The coffee that energizes us is actually quietly stealing our energy

 
We all love coffee. Even if you don't like its taste, you will like the changes that coffee brings to your body: it makes you more focused and full of energy. But how long do the effects of coffee last? The latest research shows that coffee may not only provide people with energy, but will consume energy.

Coffee: The Culprit That Steals Your Energy

Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. If the term is too complicated, you just need to remember that it does not generate new energy for you, but draws and depletes the energy you already have.

Adenosine is a substance secreted in the brain that acts to make people feel sleepy and regulate sleep. The more adenosine in the brain, the sleepier you are.
In addition, adenosine can also help us reduce inflammation in the body, regulate the heartbeat, and help digestion.

Your body likes regular sleep, so the brain releases adenosine on a 24-hour day and night cycle. If you force yourself to stay up late, you will feel more sleepy because your brain releases more adenosine than usual to help you fall asleep at normal times.
After consuming caffeine, the human brain does not stop secreting adenosine, its receptors are only temporarily inhibited. At this time, your state is very delicate: your body feels tired, but you yourself don't feel tired.

Like an over limit credit card, it can no longer be used after the it reaches a certain amount.
Neuroscientist and Stanford professor Andrew Huberman calls it "sleep hunger." But when the limit is met, it finally triggers the phenomenon of "coffee no longer works", that is, coffee burnout.

How to Avoid Coffee Burnout?
Caffeine is a recreational drug that is in use today.
Maybe someday in the future, it will be locked in the back of the cabinet like alcohol and prescription drugs, and minors are prohibited from touching it. But before that day comes, we need to learn to use caffeine healthily.

The first step is to understand caffeine. Here are three little-known facts about coffee:
The half-life of caffeine is five hours. This means that if you drink a cup of coffee five hours before bed, it is equivalent to drinking half a cup of coffee before going to bed.
While coffee keeps you focused and energized, it can also increase your stress.
Adenosine takes time to wear off in the morning. At the same time, many hormones are released when you wake up in the morning.

With this knowledge, you can improve the frequency of coffee drinking and ensure healthy sleep. Specifically, you can:
Stop drinking coffee ten hours before bedtime to ensure that your body can completely deplete the caffeine before bedtime and prevent it from inhibiting adenosine.
Work off any remaining stress with physical activity. If you feel anxious or tense during the day, try going for a walk or exercising.
Drinking coffee 90 minutes after waking up in the morning will give your adenosine time to wear off before you artificially (caffeine) suppress them.
Coffee is not bad.

For some of us, coffee is a life-enhancing agent that helps us regulate when we spend our energy, thereby helping us take control of our lives.
But it needs to be remembered that coffee is helping people to draw energy, not generate new energy. And all overdrawn things will eventually have to be repaid.
Keep this in mind to really deal with the relationship with caffeine.

Read Also:

After reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" epiphany, I fell into the "rat race trap" for so long

Listen: Podcast

After reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" epiphany, I fell into the "rat race trap" for so long

 

1

In the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad", there is a term called "rat race trap".

The mouse had to run on the wheel in order to eat the cheese in front of him. The faster it goes, the faster the wheels turn. Until the end exhaustion, also can't reach a mouthful of cheese. In fact, if you want to eat cheese, you need to jump up, not run forward.

But the mouse just ran with its head buried in its head, exerting force in the wrong direction, wasting its energy.

Many people are like this mouse, walking forward non-stop, but rarely stop to think. In the busy cycle, they are trapped in the cage of life. After all, the life you want is not accumulated by ineffective efforts. Without deep thinking, all hard work is in vain.

I think such questions have more or less appeared in our minds.

Why do we work overtime until 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, but our colleagues get promoted?

Why do we enrol in many courses and study hard every day but still get little effect?

Why do we pack our schedule so full and we can't grow at all?

Physical effort is just a habitual exercise of muscles, and diligence without thought is actually the greatest laziness.

Efforts without thinking, without structure, without logic, will only lead you into a cycle of fatigue and inefficiency.

Getting rid of low-quality diligence and developing the habit of deep thinking is the first step in life advancement.

