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We’ve covered all kinds of caffeine “hacks” here at Lifehacker, from taking “caffeine naps” to getting “optimally wired.” And, of course, we’re obsessed with the perfect cup of coffee. But when it comes to why so many of us love our coffee, tea, soda, or energy drink fixes, and what they actually do to our busy brains, we’ve never really dug in.

While there’s a whole lot one can read on caffeine, most of it falls in the realm of highly specific medical research, or often conflicting anecdotal evidence. Luckily, one intrepid reader and writer has actually done that reading, and weighed that evidence, and put together a highly readable treatise on the subject. Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine, by Stephen R. Braun, is well worth the short 224-page read. It was released in 1997, but remains the most accessible treatise on what is and isn’t understood about what caffeine and alcohol do to the brain. It’s not a social history of coffee, or a lecture on the evils of mass-market soda—it’s condensed but clean science.

What follows is a brief explainer on how caffeine affects productivity, drawn from Buzz and other sources noted at bottom. We also sent Braun a few of the questions that arose while reading, and he graciously agreed to answer them.

Caffeine Doesn’t Actually Get You Wired

Right off the bat, it’s worth stating again: the human brain, and caffeine, are nowhere near totally understood and easily explained by modern science. That said, there is a consensus on how a compound found all over nature, caffeine, affects the mind.

Every moment that you’re awake, the neurons in your brain are firing away. As those neurons fire, they produce adenosine as a byproduct, but adenosine is far from excrement. Your nervous system is actively monitoring adenosine levels through receptors. Normally, when adenosine levels reach a certain point in your brain and spinal cord, your body will start nudging you toward sleep, or at least taking it easy. There are actually a few different adenosine receptors throughout the body, but the one caffeine seems to interact with most directly is the A1 receptor. More on that later.

Enter caffeine. It occurs in all kinds of plants, and chemical relatives of caffeine are found in your own body. But taken in substantial amounts—the semi-standard 100mg that comes from a strong eight-ounce coffee, for instance—it functions as a supremely talented adenosine impersonator. It heads right for the adenosine receptors in your system and, because of its similarities to adenosine, it’s accepted by your body as the real thing and gets into the receptors.

Update: Commenter dangermou5e reminds us of web comic The Oatmeal’s take on adenosine and caffeine. It’s concise:

More important than just fitting in, though, caffeine actually binds to those receptors in efficient fashion, but doesn’t activate them—they’re plugged up by caffeine’s unique shape and chemical makeup. With those receptors blocked, the brain’s own stimulants, dopamine and glutamate, can do their work more freely—”Like taking the chaperones out of a high school dance,” Braun writes in an email. In the book, he ultimately likens caffeine’s powers to “putting a block of wood under one of the brain’s primary brake pedals.”

It’s an apt metaphor, because it spells out that caffeine very clearly doesn’t press the “gas” on your brain, and that it only blocks a “primary” brake. There are other compounds and receptors that have an effect on what your energy levels feel like—GABA, for example—but caffeine is a crude way of preventing your brain from bringing things to a halt. “You can,” Braun writes, “get wired only to the extent that your natural excitatory neurotransmitters support it.” In other words, you can’t use caffeine to completely wipe out an entire week’s worth of very late nights of studying, but you can use it to make yourself feel less bogged down by sleepy feelings in the morning.

These effects will vary, in length and strength of effect, from person to person, depending on genetics, other physiology factors, and tolerance. But more on that in a bit. What’s important to take away is that caffeine is not as simple in effect as a direct stimulant, such as amphetamines or cocaine; its effect on your alertness is far more subtle.

It Boosts Your Speed, But Not Your Skill—Depending on Your Skill Set

Johann Sebastian Bach loved him some coffee. So did Voltaire, Balzac, and many other great minds. But the type of work they did didn’t necessarily get a boost from their prodigious coffee consumption—unless their work was so second-nature to them that it felt like data entry.

The general consensus on caffeine studies shows that it can enhance work output, but mainly in certain types of work. For tired people who are doing work that’s relatively straightforward, that doesn’t require lots of subtle or abstract thinking, coffee has been shown to help increase output and quality. Caffeine has also been seen to improve memory creation and retention when it comes to “declarative memory,” the kind students use to remember lists or answers to exam questions.

(In a semi-crazy side note we couldn’t resist, researchers have implied this memory boost may be tied to caffeine’s effect on adrenaline production. You have, presumably, sharper memories of terrifying or exhilarating moments in life, due in part to your body’s fight-or-flight juice. Everyone has their “Where I was when I heard that X died” story, plugging in John F. Kennedy, John Lennon, or Kurt Cobain, depending on generational relatability).

