I'm experimenting with caffeine hacking (useful app inside)

I'm going through a period where I'm trying to improve every aspect of my life. From reading books to practising meditation, from showing up regularly at the gym to following a healthy diet, and so on and so forth. The transformation has been incredible and I am proud of what I've achieved so far, but there's one aspect that I am still trying to master: sleep.

Make no mistake. Just a few months ago, I used to wake up around 8 to 9 AM. Now, by 6:05 AM I'm already out of bed — I can say I'm as close as I've ever been to my peak performance, when I used to regularly wake up at 5 AM, feeling refreshed and ready to face the day.

What I mean is that the quality of my sleep is not as good as I'd like it to be, and I've been exploring different ways to figure out why.

I've tried everything, from very expensive pillows (still trying to determine if it was an improvement or not) to pre-bed technology wind-down and meditation. I've set all my devices to switch to warm light at dusk (thank you f.lux), listened to relaxing sleep music, bought a very expensive sleep mask (yes, I like expensive stuff) and some special earplugs (you get the gist of it...). It's not that none of that really worked; it's just that I still didn't feel like I was waking up refreshed.

Until I thought... wait a second. How much coffee am I drinking?

Well, as a good southern Italian, I wasn't keeping track of that. Big mistake. I was having as many as 3 espressos and 1 americano per day, plus I wasn't accounting for my pre-workout drinks, each with a whopping 250mg of caffeine.

Talk about improving aspects of my life!

So I took the initiative and:

• Listened to this incredibly interesting podcast by Andrew Huberman, which opened my mind about what caffeine does and how we can use it optimally.
• Took a complete day off it, just to cleanse my body (it was a tough day...)
• Downloaded a super cool app by Mr. Gong Zhang called HiCoffee (the app, not the guy lol) — I strongly recommend it to everyone, at a bargain price for a lifetime licence, and it even has dedicated Mac and Vision Pro versions! (I'm not affiliated in any way)
• Looked into online sources and documents + the calculator inside the app itself to find out what my daily limit of caffeine is to get a good night's sleep.
• Started tracking my caffeine intake.

Turns out, I was already reaching my limits with just one cappuccino + my pre-workout drink. I discovered that these two drinks were enough to disrupt my sleep, and I was basically doubling up my recommended dose of caffeine. Long story short, I was living in a state of constant jittering without even noticing.

In conclusion, if you have trouble sleeping, I would recommend you avoid making the same mistake and start from the obvious. Look into your caffeine consumption, and:

• "Hack" yourself and drink it only when you really need a boost to maximise its effectiveness.
• Don't drink it in the first 90-120 minutes after waking up (you don't really need it and, according to studies, you will avoid the post-lunch weakness).
• When you really want it, remember there's always a decaf ready for you. It might not be the same, but that's 2mg of caffeine instead of over 80.

Let me know how you get on with it if you want. Feel free to tag me on X/Twitter.

Good luck!