Most of us can’t wait for our first brew of the day to hit our tongues. But let’s be honest, it’s not just about the flavour. It’s about the ritual, the routine and the cognitive correction that boosts us into gear before the day takes off. Some of us love brewing our own morning cup in the office, others prefer grabbing a barista-made cup pulled from professional coffee machines from our favourite spot on our commutes. Whatever your preferred way to drink it is, coffee has become the official fuel of productivity across the globe.
And in Australia, it’s more than just a beverage – it’s part of the culture, and Australian coffee is a source of pride. It’s a staple for office productivity and locking into personal errands alike. But that raises a bigger question – does coffee make you more productive, or has it become a sort of placebo? So, if you’re a beanaphile like us, it’s worth knowing a bit more about your daily drink. Below, we break down the stats and research to see if coffee is really helping you get more done, or just helping you feel like you are.
- Caffeine Improves Focus and Concentration, Up to a Point
- Finding the Sweet Spot
- How Does Tolerance Affect the Benefits of Coffee?
- Timing matters
- Caffeine’s Productivity Power Lies in Timing and Moderation, Not in Volume
Caffeine Improves Focus and Concentration, Up to a Point
Putting the taste and types of coffee aside for a second, how does caffeine affect our brains? When you drink coffee, caffeine enters your bloodstream and, within 5 to 20 minutes after ingestion, enters your brain. But it takes around 30 to 60 minutes to get the stimulating effects of caffeine.
In the brain, it blocks a neurotransmitter called adenosine, which is responsible for making you feel sleepy. This block increases wakefulness and cognition, but it also increases the activity of other neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine – a combo that boosts short-term focus and concentration, gives you a little mood increase and the team a morale boost.
This is the effect that has made coffee a drink known to increase productivity levels and make you more able to kick-start your day and power through your to-do list. Concentration without motivation doesn’t always equate to productivity, because you have all the attention in the world, but where you place it is just as important. This is why the triple affect of mood, wafefulness and focus makes for the perfect ingredient list to keep your spirits and energy levels up towards tasks, so you have the motivation and the attention to work productively.
Finding the Sweet Spot
How good is that? A delicious drink that’s easy on the system and helps you work smarter and faster? But remember, its impact is not linear and the initial burst in focus doesn’t mean your productivity will last forever, or that you can keep drinking cups to keep the energy going. Finding the perfect cappuccino strength that meets your personal sweet spot of coffee benefits for mental performance, where you get all the wonderful focus and alertness without feeling hyper and jittery, can be a bit of a trial-and-error process.
The key is knowing how much to consume and when the best time to drink coffee for productivity is for you. We’re all built differently, and consequently, have different reactions and outcomes from different amounts of caffeine in our system. However, we can also lean into the science to help us understand the optimal caffeine dose and timeframes for productivity.
The sweet spot for most people tends to be somewhere between 100 and 200 milligrams of caffeine, which is about the amount in one strong mug of coffee. More than that at one time, and you’re in the hyper-alert zone: shaking hands, darting thoughts and an attention span that’s all over the place, where caffeine’s impact on work efficiency usually becomes negative. Consider caffeine to be like seasoning in your food – it can enhance the flavours, but it shouldn’t be running the show.
How Does Tolerance Affect the Benefits of Coffee?
For the veteran coffee drinkers, you may notice the benefits of coffee diminishing over time, or maybe even become non-existent. So, how does coffee affect productivity at work when a tolerance is at play?
Caffeine is a stimulant, and your mind and body build a tolerance to its impact over time, so if you’re working through five pots a day just to feel awake, your brain is probably struggling to get the desired mental boost that keeps you satisfied. If you find you’re tired and lack concentration without coffee, you may have a bit of a dependence. If this is the case, it will take stronger cups to reach similar levels of alertness that people who don’t regularly consume it achieve with just a cup.
What can be worse for some people, high caffeine intake can disrupt your sleep, and poor sleep is a massive focus killer. So, rather than endlessly chasing that buzz with increasingly more cups, it makes more sense to use caffeine sparingly: a cup in the morning, and perhaps a little top-up in early afternoon if you absolutely need one.
Timing mattersÂ
Have you ever had those mornings when no amount of coffee will boot up your brain? That might be because you’re drinking coffee too late in the afternoon, or too early after you wake up.
Cortisol, our stress hormone, plays a key role in bodily functions, including controlling the sleep-wake cycle. Our cortisol levels only really begin to reach their peak around 30 to 45 minutes after we wake up. Drinking you’re morning coffee before your cortisol levels have peaked won’t speed up the waking process; in fact, it actually has a dulling effect on your energy bodies. So, make sure to let your body acclimatise to being awake before giving it a boost with caffeine.
Afternoon slumps, however, can be perfectly paired with a caffeine hit. A well-timed coffee – say a shot of espresso at around 2 pm or 3 pm – can save the day by helping you push through the dip with grace, and without ruining your sleep. Keep in mind your stress levels, though, during this time of the day, as the stimulating effects of caffeine on top of stress or anxiety can increase these feelings and make it harder to focus.
Any coffee beyond 3 pm is bad news for your sleep hygiene. Cortisol levels are typically lower in the afternoon, as the day progresses and your system begins to slowly wind down after a productive day. Coffee too late in the afternoon means you’re fighting against your body’s natural sleep-wake cycle, and can seriously interfere with your ability to get a restful night’s sleep.
Caffeine’s Productivity Power Lies in Timing and Moderation, Not in Volume
The results are in, and, thankfully for most readers, coffee absolutely helps increase your productivity and makes for the perfect office offering. It has a direct effect on our brains and provides a fast boost in focus, cognition, memory and energy. It gets a little more complicated when we overdo it and begin fighting against our natural cortical level fluctuations and sleep-wake cycles. So, to truly get the productive powers of coffee in the office, we need to be mindful of the time and how much we’re drinking it.
Stick to a morning cup of coffee at least 45 minutes after you’ve woken up for the day, and feel free to have a second pot later in the day, but not after 3 pm. Your mind and body are incredibly intelligent, and left to their own devices, enable our functionality like nothing else. However, a daily boost through a delicious coffee is an ideal situation to stay on top of your workload and life demands while feeling good along the way, a win-win.Â
