Creativity and Focus

CoffeeI have never been a coffee drinker.  I have enjoyed alcohol for years.  But not until this sabbatical did I realize how essential both would be for this break’s projects.

I rarely drank coffee because I did saw no point and did not particularly enjoy the taste.  I sleep well most nights and almost never feel tired.  Not never, of course.  I have certainly stayed out past proper bedtime on occasion and felt drowsy in the day’s quiet lulls.  But 19 out of 20 days I never felt sluggish until before lying in bed.  And I saw no point developing a coffee addiction if it could be avoided.

But my Chinese studies have introduced a kind of mental fatigue I had never before known.  Even during my insanely busy periods at EMC–ten or more days of  12-14 hours of work a piece–my mental fatigue did not compromise my work.  It was tiring, for sure.  But not the kind of tiring that impacted my focus.  But language study is different.  One iota of sleep less than I need and I catch my mind wandering in the first hour of class.  I wrangle it back into the room only minutes later to find it has again escaped.  But coffee fixes this.

I was recently talking with my girlfriend about the difference in fatigue caused by studies as compared to work.  Work certainly beat me up in the past.  But on the whole we set our own pace at work.  A day of meetings, email, phone chats, content creation and problem solving contains dozens of scheduling decisions.  Sometimes we bin emails, other times we drift off in large meetings, we often introduce change by finding someone to meet face to face.  Those scheduling decisions give us some control over the intensity of our activities.  And that control limits work’s impact on our energy.

But language studies are different.  They are a treadmill whose pace is set by someone else.  And they contain obstacles introduced an unwavering master.  For a three-hour period I have no control over when I am listening, when I am speaking, and when I am solving problems (as rank novices are often doing when decoding unfamiliar sounds).  When someone else dictates the pace and problems must be solved every third sentence, a three hour class extraordinarily taxes the mind.

But then I discovered coffee.  I drink coffee at the one-hour break.  The difference between my retention for the first hour and the next two is self-evident.  I can decode sentences with more endurance.  I can concentrate undistracted for longer periods of time.  I shared my observations with my girlfriend because she weeks ago found online sent me the following infographic.

Beer vs. Coffee

It was not until I saw this graphic that I started to contemplate the amazing power of alcohol.  Students of languages will attest to the power of alcohol in communication.  As the above graphic states, alcohol increases creativity and lowers inhibition.  Fear of failure and embarrassment is the primary inhibiter of language skill development.  When we drink more we speak boldly.  And all kinds of foreign crap pours out of our mouths.  And that helps.  At those times we develop the skill of language recall and application.  In short, speaking an unfamiliar language is a highly creative process enabled by alcohol.

So, caffeine improves my classwork and alcohol improves my practice.  Should these discoveries not influence my broader life?  Indeed, one or two glasses of alcohol has catalyzed the majority of these blog articles.  It has fertilized my budding business ideas.

I have made no secret in previous writings of my frustration with Chinese studies.  I am doing fine on vocabulary and writing.  But listening and speaking have been difficult.  Listening is helped with a daily dose of coffee for each class.  But speaking must be at its best during oral exams, which return next week.

The real question is: should I have a couple shots of whiskey before my finals?  Maybe an Irish Coffee for the best of both worlds?

Leave a Reply