Coffee, man’s best friend

Imagine a high-profile profession with lots of pressure and the need for a clear mind at the same time, and you usually think about CEOs, lawyers, IT specialists, etc.

What links them all? It is coffee, the nectar of gods, which makes everyone more productive, attentive, and much more efficient at work. Even films and TV depictions of said professions can’t go far without a cup or mug of coffee.

Taking a look at IT the (ab)use of coffee goes far in the past: event Alan Turing chained his mug to a radiator so that nobody can steal it. But why depend on coffee so much? Many programmers usually arrive at a point when they start to think about potential projects that can be done – and the more of exposure and experience, the more ideas come to one’s mind. The usual problem arises – no extra time, as the day can stretch only so much. Just add the need to take care about oneself, eating, going out, learn, etc. and a programmer is suddenly held at a gunpoint for time usage. Coffee is now the magical potion allowing to seemingly stretch a minute into a cascade of ultra-programming - and 24 hours are suddenly similar to 26 hours of work and productive time. Now there is no doubt that the comparison of programmers to “machines turning caffeine into code” makes quite some sense; it’s incredibly effective.

But what about sleep, you may ask, when one is riding on a coffee high? It sometimes happens that the day is simply not long enough to have a meaningful sleep – and then comes a time to turn to alternative approaches. According to a plenty of researchers an adult needs at least 7 hours of sleep a day, but in many cases the pressure to finish a project simply does not allow to spend so many hours sleeping. (And you usually can’t fall asleep, as your mind banana simply refuses to shut down.) A system of all nighters can be nicely implemented together with powernaps, which results in a temporal shift into polyphasic sleep pattern, ie. having more than two sleeping times. The body and mind take out the sleep deficit afterwards and one can sleep more than 12 hours in one day. It is, however, extraordinary way of getting work done in a very short timeframe.

But why do I have some polyphasic sleep sessions? Well, the University and job itself is taking up quite a lot of time, and when my mind feels the need to do some work on other projects, I just have to make a timeslot for it (otherwise sleeping is not possible, as mentioned above with the refusal to shut down). Then it usually happens that the most important tasks are done at 4am – for example editing webpages, implementations of optional exercises, sign-up processes for internships (eg. Skyscanner), or even writing this very blog post.

Coffee and polyphasic sleep is a tool to build, but like a fire it can also become a tool to destroy.

 

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