Buzz
Caffeine can boost your alertness, just like a restful night's sleep. Until now, if you wanted to carefully plan your caffeine intake, the tool to use was 2B-alert, which, while useful, was cumbersome and difficult to navigate. However, omnicalculator has now introduced a streamlined version called the Coffee Kick Calculator.
To use it, simply input the time you woke up and how much sleep you had. Then, enter the times and types of caffeinated drinks you consumed. Here’s how your alertness levels throughout the day would look (the higher the line, the more alert you are) if you got a full eight hours of sleep and woke up at 6 a.m.:
According to the way this calculator measures 'alertness,' you start with 100% when you wake up, drop to 81% around 11 a.m., rise slightly around 8 p.m., and then rapidly decline after 11 p.m. Sounds promising, right? Now, what if we had a large brewed coffee right after waking up?
Great, we’ll be extra alert in the morning and still experience the usual fatigue at night. But what happens if we get that after-lunch slump and have a large coffee (I’m entering it as 1.5 cups)?
The coffee does its job, and throughout the workday, we stay significantly more alert than we would without it. However, the graph resembles a roller coaster, a warning pops up indicating that we've consumed more than 400 milligrams today (we’ll be fine, but it’s not optimal), and we're still more alert than usual come bedtime.
In reality, no one’s as precise as a calculator: some people get more of a boost from caffeine than others, and the more frequently you consume it, the less effective it becomes.
If you want to dive deeper into your caffeine consumption, the original 2B-alert can simulate multiple days of sleep deprivation and compare different caffeine schedules. But if you're just looking for a basic understanding of how caffeine impacts your alertness, the Coffee Kick Calculator will serve the purpose.