Then again, one study in which subjects proofread text showed that a measurable boost was mainly seen by those who could be considered “impulsive,” or willing to sacrifice accuracy and quality for speed. And the effect was only seen in morning tests, indicating the subjects may have either become lightly dependent on caffeine, or were more disposed to such tasks at that time of day.

So when it comes to caffeine’s effects on your work, think speed, not power. Or consider it an unresolved question. If we’re only part of the way to understanding how caffeine affects the brain, we’re a long way to knowing exactly what kind of chemicals or processes are affected when, say, one writes a post about caffeine science one highly caffeinated afternoon.

For a more direct look at what happens to your brain when there’s caffeine in your system, we turn to the the crew at Current. They hooked up one of their reporters to a brain monitor while taking on some new caffeine habits, and share their brains on caffeine:

Effectiveness, Tolerance, and Headaches

Why do so many patients coming out of anesthesia after major surgery feel a headache? It’s because, in most cases, they’re not used to going so long without coffee. The good news? If they wait a few more days, they can start saving coffee again for when they really need it.

The effectiveness of caffeine varies significantly from person to person, due to genetics and other factors in play. The average half-life of caffeine—that is, how long it takes for half of an ingested dose to wear off—is about five to six hours in a human body. Women taking oral birth control require about twice as long to process caffeine. Women between the ovulation and beginning of menstruation see a similar, if less severe, extended half-life. For regular smokers, caffeine takes half as long to process—which, in some ways, explains why smokers often drink more coffee and feel more agitated and anxious, because they’re unaware of how their bodies work without cigarettes.

As one starts to regularly take in caffeine, the body and mind build up a tolerance to it, so getting the same kind of boost as one’s first-ever sip takes more caffeine—this, researchers can agree on. Exactly how that tolerance develops is not so clear. Many studies have suggested that, just as with any drug addiction, the brain strives to return to its normal function while under “attack” from caffeine by up-regulating, or creating more adenosine receptors. But regular caffeine use has also been shown to decrease receptors for norepinephrine, a hormone akin to adrenaline, along with serotonin, a mood enhancer. At the same time, your body can see a 65 percent increase in receptors for GABA, a compound that does many things, including regulate muscle tone and neuron firing. Some studies have also seen changes in different adenosine receptors when caffeine becomes a regular thing.

Caffeine, it’s been suggested, is probably not directly responsible for all these changes. By keeping your brain from using its normal “I’m tired” sensors, though, your caffeine may be causing the brain to change the way all of its generally excitable things are regulated. Your next venti double shot goes a little less far each time, in any case. Photo by zoghal.

A 1995 study suggests that humans become tolerant to their daily dose of caffeine—whether a single soda or a serious espresso habit—somewhere between a week and 12 days. And that tolerance is pretty strong. One test of regular caffeine pill use had some participants getting an astronomical 900 milligrams per day, others placebos—found that the two groups were nearly identical in mood, energy, and alertness after 18 days. The folks taking the equivalent of nine stiff coffee pours every day weren’t really feeling it anymore. They would feel it, though, when they stopped.

You start to feel caffeine withdrawal very quickly, anywhere from 12 to 24 hours after your last use. That’s a big part of why that first cup or can in the morning is so important—it’s staving off the early effects of withdrawal. The reasons for the withdrawal are the same as with any substance dependency: your brain was used to operating one way with caffeine, and now it’s suddenly working under completely different circumstances, but all those receptor changes are still in place. Headaches are the nearly universal effect of cutting off caffeine, but depression, fatigue, lethargy, irritability, nausea, and vomiting can be part of your cut-off, too, along with more specific issues, like eye muscle spasms. Generally, though, you’ll be over it in around 10 days—again, depending on your own physiology and other factors.

Update: Commenter microinjectionist offers his own summary of more recent caffeine studies, which offers expanded reasons why caffeine users feel a “morning crash,” as well as why your whole body, not just your brain, might feel so bad when you withdraw.

Getting Out of the Habit and Learning to Tame Caffeine

Beyond the equivalent of four cups of coffee in your system at once, caffeine isn’t giving you much more boost—in fact, at around the ten-cup level, you’re probably less alert than non-drinkers. So what if you want to start getting a real boost from caffeine once again, in a newly-learned, less-dependent way?

