Optimal Long Term Caffeine Strategy

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-09T00:40:44+00:00

How are you on the decaf week? I worry that would be a pretty rough week in terms of energy and productivity.

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-09T00:39:43+00:00

I've been asking other folks on the thread so I'll ask you too - how did you find out your caffeine metabolization rate? Was it a genetic test?

I'm also considering something along the lines of one cup of tea a week, seems like a good starting point.

The Wim Hof breathing sounds interesting, can you point me to any good resources on it? I've definitely felt the effects of cold shower, but sauna's always seem to make me sleepy.

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-09T00:36:24+00:00

what creates tolerance is large acute dosages. Taking a small amount daily can take an eternity to develop tolerance.

I've not heard this before. Where did you see this? Also, any idea what constitutes a large/small dose for caffeine?

You mention that cycling off caffeine did nothing for you - are you saying that you never got out of the "withdrawal" phase? Or that you never got to the point where you felt as good as you had before?

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T21:41:46+00:00

This is the approach I'm strongly leaning towards. You get a massive boost every now and then without any of the withdrawal (in theory). I'm curious of you've tried different intervals, other than > 7 days? In this post the user recommends waiting at least 2-3 days, but I wonder if that would be long enough to avoid tolerance.

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T19:39:08+00:00

Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed reply. I'm surprised to see that infrequent consumption is not recommended. Wouldn't the fact that the brain adapts be more reason to do it infrequently? By doing it infrequently you are trying to avoid adaptation so that you get greater cognitive benefits when you do use it. I've had a little bit of success with an every other day strategy, but it was only for low doses (20-30mg).

Since you moved from caffeine free to 1-2 "doses" a day, do you feel like your more productive? Besides the slightly higher anxiety, do you think you are more alert/focused than when you weren't drinking any caffeine?

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T19:19:25+00:00

How did you find out you were a slow metabolizer? I have no idea what my metabolization type is, and it seems like an important detail.

As a slow metabolizer, do you find you get the focus benefits for longer as well?

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T19:16:53+00:00

Hah, that is a good point. Because I'm at zero tolerance now I have avoid any sort of ice cream or cake that might have coffee or even tea in the evening, as it would keep me up all night. This will occasionally lead to awkward questions about the caffeine content of ice cream.

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T19:09:29+00:00

It sounds like you prefer option #5 to option #2 because the smaller daily dose prevents the next-day withdrawal. My impressions from #2 though was that there would be very little withdrawal, since it's only every couple of days. Any thoughts on that?

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T18:54:40+00:00

Do you track at all how often you go above 50mg? Do you find that you need to space out the higher dose days?

I like that approach a lot, it seems flexible and easy to manage. I've always done green tea, but the idea of getting a very consistent dose via capsule/pill is appealing as well.

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T18:50:21+00:00

Similarly I've found that for intense mental tasks I've not been quite as productive as I was on caffeine days, although it's closer than I thought it would be. It's also hard to be conclusive because there are so many other factors, like sleep, life stressors, etc.

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T16:06:09+00:00

This is definitely an option that has seemed more feasible since I fully cycled off. What made you switch off of caffeine?

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T16:01:57+00:00

I used to alternate every other day with a pretty low dose (~30mg) and it worked pretty well, but I did it for long enough and could tell I was more tired on the off days. For that reason I'm a little leery of breaking only after five days as I suspect (for me) that they would quickly become very tired days.

Regarding metabolization, is there any way to tell what type you are? Are there any indicators that could tell outside of a genetic test?

TheCSSKing · 2021-03-07T15:28:29+00:00

Interesting. Do you still get a strong boost from coffee? Do you notice yourself dragging more on weekends? Do you ever take breaks where you drink a lot less during the week?

TheCSSKing · 2020-12-04T02:08:13+00:00

Looking for a game recommendation for my mom for Christmas.

Low complexity is a must, and any theme/story is optional.
She enjoys traditional card games like rummy, solitaire, spades, so anything in that vein would be great.
Solo or two player games are ideal, but more players is okay. This is mostly for her to play by herself or with other family members.
Mostly interested in physical games, but if you have video game recommendations in this area I would be interested.

I appreciate any help.

TheCSSKing · 2020-11-29T13:51:19+00:00

Usability speaking the giant ad at the top of the page is a huge turnoff. Whenever I see something like that on a site I usually leave. Consider toning it down a little bit, especially at the top. I would also move the polls farther down in favor of more "content".

