Hello!

I’m prewriting this post a couple days in advance, actually, due to stuff coming up. I will probably not get very much sleep during that time.

First, a tiny bit of relevant background. I’m going to have a strict timeframe (48 hours, starting at noon one of the days) to do a thing that will involve minimal sleep. Because I have this specific timeframe, I’m able to try to prep for it.

So, I thought I’d share my caffeination prep I’m using!

(As a second note, I’m usually at a higher-than-necessarily-recommended level of coffeenation. Yes, I spelled that intentionally.)

For the better part of the week leading up to the thing, I worked on getting myself (relatively) off caffeine. So, a couple days of no more than half-caff, or usually decaf.

Then, no more caffeine than available in a cup of green tea, and herbal tea for the rest of the time.

In addition to helping me get off caffeine, this allowed me to catch up on sleep a bit.

4 and 3 days before The Thing, I added a normal cup of coffee back into the mix. You see, I don’t want to be completely off caffeine before starting. That can lead to unanticipated jitteriness, and hypercaffeination by mistake, which would cause problems.

2 and 1 days before The Thing, I was back to the half-caff / decaf route. (Less than the equivalent of one of my usual size cups of coffee, though.)

This enabled me to get sleep. At least, theoretically. I had a couple issues between night 2 and 1, but that was probably at least in part due to being on YouTube. That’s a very distracting rabbit hole! So really, the system can’t be blamed.

And now (well, as you’re reading this, not as I’m writing this) I’m doing The Thing. Since it’s worked previously, I’m guessing it will work now to help keep me awake.

I hope that helps, next time you have 48 hours where it’s nice to not need to sleep!

have a lovely Tuesday!