Our own Jason Fitzpatrick has both intentionally “quit” caffeine, as well as just plain run out of coffee. Being the kind of guy who measures his own headaches and discomfort, he suggests measuring your caffeine intake, using caffeine amounts in all your drinks, chocolate, and other “boosting” foods. Wise Bread has a good roundup of caffeine amounts, and the Buzz Vs. The Bulge chart also shows how many calories you’ll be cutting if you start scaling back. Once you know your levels, map out a multi-week process of scaling down, and stick to it. Jason also suggests that dependency kicking is a good time to start taking walks, doing breathing exercises, or other mind-clearing things, because, in his experience, their effects are much greater when caffeine is not so much a part of your make-up.

Braun, author of Buzz, sees it the same way, but still uses coffee—strategically, according to our email exchange:

In practical terms, this means that if you’d like to be able to turn to caffeine when you need it for a quick, effective jolt, it’s best to let your brain “dry out” for at least several days prior to administration. This is actually my current mode of consumption. I don’t regularly drink coffee anymore (gasp).

This from a man who loved (and wore out) his home espresso maker. I love coffee in all its guises. But after 30+ years it wasn’t working for me. For one thing, the problem with caffeine is that there are adenosine receptors all over the body, including muscles. For me, that meant that caffeine made me vaguely stiff and sore, and it aggravated a tender lower back that was prone to spasm. But I also just wasn’t getting a clean, clear buzz from coffee…I drank so much, so regularly, that drinking an extra cup or two didn’t do a helluva lot except, perhaps, make me a little more irritable.

So about a year ago I slowly tapered down, and now I have, if anything, a cup of tea (half black, half peppermint) in the morning. (The amount of caffeine from the black tea isn’t enough to wire a gnat.) Not only does my body feel better now, my brain is clean of caffeine, so I really want (or need) a good neural jump-start, I will freely…nay, ecstatically…indulge. Then I stop and let the brain settle again.

That’s the theory, anyway…and it’s basically true, although I’ll freely admit that sometimes I have an espresso or coffee just because it tastes so damned good.

If you’d like Braun’s extended takes on caffeine tolerance and withdrawal, along with the advent of energy drinks and caffeine’s impact on creativity, you can read our full email interview.

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

There’s some truth to it. Posts like this and search trends point to what we’re after. Many people want the ability to focus more and feel like they’re losing the ability to focus on a particular task for long periods of time. We feel like we’re losing that ability. Getting Things Done and all the other books out there tend to give you some rituals to cope with the problem — but only if you could stick to them. Most of us, just a few weeks after reading that book, sit next to filing cabinets (virtual or otherwise) and go about our merry way.

That’s because we’re focused on the wrong thing. To get a longer attention span — even a span long enough to read this article — don’t worry about managing the information. Worry about managing your attention. Paying attention, for long periods of time, is a form of endurance athleticism. Like running a marathon, it requires practice and training to get the most out of it. It is as much Twitter’s fault that you have a short attention span as it is your closet’s fault it doesn’t have any running shoes in it. If you want the ability to focus on things for a long period of time, you need attention fitness.

Neuroplasticity is how your brain changes its organization over time to deal with new experiences. It involves physical changes inside of the brain based on the particular tasks the brain is asked to complete. It’s why the hippocampus of a seasoned taxi driver in London is larger than average, and how a meditating monk grows grey matter. Your brain isn’t a mythological deity but a physical part of your body that needs to be taken care of just like the rest of your body. And your body responds to two things really well — diet and exercise. Let’s presume your brain, being a part of the body, also does.

Things like Inbox Zero or cutting down on meetings may be handy tricks, but they don’t take neuroplasticity into account. The bet there is that you have a finite amount of attention to spend, and that attention range isn’t changeable. That stuff is handy for making the best use of your limited attention span, but it’s not going to improve your attention span. It’s not going to stop your brain from being easily distracted or unfocused if you’ve already trained it to be that way.

So how do you train to focus? I’ve been using interval training with great success. Modeled after how I trained to run my first marathon using Jeff Galloway’s technique, I practice attention interval training. I got this timer installed on my computer. It’s an excellent interval timer based on a technique called the Pomodoro technique — but I’m primarily using it based on its ability to make sound, set good intervals, and support logging. I started small: 10 minutes of work with two minute breaks. My strategy has been to keep it so when the timer goes off that tells me it’s time to take a break, I feel like I can keep going. I’m up to 35 minutes now with 2 minute breaks. Interestingly enough — this is about as far as I’ll get probably while still being able to keep Instant Messaging on. I’ve found that about 35 minutes is the max response time for IM to be useful.

The timer isn’t the key part though, that’s just a component of a system like a good watch is a part of running a marathon. Here’s how I set that up:

Ditched the Second Monitor

I’ve been using a second monitor for nearly ten years, thinking that vast amounts of space were key to productivity. The second monitor myth has been around for quite some time. Yet the only actual scientific study I could find linking multiple monitors to productivity was done in 2003 by a monitor manufacturer, a video card manufacturer, and the University of Utah. It’s actually kind of a marketing document, not a study. I’ve opted for one, large monitor. Two monitors just allows me to put distractions on one monitor, and actual work on another.

