Coffee and Coercion
A case study
Category: Self-love, lifestyle
Epistemic status: n=1
A few years ago, I read that people who drink coffee live longer.1 So I decided to pick up the habit. Picking up coffee felt great, but the novelty wore off fairly soon. Instead of getting boosted to super-normal levels, I started using coffee to just get back to normal.2
I stopped drinking coffee. Then I thought: “What if I use it on a needs basis, as a pick-me-up on days when I’m tired?”.
I started using it occasionally to manage fatigue and tiredness. And then a predictable problem occurred; the line between “I really need to” and “wouldn’t it be nice” is not clear. There are edge cases which serve as battlefields for inner conflicts. A short-term part of me manages to convince the not-getting-addicted part of me that a given situation calls for a pick-me-up and that one cup surely isn’t harmful.
This led to me drinking 2-3 cups a week. This got exacerbated by going to the office, where the coffee flows freely3 and the cult of the bean is strong.4 Given some time, I went back to 2 cups a day.
I tried to avoid habituation by keeping to small cups (1/4 normal size, or 30mg~ of caffeine). “Small cups” is another unclear line. Brewed coffee varies in concentration, and different cups vary in diameter. I think there was a slight escalation in my consumption. Either way; this approach didn’t help me avoid the negative side effects.
A few days ago, I bought some decaf, separating the ritual from the caffeine. This sucked for a day or two, but then I started feeling much better. As my head cleared up, I started thinking about the way I relate to coffee.
There are patterns of unskillfulness in the abridged timeline above. Let’s go exploring!
Ever since I had my self-love insight, I’ve prioritized feeling good.
“Feeling good” is a subjective term, some people might use it to describe a state free from pain, or what I would call “feeling alright”. When I feel good, everything gets better. My posture improves, and I feel connected and aware of the perspectives I hold, the way I move through the world, and the physical sensations I feel. Working out and meditating goes from chores on the todo-list to feeling great. I stop zoning out, procrastinating and distracting myself with social media.
Things that feel like big projects for feeling-blue me turn into easy tasks that I can do with my left hand while passing by. I connect to others more strongly, and can easily go into deep feelings of appreciation and goodwill/love. I sing more, have less muscle tension, and my feeling of subjective time increases. The days literally feel longer, sometimes 2-3x compared to when I’m feeling down.
Feeling good is the source of agency and flow. Feeling good is upstream of everything else. Self-love and skillfulness are key to feeling good. It’s instrumentally and intrinsically optimal.
So what does prioritizing feeling good look like? It means actually, literally, having it as the top priority. If I’m working and start to feel dull, bored or tired, I take a break to focus on self-care5 and doing nice things. "Pushing through" is subtle self-coercion.
I easily fall prey to a causation inversion. In reality, I get shit done when I feel good. Part of my performance-anxiety-riddled brain flip the causal direction and start thinking that I must get things done in order to feel good. “If I clear out my todo-list, I will feel better” or “If I just get this one thing done, I will have more time and things will be nicer”.
Given the enormous agency difference between my feeling-good state and my feeling-blue state, this is obviously bullshit. The most efficient way for me to get things done is by making sure I feel good before going at it. Taking a self-care break also allows me to reorient, looking at things with fresh eyes to make sure that the thing is actually relevant. Distracting myself with useless busywork is a form of procrastination, procrastination is a way to disassociate from unpleasant experiences.6
Procrastination is a way to disassociate from unpleasant experiences
The attentive reader will have noticed a contradiction. Using coffee to “push through” tiredness connects an addictive substance with subtle self-coercion, reinforcing patterns of performance anxiety and self-coercion.
Fuck that. I’ll stick to decaf, and rest when I need to rest.
This goes for decaf as well!
This is my subjective experience at least. Seems like exercise-wise, habituation is not a thing, but I can’t be bothered to look into whether my subjective habituation experience aligns with research. I have noticed a clear pattern, enough to put strong weight into it being the case for me, but don’t take this as an invite to extrapolate. n=1.
As long as we take care of the coffee commons
= Coffe breaks
I enjoy taking a walk, listening to music, listening to ASMR, calling a friend on the phone (which goes well with walks), lying down on my bed of nails, or taking a warm shower. There are endless possibilities, experiment to find your preference.
https://cognitiontoday.com/you-procrastinate-because-of-emotions-not-laziness-regulate-them-to-stop-procrastinating/