
— 1 coffee & 1 green tea for 4 days
— 1 decaf & 1 green tea for 4 days
— 1 green tea for 4 days
— 10 days no caffeine
Total 30 days. Did I succeed? Yes, with flying colours.
How was it?
Honestly, not too bad. The first few days were the toughest and I really did feel out of sorts… But after day 8 or so it was plain sailing. I did have to make some lifestyle changes though.
During the early phases, I would try and do some exercise in the middle of the day to get my body working while avoiding a big lunch. Interestingly, I also made different meal choices. For example, having coffee after sushi seems really weird to me, so in fact, I would have that for lunch more often and wash it down with something herbal.
I reckon I slept less too… I found myself with a lot of energy at the end of the day—so while I normally get up at 6.20 am, I was often going to bed after 11 pm, and feeling ok for it.
Getting forensic about why I succeeded
During my path to decaf, I read two great books! ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg and ‘Willpower Doesn’t Work’ by Benjamin Hardy.
I realized that Coffee drinking was a habit! It’s the thing that I was doing before my power hour at work from 8 to 9 am. The book mentions two things: Understand the cue to drink coffee and then provide an alternative ritual. Some mornings when I wasn’t sleepy at all, I realized that I was just going through the motions or procrastinating a little (get to work = cue), and as I understood that I didn’t always need caffeine, I replaced it with ginger tea (ginger tea = new ritual). Another new ritual could have been doing some press ups or walking around the office a bit.
‘Willpower Doesn’t Work’ speaks to creating an environment for success. To take an extreme—is it easier for an alcoholic to be sober in a bar or a yoga camp!? The latter of course, because of the environment. So Benjamin Hardy presents the following framework for succeeding at challenges that require determination, essentially, by reducing the amount of willpower required. Your environment should embrace these factors:
— High investment
— Social pressure
— High consequence for poor performance
— High difficulty
— Novelty
Creating an environment for decaf success
To relate Ben’s work to my case: High investment; this is about having a challenge that is actually a challenge! Sometimes the bigger the task, the more committed you are to seeing success. Social pressure; this is me putting the challenge on the blackboard and finding a buddy to join me on the journey. High consequence for poor performance; in this case it was embarrassment… But higher stakes might have been to do a lap of the office in my underwear…! (Yikes!) High difficulty; according to Ben this is about creating responsibility—something we see in leadership all the time. I’m not sure this applies to my challenge, but if I knew some dark secret about caffeine, it might have created more motivation. Novelty; this is the first time I have done a decaf challenge, so new for me—this makes it refreshing and easy to stay engaged. But to draw on another personal story, as I’m midway through my second ‘100 days no drinking’ I’m not wildly excited by the prospect of round 3—I might need a new challenge for next year if I want the power of novelty on my side.
Thanks for reading :)
Sources
Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House Publishing Group.
Hardy, Benjamin. Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success. Hachette Books.
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Simon is the Founder of STANCE, a brand storytelling agency.
