I think of myself as pretty skilled and nuanced at introspection, and being able to make my implicit cognition explicit.
However, there is one fact about me that makes me doubt this severely, which is that I have never ever ever noticed any effect from taking caffeine.
I’ve never drunk coffee, though in the past two years my housemates have kept a lot of caffeine around in the form of energy drinks, and I drink them for the taste. I’ll drink them any time of the day (9pm is fine). At some point someone seemed shocked that I was about to drink one after 4pm, and I felt like I should feel bad or something, so I stopped. I’ve not been aware of any effects.
But two days ago, I finally noticed. I had to do some incredibly important drudge work, and I had two red bulls around 12-2pm. I finished work at 10pm. I realised that while I had not felt weird in any way, I had also not had any of the normal effects of hanging around for hours, which is getting tired, distracted, needing to walk around, wanting to do something different. I had a normal day for 10 hours solely doing crappy things I normally hate.
So I guess now I see the effect of caffeine: it’s not a positive effect, it just removes the normal negative effects of the day. (Which is awesome.)
I think of myself as pretty skilled and nuanced at introspection, and being able to make my implicit cognition explicit.
However, there is one fact about me that makes me doubt this severely, which is that I have never ever ever noticed any effect from taking caffeine.
I’ve never drunk coffee, though in the past two years my housemates have kept a lot of caffeine around in the form of energy drinks, and I drink them for the taste. I’ll drink them any time of the day (9pm is fine). At some point someone seemed shocked that I was about to drink one after 4pm, and I felt like I should feel bad or something, so I stopped. I’ve not been aware of any effects.
But two days ago, I finally noticed. I had to do some incredibly important drudge work, and I had two red bulls around 12-2pm. I finished work at 10pm. I realised that while I had not felt weird in any way, I had also not had any of the normal effects of hanging around for hours, which is getting tired, distracted, needing to walk around, wanting to do something different. I had a normal day for 10 hours solely doing crappy things I normally hate.
So I guess now I see the effect of caffeine: it’s not a positive effect, it just removes the normal negative effects of the day. (Which is awesome.)