Your Coffee. Your Wine. The Perfect Balance of Both for Peak Performance and Practice.

Written by Thomas McGregor
Published: August 10, 2014 at 5:50 AM [UTC]

Depending on the day, 8 o'clock rolls into town and I pop an unopened bottle of red wine for a nice wind down. The wine is a nice cap on the day as I take time to take stock of how the day went and how I can make it better next time. Wine is also very artistic for me; wine has many levels and many different types. This allows me to explore different areas of the world and how they influence the wine I enjoy.

The question is this; what amount of coffee helps my performance as a teacher, performer and creative? Also; what amount of wine aids in my night time creativity by allow my mind to be more free?
In this article I will outline what the professionals say regarding these two stimulants that most every creative professional enjoys on a daily basis, in order to showcase the benefits of them in the correct doses.

Coffee:
Caffeine is one of the best-tested ergogenic aids (substances, devices, or practices that enhance an individual's energy use, production, or recovery) and is known to help athletes train harder and longer. Caffeine stimulates the brain and contributes to clearer thinking and greater concentration.
There are more than 74 good studies on the use of caffeine for both endurance exercise and short-term, higher intensity exercise. The vast majority of the studies conclude that caffeine does indeed enhance performance and makes the effort seem easier (by about six percent).
The average improvement in performance is about 12 percent, with more benefits noticed during endurance exercise than with shorter exercise (eight to 20 minutes) and a negligible amount for sprinters. More benefits are also noticed in athletes who rarely drink coffee, hence are not tolerant to its stimulant effect.
Because each person responds differently to caffeine, don't assume you'll perform better with a caffeine-boost. You might just end up nauseated, coping with a "coffee stomach," or suffering from caffeine jitters at a time when you're already nervous and anxious.
And be forewarned: While a morning cup of coffee can assist with a desirable bowel movement, a pre-competition cup might lead to transit troubles! Experiment during training to determine if a caffeinated beverage or plain water is your best bet.

Caffeine is also an ergogenic aid, meaning it increases power output. This is true for both aerobic and anaerobic exercise. If taken before a workout, caffeine could improve your performance and give you an edge over your opponents.
There is some evidence high doses of caffeine can reduce blood flow to the heart during exercise. The mechanisms aren’t fully understood, and it was in extremely large doses.
People respond to caffeine in different ways, so be sure to test its effect on yourself. If you consume reasonable amounts, it will likely improve your performance. The bottom line is, as always, did you go faster or not?

The amount of coffee that you should take for your best performance is found right before you start to feel "over caffeinated" . This is going to take some experimenting. You will find the best amount when you aren't scatted and focused. This might be in lesser forms of caffeine; i.e. green tea, black tea. Again, this will take some experimentation and some time. But enjoy the process and lead your day with jolt.

Wine:
Sociologist Joseph Gusfield observed in an essay he contributed to Constructive Drinking, the mere presence of alcohol signals that we have permission to be our "authentic selves," we are allowed -- at least to a degree -- to reveal personal information about ourselves, to talk about silly things, and gossip more about others. This alludes to the idea that we are more honest with what we want and tend to not let silly self doubt stand in the way of us achieving it.

The BPS Research Digest called "Uncorking the Muse,” which shows that "mild intoxication aids creative problem solving." The researchers had male subjects between the ages of 21 and 30 consume enough vodka to get their blood alcohol concentration to .07, which is about equal to consuming two pints of beer for an average sized man. Then they gave them a standard creativity task 'the "Remote Associates Test", a popular test of insightful thinking in which three words are presented on each round (e.g. coin, quick, spoon) and the aim is to identify the one word that best fits these three (e.g. silver).'

The tipsy respondents performed better on the test than their sober counterparts:

1. "they solved 58 per cent of 15 items on average vs. 42 per cent average success achieved by controls"

2. "they tended to solve the items more quickly (11.54 seconds per item vs. 15.24 seconds)"

Tipsy subjects appeared to perform better and faster because the were less inhibited ("intoxicated participants tended to rate their experience of problem solving as more insightful, like an Aha! moment, and less analytic") and, following earlier research, people with better memories tend to do worse on the Remote Associates Test. Because drinking dulls memory, it may help such people perform better on this creativity test . The researchers also speculate that "being mildly drunk facilitates a divergent, diffuse mode of thought, which is useful for such tasks where the answer requires thinking on a tangent."

Therefore, creativity is directly linked to free thinking and the letting go of conditioned inhibitions that catalyzes out of the box thinking. This means that a good couple glasses of wine in the evening can spark new ideas and solutions to problems for the next day, or problems that had arisen that day. Wine, as in the case of coffee, can be that edge to your creative power; within reason.

Conclusion:
As professional and adults, we should use these substances respectfully and as tools. Now, if you are drinking[coffee or wine]socially, the word tool would not apply. But in the case of the creative process, they are tools to not be over used or worn out. Taking breaks from any tool is of benefit to the producer. But, as we see above, they can be assets to your creative process on a daily basis.

(Sources: Active.com / BulletProofExec.com / Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor)