Workstation: Our Coffee Rituals Say Much About Us

Here in the building, you can buy fancy coffee in the cafe or good-enough coffee in the cafeteria. At around 4:30 in the afternoon, a cry of “Coffee’s up!” can be heard in the newsroom, signaling the arrival of a cart offering free coffee and hot water in metal urns. I’m among those who turn up their noses at the free coffee, preferring to pay 75 cents to use the machines in our floor’s pantry that dispense single cups through a pouch.

A clique of reporters has gone in on a coffee maker, in which they brew Dean’s Beans from Massachusetts. An editor has both a coffee maker and a hot water kettle at his desk, along with two tea infusers that he bought at the Museum of Modern Art.

I’m sure that workers at investment banks, tech companies, retailers, construction job sites and other locales have their own rituals, too. Caffeine tugs us into this kind of behavior because it is a drug — almost never an addictive drug, though, but a potentially habit-forming one, said Stephen Braun, a medical writer based in Amherst, Mass., and author of “Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine.”

“What caffeine is basically doing is putting a block of wood under your brake pedal,” he said. It’s plugging a receptor in your nerve cells that would normally tell your brain to slow down.

Caffeine has “insinuated itself into the workplace, and I don’t see anything particularly wrong with that,” Mr. Braun said. It used to be that it felt like a vice. But “the mass of research has failed to demonstrate that caffeine is bad for your health; it’s just not there,” he said.

That’s if you consume it in small doses and don’t have a health issue like high blood pressure. As the Mayo Clinic warns on its Web site, large doses of caffeine — 500 to 600 milligrams, or roughly the equivalent of four or more cups of brewed coffee a day — can lead to insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, irritability, stomach upset, fast heartbeat and muscle tremors.

But if it’s used responsibly, caffeine may actually be good for you, according to some research. It has been shown to aid concentration and productivity, and to improve the performance of night workers, who are prone to fatigue.

Mr. Braun’s coffee of choice is Major Dickason’s Blend by Peet’s. He rarely buys coffee at a cafe because he is a freelance writer with an uncertain income stream.

Your caffeine ritual can say a lot about your finances and your attitude toward money. People who do the math know that they can save hundreds of dollars a year by making their own coffee or tea. Personal finance experts — or killjoys, as I call them — often advise people to cut out that daily latte and put the savings toward their retirement.

For some people, though, that daily contact with a friendly store owner or cashier can tip the balance toward making their workday happier and maybe a little less lonely. That has value, too.

Loneliness has been linked to cognitive decline, so workers who banter with their barista or take coffee breaks together are actually doing a service to their organization. Social bonds that result from daily interactions among co-workers can lead to greater collaboration. Well-designed beverage areas in the workplace have actually been found to improve productivity.

Whether you buy a coffee at Starbucks, make one yourself or gather at the coffee urns, it’s just plain good for your brain to take a break. Mental concentration is like a muscle, says John P. Trougakos, an assistant management professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management. It needs periods of rest the way weight lifters need to take breaks between repetitions.

BUT always remember that caffeine is a drug and as such can be misused, Mr. Braun said. “When you’re using caffeine regularly, your brain tries to adjust,” he said. “It will take more of the drug to get the same effect over time.” That’s why there are withdrawal symptoms like a headache if you quit too suddenly, he said.

Mr. Braun tries to take periodic “caffeine vacations” to counter this effect. And when he returns from one of those vacations, he said, that first cup of Major Dickason’s Blend is amazing.

Workstation: Deadline Pressure, the Great Motivator

During my Googling I found out that Dan Ariely is an expert on deadlines, and I forced myself to contact him because I had promised to get this work done.

Making that declaration was a good move, as it turns out. Publicly committing to meeting a deadline is a powerful motivator because it puts your reputation on the line, said Mr. Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University and the author of “Predictably Irrational.”

Workers who fail to meet deadlines risk the disapproval — and sometimes the wrath — of their managers and colleagues. Still, some people will blow a deadline, rationalizing that there is both a “deadline” and a “real deadline.” They will use whatever devices and excuses they can muster to buy more time.

But what about assignments that don’t have clear deadlines? Or projects that are so large that they must be done in increments, so that pulling an all-nighter isn’t an option? Or creative goals that no one much cares about, except you?

I know people who, through boundless narcissism, single-minded obsession or unfathomable self-discipline can complete big projects without deadlines. Many of us, though, need a looming threat to finish major work.

People respond well to deadlines because meeting them provides a distinct feeling of having achieved something within a time frame. “It’s a good way to keep score,” Professor Ariely said.

It is possible to motivate yourself, he said, by announcing a deadline to others — perhaps on Facebook or on Twitter. Not meeting the deadline would then feel like breaking a promise, he said: “It does say something about your character.”

A mere announcement on Twitter, though, would hardly be enough for die-hard procrastinators. If you are one of them, consider creating a situation that has real consequences, Professor Ariely said. Give a friend $100 and say, “If I don’t meet my deadline you can keep this.” Or, he said, try the prospect of public humiliation. Make a bet with your friends: if you don’t meet the deadline, you must run through the streets naked.

Perhaps Professor Ariely has friends who really would force him to run naked through the streets of Durham, N.C. My friends are warm and supportive and would say “that’s O.K.” if I didn’t meet my self-imposed deadline, which, of course, makes them wonderful friends but not good enforcers.

I have always wanted to write a book, however, and it occurs to me: Why not hire someone to hector me? Services like TaskRabbit have sprung up to help people with all manner of tasks, including fixing their computers and doing their laundry. Surely a stranger would be willing, for a small fee, to call or text me and say: “Have you written those 500 words you said you would write by 8 a.m.?” It’s worth a try. A shaming e-mail if I don’t do my assignment should be included in the price.

Here may be the secret to meeting a big self-imposed deadline: First, divide the work into smaller tasks and set deadlines for every one of them. Then find a tough and reliable person to hold you accountable for meeting each one. Make meeting the big deadline — not achieving perfection — the ultimate goal. Voilà. You’re making no guarantees of quality, but perhaps your work can be improved later.

THIS column, for example, is nowhere near as good as it was as a vague idea in my mind’s eye. There’s so much more I wanted to cover, including the etymology of the word “deadline.” (O.K., I’ll throw it in: It was formerly “a boundary around a military prison beyond which a prisoner could not venture without risk of being shot by the guards,” according to Dictionary.com.)

I wanted to discuss the link between death and deadlines, and whether death awareness affects people at work, a topic that has been explored by Prof. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

But I ran out of time, and that’s the point. This column — inferior though it is to what I had imagined — is done, and it’s done because I had a deadline.