2

There is another story in the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad".

There is a village with no water source within a mile radius, and the villagers can only drink the rainwater that falls occasionally.

To solve the water problem, the village selected young men Ed and Bill to be responsible for the water supply, and signed contracts with both of them.

After the contract was completed, Ed couldn't wait to buy two large barrels to carry water from the distant lake for the villagers to use.

However, even if he gets up early and works late every day, it cannot fundamentally solve the water supply problem.

Another young Bill, who disappeared after signing the contract.

Half a year later, he brought back an engineering team and worked hard for a year to establish a complete water supply system.

This method greatly saves labour costs, and the price is much cheaper than Ed.

Soon, the whole village used Bill's water.

In a hurry, Ed called his two sons to carry water even harder, and the price of water dropped even more than before, but in the end he found that he could not compete with Bill at all.

The different circumstances of Bill and Ed reminded me of a story circulating in the Ford Motor Company.

Ford's boss once hired an expert to evaluate the performance of employees.

The expert said after the inspection: "There is a lazy guy who stays in the office all day and wastes your money. Every time I pass by, I see him sitting around with his feet on the table."

The boss laughed when he heard that, "I know this guy is lazy, but he once came up with an idea that saved our company millions of dollars. He put his feet on the table like that when he thought of that idea."

What do these two stories tell us?

Because no matter in life or in the workplace, people often only look at the results, not the process.

Mediocre people always emphasize their own efforts, and then do nothing; while masters do things, they often act after thinking, and speak with results.

Effort is just a "tactic", but developing a global thinking, spreading out the map, and finding the right entry point is the "strategy" that will get twice the result with half the effort.

Therefore, working overtime every day does not make us great people, and working from dawn to dusk does not necessarily make us better.

If a person is not good at thinking, no matter how hard he works, it will be difficult for him to innovate and make breakthroughs.

Only those with sharp vision and advanced mind can be favoured by fate.

What really widens the gap between people is never the degree of effort, but the depth of thinking and the quality of diligence.

3

Chris Bailey, the author of the book "Don't Let Ineffective Efforts Destroy You", was called "probably the most efficient person in the world" by TED. He proposed that there are three elements of high-efficiency life:

Time, energy, focus.

Any efficient life is related to one or more of these elements.

If we don’t have any plans for life and work, and rush all day without any focus, we will lose efficiency due to distraction, and thus fall into the vicious circle of "the busier the poorer".

I think of a survey conducted by Harvard University, targeting a group of young people with similar intelligence, education, and environment.

Studies have found that those who set long-term goals from the beginning have basically become successful people after 25 years;

People with short-term goals also successfully entered the middle class of society;

Those who have no goals are almost at the bottom of society, often unemployed, and rely on social relief to survive.

There is a saying in "University": Make a decision before you move, and you will gain something when you know it.

When a person's goal is clearer, the path to the goal will be clearer.

It is absurd for many people to repeat their busyness day after day, but imagine a different future.

What really makes you stronger is that you can establish a thinking framework and grasp the underlying logic of things.

Learn to manage by objectives and put your energy on the cutting edge in order to maximize your efforts.

Read Also:

Do you own all six types of wealth?

Listen: Podcast

Do you own all six types of wealth?

 

When it comes to wealth, you probably immediately think of money. Money is indeed a type of wealth, but it is not the only form of wealth. Money is only a low-level form of wealth. If you put all your energy on pursuing this low-level form of wealth, you will lose the opportunity to win other forms of wealth.

When it comes to wealth, what do you think of? The top ten richest people in the world? Your relative in Australia has a bigger house, a nicer car, and a cottage on the hill? Or the billionaire CEO of your company? Professional athlete, musician or movie star?

Of course, all of these people are "rich" from a financial standpoint.

But money does not monopolize wealth. The definition of wealth is "a substantial amount of valuable material property or resource", but looking at this definition, money is not listed as the only valuable property or resource.

Which resources you consider valuable is as important as the abundance of the resources themselves. The key is to optimize for the right form of wealth.

Money

Money is the simplest and most obvious form of wealth because it can be quantified.