Set up Spaces in OS X

Spaces is virtual desktop software on OS X. I never thought it was useful before ditching the second monitor, but now — instead of having always-on distraction in one monitor on my desk, I can put my email, twitter, and surfing browser in one “Space” on OS X and keep it there. When I start my pomodoro timer, I hop into a “space” that looks more like this — only the tools I need to do whatever task I am up for on the screen. In this case, I need limited web browsing and a text editor to write this blog post. Note the addition of “about:blank” in my bookmark bar at the top of the browser. While I’m writing and don’t need to use the browser, I tend to blank the screen out so I don’t get too distracted by the browser.

My third space simply has Remember the Milk running in full screen.

Ed. note: If you’re not running OS X, take a look at these popular virtual desktops for alternatives to Spaces.

Turned the mouse off during work-time

During the time that I’m working (unless I’m editing) — my 35 minute work intervals — I turn my mouse off. I’ve found that I can focus much more on the task at hand if I don’t touch or use that mouse. For me, my mouse is a gateway towards passive browsing and web surfing. If I don’t have access to it, I can’t begin the chain reaction of getting sucked into the web. For me, it’d be like running a marathon on a road with 26.2 miles of chicken-wing stores. I might make it a few miles, sure, but around mile 20, I’m going to succumb to temptation. I’ve found that Divvy helps me manage windows without the mouse, and that Vimium helps me use the web for research without the mouse.

Created a proactive routine

Part of my 2 minute break-time is used to set-up whatever tools I need to accomplish my next task. I use that time to figure out exactly what I need for my next task, close-down all the things I don’t need for that task, and set windows up appropriately. There’s rarely a time when I need more than two windows open. My workspace, whether it be writing code or writing blog posts, more often than not, looks like this. The set-up generally involves closing all tabs in the browser, and starting the browser fresh with an about:blank page. The key here is, I don’t just hop into doing work. I spend a minute or two setting up an ideal environment for me to be able to complete whatever my next task is. When I leave my computer for the day, there are no windows open. I start with a blank slate to come back to. No need getting bogged down in yesterday’s set-up.

About those tabs

None of my web browsers — surfing or otherwise, are allowed to have more than 5 tabs per browser window at any time. I do this via the No More Tabs Chrome extension. This extension is pretty brutal: if you create a new tab and you’re over your tab limit (defaults to 5) it’ll close your oldest one. I’ve been running this extension for over a month, and not once have I had a serious problem. It’s forced me to pay attention to a particular web page and finish working with it if I’m going to move on to something else.

The Environment Around Me

While I work primarily from home, I’m still prone to distractions from my environment. To conquer that, I have a pair of noise-reducing headphones, and I listen primarily to lyric-free music. Just a bit of noise to keep me focused. I sit at my desk, but I suspect that I’ll be converting to a standing desk soon because I don’t want to die early. I also tend to keep some snacks (nuts) and beverages around my desk so that food and water don’t lower my focus threshold. Though there’s one big anomaly here: I’m not working in an office with that many people in it. I don’t have a lot of meetings to take. I’m not managing anyone right now. For that though, I suggest consolidating all meetings into the afternoon and make them back to back. That way, you’re getting them out of the way and you have solid, long blocks of time to focus on getting things done.

Synopsis

Like all exercise, different kinds of workouts work differently for different people. For me, interval training works wonders — this blog post, for instance, has taken me 70 minutes to research and write — ordinarily a blog post like this before I had this set-up would take me nearly a full day’s worth of work. More importantly though, I’m able to do things like read long articles or even academic papers — things I never used to “have time for” which really meant “had attention for.”

If you think you’re having focus problems — if the concept of provigil appeals to you, or you’ve thought “oh if I could only get my hands on some ritalin,” think about setting up an attention fitness regimen for yourself instead. My general advice:

1. Do slightly less than you think you’re capable of
2. Increase your capacity while staying under that bar (#1)
3. You’re not going to run the attention fitness equivalent of a marathon today. Start slow.

Your brain, like your body, is only a result of what you train it to do. Attention fitness, like any other kind of fitness, takes time even to get into a routine. But once you make it a habit, it starts to pay off.

Clay Johnson blogs at Infovegan.com, a blog about information dieting and civic accountability. He was formerly the director of Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation and founder of Blue State Digital — the technology company behind Barack Obama’s web site.

Photo by Ed Yourdon.

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