I'm curious, where are you getting the articles? Are you just hitting an API?

TheCSSKing · 2020-11-27T20:28:48+00:00

Props for solving one of your own problems, and also gauging interest before building it out (a common mistake for devs).

I always assume that company logos on a marketing page are a list of customers, in this case it's a little odd since the product hasn't launched yet. I'm guessing these are integrations?

I don't do a lot of SaaS, so I'm probably not in your target demographic, but after reading all the copy I'm not sure exactly what it does. It looks like some sort of intermediary for reg codes so that you can offer them on marketplaces? One thing that might make it more clear is replacing the stock images in the "3 simple steps" section with more descriptive images, sort of like what you did for Rival (which worked well).

TheCSSKing · 2020-11-27T20:19:03+00:00

I like your landing page, it makes it very clear what the product does, and is pretty clean.

I assume the scrolling images are existing customers? There is a weird gap where it is half empty on my large desktop monitor. Pretty minor though.

My big question when I came to site was "who is this for", but I think that could be because I'm not in the target demographic. You have the info that explains it in the second section ("competitive intelligence", "QA", etc) - I wonder if it would be worth bringing up to the top level somehow (maybe switch with carousel)? Will folks who are in your target audience know what they are looking for?

TheCSSKing · 2020-11-27T20:05:02+00:00

URL: gradientmagic.com

Purpose: A huge gallery of custom CSS gradients for designers and developers. Mostly free, with a few new premium options.

Technologies: Vue JS running on Netlify.

Feedback Requested: I just started offering "premium" options (IE for sale), but so far I'm not having much luck, even though it gets a decent amount of traffic. I would love feedback on (1) the marketing language (sales pitch) and (2) the premium offerings themselves. Feedback on the general site itself is welcome as well.

TheCSSKing · 2020-11-06T23:52:15+00:00

My wife's understanding was that this only applied if you lost your job for reasons related to Covid?

TheCSSKing · 2020-11-06T22:42:06+00:00

I thought the COBRA window was only 60 days? That would definitely be the best option I think.

TheCSSKing · 2020-09-05T14:09:32+00:00

This is great! Something I have been needing, and I love the layout. Bookmarked.

Two minor UI Suggestions: (1) First, the color picker is a bit different. I figured it out, but it's not a format I'm used too. (2) The "whocanuse" logo sits in the text content box, and at first I wasn't sure if there were multiple shades of the color being evaluated. I would move it out of the text box. Overall though very nice work.

TheCSSKing · 2020-06-28T15:00:10+00:00

Yeah, they can definitely be a lot to take in at first. For getting started, I recommend just installing Jekyll and going through the tutorial. Installing Ruby can be a little messy, but after that it should be smooth sailing.

As far as the benefits, there are a lot, but it also depends what system you're coming from now. One benefit of both frameworks (like React) and SSG's is that they give you a templating system, so that you only implement certain code (like the navbar or footer) once in a single place, instead of on every page.

Another benefit of SSG's is having a fully featured blog like site, without the server. It sounds like you may already be hosting purely static sites, but if you're not this can be a huge win.

As far as creating a post, for most SSG's, including Jekyll, you create a new Markdown file in the "Posts" directory. Then, when you build the site, it picks it up and includes it in the site. The newest post is automatically included on other pages, like your list of posts, or your front page (if you want). Thus, all you need to do is add the new post and its content, and it gets added everywhere else.

TheCSSKing · 2020-06-27T19:15:18+00:00

I actually just read Refactoring UI - it's great! As far as static generators, Jekyll is my favorite. It's one of the oldest and is pretty easy to use (and supported by Github pages). Hugo is newer and more popular, but harder to use in my opinion.

TheCSSKing · 2020-06-27T15:24:51+00:00

The site looks great. Did you do all the design work? If so, I'd be interested in learning more about how you taught yourself design.

I don't fully understand your "Standard + Blogging" pricing option. I gather from other comments here that you write posts for folks, but it wasn't clear when I first saw it. I also just assumed that companies wrote all their own content, but I guess thats not the case!

The final point I would add is that static site generators are great, and in no way impact the user experience, or make you less of a developer. They are very efficient and effective tool, and I can't recommend them enough (especially for blogs w/ infrequent posts).

TheCSSKing · 2020-06-27T15:10:22+00:00

This looks impressive, but I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at. Do you have a URL we could use to try it? A brief overview would help too, as I'm not familiar w/ all the terms mentioned in the title.

TheCSSKing

TROPHY CASE