How much is your annual salary? $100,000.

How much is your house? $500,000.

How much will your child's college tuition cost? $50,000.

How much is your portfolio worth? $250,000.

Forbes magazine keeps track of the world's richest people in real time, so everyone can see how much money the super rich have.

Because monetary wealth is so easy to recognize, it becomes a point of comparison. Money is the only form of wealth that makes you look at your neighbour and say "I'm richer/poorer than him".

Money can become a knee-jerk competition. Just like any other competition, we want to beat our peers. Earn more money. Get more property. Indulge in more fun. Do whatever it takes to win the game.

But there is a point that is often overlooked. At a certain point, money can become an attractive scoreboard, but a poor measure of wealth. Money has diminishing returns.

This makes sense if you stop and think about it. When income is low, extra money can make a huge difference in the way you live. Paying rent will be easier. You will have security. You can also afford to take a vacation or two.

However, as your income continues to increase, you can buy a bigger house, better car, better meals and better clothes, but that's it, you can't do anything new. You're just paying more for a more luxurious rendition of your current lifestyle. If you can pay your bills, spend your money on experiences, and save/invest the rest, then you're doing pretty well. Everything else is icing on the cake.

There's actually a nasty paradox associated with having a lot of wealth:

Some luxuries won't make your life better, but losing them after experiencing them will definitely make your life worse.

Some people put money and wealth first, and are desperate to pursue money and wealth. The biggest problem with this approach is the opportunity cost associated with it. How many hours did it take to increase revenue from $250,000 to $500,000? What about $1 million? What about $10 million? How much do you need to earn? What other forms of wealth would you have to sacrifice to achieve that goal?

Is this really the game you want to win?

Knowledge

Knowledge, like money, is a cumulative form of wealth. However, unlike money, the "knowledge" possessed by people is difficult to compare. A polyglot, a chef, a world-class investor are all knowledgeable, but not in the same form.

Different people have different ways of acquiring knowledge. Someone learned Spanish by not being afraid to speak it, no matter how bad it was. Someone became a master chef by trying a lot of disgusting recipes. Someone became a great athlete by being a rookie for a long time, trying to make a big business, playing a thousand games of chess, exchanging stories with others... all these can help you accumulate more knowledge.

You gain knowledge for working to develop your skills and expertise, and you earn money for using those skills and expertise to help others.

But knowledge is not just a tool used to create wealth, it is wealth itself.

Gaining knowledge should not be viewed solely as a means to help you achieve other goals. Knowledge is a worthy goal in itself.

Travel to broaden horizon

Time

If money is the most obvious form of wealth, time is its opposite. Time is an asset you can't see. Time has no such things as expensive possessions and a good salary to show off. Time is so indifferent that you hardly notice it.

If monetary wealth is best shown through luxuries, the abundance of time is best shown through nothingness.

Money and wealth are shown to the world on scoreboards, but time is measured in an hourglass that no one can see, not even you. As we earn more and more money, monetary wealth increases but time becomes scarcer. When you are the poorest financially, you are the one with the most time, but when we have the time, we rarely notice.

We realize the value of time only when it is almost running out.

In theory, the currency has unlimited upside. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, is now worth more than $200 billion. But one day, someone (maybe Musk!) could be worth $500 billion, or even $1 trillion. There is nothing you can do about this possibility.

Time is just the opposite. Our time is strictly limited, our money generally increases with age, but our time decreases with age. You can't buy more time, and you never know how much time you have left.

If wealth is measured in increments of time, young people are richer than anyone. Of course it would be great to have $100 billion. But if you're young, how many years are you willing to sacrifice for Bezos' fortune?

Or how about we turn the question around? How much do you think Bezos is willing to give to trade places with someone like me who is 25 years old and will never become a billionaire? Maybe all of them. He has pledged to invest billions of dollars in life extension technology.

We tend to be unaware of the presence of oxygen when it’s plentiful, but when it’s scarce we desperately want more, and our sense of time does the same. Once the money is spent, you can earn it again. When your time runs out, it's game over.

Opportunity cost is everything, how much is your hourglass worth?

