An Unexpected Benefit from Quitting Coffee - 10 Months In
Date: 2025-10-15 | caffeine | coffee | health | productivity | reflect |
I quit coffee at the beginning of the year and shared how it affected me as a software engineer and in my most recent job search.
The primary benefits were:
- Getting to sleep on time more often and waking up in the mornings feeling rested
- Don't need caffeine to start doing things (no zombie feel)
- Less anxiety and easier to enter a focus session
I still feel these benefits are true but I've also discovered a new one, 10 months into quitting coffee.
The Unexpected Benefit of Quitting Coffee
Over the past 3 months my sleep schedule and quality has taken a severe hit. I had a baby and babies like to wake up every 2-3 hours which eliminates the possibility of a full night's sleep unless you do something like sleep shifts.
I've also had a few very late nights this past year from birthdays to weddings to traveling with time changes.
It was through these moments of sleep loss that I noticed a pattern.
Back when I was a coffee monster, I would wake up super groggy and basically be a zombie before my first cup. I'd have a bad mood and have a haze over me that basically prevented any kind of nice, productive morning.
After quitting coffee, I'm still tired. But I feel much less of that haze. I can still get up and do things - exercise, write a blog post, do some research. And none of this is predicated on first grabbing a coffee.
Multiple nights of bad sleep are still debilitating, as I found out with the baby, but one night of bad sleep here or there has had much less impact on me than it had before.
Next
As a caveat, I do still drink caffeine but it's in much smaller doses - an iced tea or decaf coffee. I don't know if I'll ever fully remove it but I've already seen some big benefits from just limiting my caffeine intake.
If you liked this post you might also like:
Want more like this?
The best way to support my work is to like / comment / share for the algorithm and subscribe for future updates.