Health

Health is the cousin of time. Like time, health is seldom thought of when one is healthy. When we are young, we tend to have a lot of health. So we eat and drink, never exercise, it's okay, you're young. We will rejuvenate quickly no matter what.

For example, in college, no matter how hard you mess with your body, you'll probably be fine.

But decisions have compound effects.

In finance, compound interest is a powerful force. Someone who invests an extra $200 a month may not see a difference in the early years, but after 30 years they could be hundreds of thousands of dollars more than someone else.

The clock keeps ticking.

But the power of compound interest is not limited to finance. In fact, its most valuable application is in health.

Inattentiveness to your health when you are young may not notice any effects early on, but as you get older, taking a laissez-faire approach to your well-being can be disastrous. What you eat starts to matter more and more. Whether or not you exercise starts to matter more and more.

As you age, your complexion darkens, your metabolism slows, and underlying health problems become more serious. At this point, the decisions you've made about your health start to snowball.

Like time, we rarely think about it when we have it. But what about when you lose it? Health will become the only thing you can think about. There is a saying that goes, "A healthy person has a thousand wishes, but a sick person has only one wish."

And that patient rarely gets his wish.

When you're broke but healthy, you have countless options. What's the point if you're rich but bedridden? What's the use of having a billion dollars if you have nothing to enjoy?

Relationship

If you lack relationships, all other forms of wealth become irrelevant. What's the use of asking for the money if there's no one to share it with you? Of course, you can go all the way to darkness on the road of single material enjoyment, but this will not bring you a sense of satisfaction.

The value of time and health depends on your ability to spend time with the people you care about. Otherwise, you're wasting your unscheduled schedule and capable body on frivolous distractions.

It's good to have a lot of knowledge, but it's best to share that knowledge with others. The only difference between a master and a hermit is whether there are students or not.

Humans are social animals, and relationships are vital to our psyche. We need people who can laugh and cry together. People were able to share their dreams, stories and fears. You can fall in love and suffer the baptism of falling out of love. Can create new memories. You can drive 1000 kilometers on a road trip together, across the east coast of the United States.

Every little thing we do comes back to relationships.

The greatest value of health is that it gives you choice.

A life rich in all other respects but devoid of relationships can be at best empty and at worst depressing. What's the point of having the world if there's no one to share it with? If it means living in one's castle, do you really want to be king of that castle?

Experience

"The purpose of life is to experience something that you will be nostalgic for later."

I generally agree with this view. Life is about a 90-year period of experience defined by various other smaller experiences. We are fortunate to live in a time when experiences are readily available, more accessible than ever.

You can travel anywhere in the world in 24 hours for less than $1,000. From learning a foreign language to learning exotic recipes, you can learn anything on the internet. For the first time ever, we can literally do anything.

If wealth is for consumption, what better way to spend your wealth of money, wealth of time, wealth of knowledge, wealth of health, wealth of relationships than doing cool things with people you care about?

At the end of the day, our experiences are all we have.

Experiences are our chances to cash in other forms of wealth for something memorable.

Some experiences cost money, but the most valuable experiences are not defined by price tags. I don't remember how much it cost to visit Tromsø, Norway. But what about seeing the Northern Lights? Priceless.

An evening spent with cold beer, loud music, a roaring fire and surrounded by friends is priceless.

Going on road trips across the American West with my best friend was priceless.

Of all the trade-offs a person can make, you will never regret exchanging financial wealth for experiential wealth. But what about missing out on experiences because you're "too busy at work"? It's hardly worth it.

As a resource, money is unlimited, but experiences, like time, are finite.

How often do you have dinner with your grandparents? What about going on a ski trip with your best friend? How many times have you had the chance to visit a new country on a whim? What about learning a new skill you've always been interested in?

Communicating with Argentines in their native language is invaluable.

Money is best used to fund the experiences you want. Go try something fun. The kind that lights a fire in your heart.

Imagine if you spent 40 years maximizing your lower forms of wealth (money) at the expense of minimizing some higher form of wealth (experiences), and waited until your twilight years to recapture the experiences you had missed, it is only in vain.

Our goal should be to have a lot of money and a rich life experience.

When you come to the end of your life, would you rather be able to fondly recall the good times you spent with the people you cared about, or would you be satisfied that you didn't "waste time and money" on these "trivial" pursuits ?

Read Also:

You must have peeled an onion, right?

Listen: Podcast

You must have peeled an onion, right?

 

When you peel the "onion" layer by layer, you will find that it has no core.

This is the opposite of the "avocado" personality, the "onion" personality.

As long as there is a little negative feedback from the outside world, it breaks down inside and feels bad.

There is this person, A.

A has always liked fashion. After graduation, she joined an internationally renowned clothing company and was employed in front-line sales.

When relatives and classmates knew that she had become a salesperson, they despise her because it seems degrading for a graduate student to be a salesperson, putting on shoes and trying on clothes for others!"

Some mean classmates deliberately came to the store to let her serve them, taking the opportunity to put her down.

Although her income was good, she couldn't stand the ridicule of others and chose to resign.

Then she went to a government agency and stayed in an administrative position for ten years.

And the colleagues who were "salesperson" like her at the beginning, one became a company executive and the other became a fashion blogger.

Looking at her boring life day after day, she began to regret it:

"If I didn't give up at the beginning and persisted, I don't know what will happen now?"

One is always the protagonist of his own, and he should not always play a supporting role in other people's dramas.

What others think is good may not be suitable for you; what others despise may not necessarily be wrong.

Others can only judge your life, but they will not pay for your sorrows and joys, let alone be responsible for your life. SO you are the one who can decide for yourself.

Read Also:

The really smart people live only 1% of their lives

Life is very tiring, if you are not tired now, you will be more tired in the future.

 

Life is like a season. After the spring, there will be winter. It is impossible to be prosperous all the time, and it is impossible to be full of flowers all the way.

Feel life, read life, think about your own things. When the words of a book seep into the heart and talk with the heart, when the soul runs into the book and communicates with the words. It is also a kind of happiness that the words can understand your heart, as if you have written yourself.

To be a pure person, let go of what you can’t bear; let go of what you can’t afford to hurt; ignore what you can’t figure out; let go of what you can’t hate. Life is a process of cultivation, why use this unyielding heart to look at people and things, trample yourself, and live up to the years.

The most difficult thing for a person to recognize is his own heart. Life is all about finding someone who is with you. There is nothing wrong with immature people being with immature people, and there is nothing wrong with mature people being with mature people, but there are many problems with mature people being with immature people.

Read Also:

After middle age: work hard for money , spend money sparingly, and save money steadily

After middle age: work hard for money , spend money sparingly, and save money steadily

 

Some time ago, there was such a topic on the Internet: "What did you understand in the past three pandemic years?"

Someone summed up the following four points:

1. You have to have a house, otherwise you won’t even have a place to stay during quarantine;

2. You have to have savings, and you can maintain your life for at least a period of time if you are unemployed;

3. Lying at home is not as comfortable as imagined, because you will be extremely anxious because you have no income;

4. The more the society develops, the more black swan events there will be. You must have the ability to fight against such uncertainties.

In fact, the conclusion is: you have to be rich.

Money can not only bring dignity and decency, but also the confidence to walk in the world.

In the second half of life, if you want to be self-sufficient in money, you must be ruthless in making money, save money in spending, and be steady in saving money.

1. Work hard for money

A relative of mine was an executive in a tech company a few years ago, and her life was prosperous.

The good times didn't last long, the industry declined, and the company where my relatives worked was on the verge of bankruptcy.

After losing her job, she couldn't find a job of the same position, and refused to lower herself, so she simply stayed at home for a few months.

During this period, a HR friend offered her an olive branch and asked her to work as an assistant to the CEO of a company.

She hesitated for several days, and finally refused.

When she thought about how old she was, she still had to serve tea and water for others, and be ordered by others, and she felt that her self-esteem couldn't stand it.

Not long after, there was an emergency in her family and a large sum of money was needed.

Looking back, I wanted to go to that HR friend for help, but there was no position suitable for her in his company. Life is like this. When you have money to make, you can't save face. If you want to make money with your head down, you have no chance.

"Self-esteem is the skin, making money is to feed the belly, which one is more important to you?"

2. Spend money sparingly

If you don't know how to control your desire to consume, then no matter how much money you earn, you can't keep up with the speed of spending it, and you will squander it sooner or later.

When you are young, you can be wilful to spend all the money you earn.

But when you enter the middle age, you have to consider the burden on you.

There are old people and young in your family, and there are mortgages and insurance premiums to be paid.

Every penny must be spent wisely, and it is even more important to habitually check the balance when going out to spend.

3. Save money

A happy life will not just fall from the sky. Only by learning to invest and save can we have the capital to support the future.

As you get older, the savings in your pocket are your reassurance and your booster.

There used to be a breakfast shop near my house, which was owned by an old couple.

Except for the Chinese New Year, I have never seen this stall rest.

Even when I catches the earliest bus and goes downstairs at five o'clock in the morning, the couple is already preparing for the day to start. Suddenly one day, the stall closed.

I learned from neighbors in the neighborhood that their daughter was admitted to a good university and found a good job after graduation.

The couple also decided to take a break and travel around the world.

I am very curious: going out to travel around the world without doing business should cost a lot of money, right?

Neighbours said that the couple had been silently saving money for so many years.

Not only they managed to help their daughter buy a house with the down payment, but also had enough money in my pocket to live a happy life in their later years.

After middle age, every sum of money you save is your happiness in your later years.

The more balance you have in your card, the easier it will be to live in the future.

A simple and practical "333 Little Rules for Saving Money" works:

Divide your monthly salary into three equal parts: living expenses, savings, and investment.

Save money in this way, no matter what, you can save at least one-third of your income every month.

Of course, the ratio can be adjusted appropriately according to the actual situation, but it is best to strictly implement it according to the plan every month.

Accumulate over a long period of time, gather less to make more, and in the end it is also a big gain.

You must believe that every penny you save is an umbrella to protect you from wind and rain in your later years, and will eventually give you the most fulfilling sense of security.

We used to think that talking about money was crude, but now we find that 99% of the sorrows in the world are related to money.

No amount of chicken soup can compare to the sense of security of a banknote.

Read Also:

The most important thing in life is to discover and know yourself

Listen: Podcast

The most important thing in life is to discover and know yourself

 

Happy people cultivate a calm attitude, let nature takes its place, do not force others, and do not oppose the world. If you have no desire, you will be free, and you can enjoy peace with a wide heart. There are too much regrets in life, and they all become forgotten in the end.

Some degree of pain has to be experienced in order to see the truth. In life, there will be as much pain as joy. Pain and joy are reflections of the soul, just like what is in the mirror depends on what is in front of the mirror. Tolerance is a bridge of mutual understanding and trust between people. An optimistic attitude comes from tolerance, generosity, empathy, and indifference to the world.

Life is not perfect, if you find that you are wrong, just start over; if you have no chance to start over, let it sink into the sea of ​​time forever. The so-called growing up of a person means daring to face oneself: before making a choice, be sincere and firm, after making a choice, have a heart that will never change.

To understand life is to understand oneself. Life is nothing more than that, let's do it and cherish it. Life is full of joy, and the longest harvest in life is actually to cherish. Life is like a road, there are ups and downs with mountains and rivers, and there are smooth roads with dark willows and flowers; life is like a river, sometimes it has twists and turns, and sometimes it bleeds thousands of miles. No matter how hard the road ahead is, no matter how helpless life is, as long as there is always happiness in your heart, there is no need to be depressed.​​​​

Life is short, and we need to make the most of it.

There are many things we can do to enjoy life before it's too late—and one of them is to appreciate the small things in life. Sure, it's easy to focus on the big picture when you're young, but as we get older, we tend to lose touch with all the little things that make up our lives.

But if you find time for these simple pleasures now…

you'll end up feeling better about yourself and more satisfied with your life than ever before.

Read Also:

The Enneagram Personality You Should Know Yourself