Around 500 years ago, a revolution was starting that would go on to change the world and sow the seeds for modern life as we know it. A craze for something so potent and powerful that it enabled people to do extraordinary things was sweeping the Arabian world and it was about to hit Europe, this powerful and exotic substance was Coffee. People were obsessed with this new drink that allowed them to seemingly be more creative and productive for longer. Coffee houses sprang up across the continent
as popularity surged, fuelling the arts and the Industrial revolution. They became gathering places that would go on to spawn ideas and institutions that are still going today, Everything from the Tatler magazine, an early example of social storytelling, to the London Stock Exchange. Artists, musicians, writers and thinkers of all kinds have been fuelled and influenced by coffee; Bach and Beethoven composed music. Bach drinking 30 cups a day, while Beethoven obsessed over the 60 beans per cup th
at he preferred while drinking his coffee. Voltaire, the French writer and philosopher, was known for his enormous consumption of coffee, reportedly drinking 40 to 50 cups a day. Novelist Marcel Proust consumed 2 bowls of black coffee and croissants as part of his daily routine. So French! and L Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had a morning routine that included five cups of strong coffee. Literary icon Ernest Hemingway was immersed in Parisian cafe culture too, and wrote about
it in his book A Movable Feast that chronicles his time in Paris, and it's a favourite of mine. Even Pablo Picasso both consumed coffee as part of his daily routine and painted it into his work as well. Most recently, filmakers including David Lynch and Martin Scorsese and Youtubers Emma Chamberlain, Peter McKinnon and more have spoken about how coffee is vital to them and their creative process, and James Hoffman has an incredible channel about coffee itself that is a coffee fuelled work of art
. and me…? not comparing myself to any of those people! Like many of the other people we just mentioned, I love drinking coffee, not only for the taste, but also because I feel like it helps me get into a certain place and helps me be more creative with what I'm doing. I also think there's something special about the ritual of actually making a cup of coffee that helps me get to a creative place when I need to do something creative throughout the day, whether it's writing, whether it's editing,
whether it's going out and filming or even recording a voiceover. Honestly, the impact, both personally and historically that this drink has just amazes me. Oh so good…. But coffee could have actually helped the advancement of human civilization, and that blows my mind. I think it's absolutely incredible that this drink is potentially partly responsible, at least for so much of human progression. So being an eternally curious person, I wanted to have a look at the science of it and see how coff
ee actually does affect us and what science says about coffee and creativity. It turns out that coffee is way more tied into the system in our body that makes us sleep than I thought at all. Scientists like Matthew Walker will tell you how coffee actually blocks adenosine receptors. And in the brain, basically what that is, is the thing that kicks off the sleep process and makes you go to sleep. And so you have this heightened sense of stimulation and for me that was really interesting because I
always thought coffee was more injecting Nitro, like NOS in the Fast & the Furious… It's not that! What it does is it sort of builds up this resistance to the sleep chemicals in your brain and it helps you have this sort of heightened sense of alertness. And you know, if you drink too much of it, that sort of jittery craziness. But in getting there, there's also another cup it actually fills; coffee helps replenish your norepinephrine and dopamine, which can both help you be more creative. In f
act, according to a recent study in medical journal called “Consciousness and Cognition” the researchers in that study found that participants who consumed A moderate amount of caffeine equivalent to two cups of coffee performed better in a creativity task than those who didn't. And the study also suggested that caffeine can enhance divergent thinking and the ability to generate multiple ideas and solutions to problems. I think people often downplay how influential and important this stuff is on
our lives, but it is actually a psychoactive drug. “The drug that more people in the world are dependent on is caffeine. But it's the world's most widely used mood altering drug” and that's an important thing to consider. So I think one of the things that creatives can do is knowing how to use it and creating routines for ourselves in order to make sure you're harnessing coffee at its best. And this is where it can become uniquely personal because everybody seems to deal with coffee and obvious
ly the active compounds that are within it slightly differently. So that norepinephrine we spoke about has been shown to actually restrict people's ability to deal with multiple ideas and therefore decrease people's ability to think divergently. So great for focusing you, but not necessarily for coming up with new ideas. But this is very subjective because not everybody seems to experience that it really important to think about the effects of coffee on our sleep. Personally, I focus all my coff
ee consumption into the mornings. One of the things that helped me when I tinkered with this was an app I used to track caffeine intake and its effects on my heart rate, sleep and how quickly it dropped off. And there are loads of these out there. I chose to use one called HiCoffee and I've Linked it in the description. What I'd suggest for everybody is experiment See how coffee affects you, see how long it keeps you up at night. Some people can drink a cup of coffee and then go straight to slee
p like they hadn't touched caffeine at all. But if you're like me…. not so much. But that being said, remember all those people who changed the world we mentioned at the start? They went hard. Now sure, they didn't have the science telling them that it could be bad for them, but for the people operating at that level, the obsession with the work overrode any concerns like this. Now, I'm not advocating or advising that you OD on coffee. What I am saying is that if you do want to change the world,
then at least knowing your limit and how close you can get to it can be a good thing if you're seriously obsessed with your art. Knowing the science we looked at is also a good thing too, and having the data out there means that we can use it to get to where we need to be, Safely! So count the cups, Use an app, Sleep when you need to, Let the caffeine take hold when that works too! I'm glad I have the science to guide me. But life is also too short not to follow your muse when you feel inspired
. So when it is there, I say don't hold back. What would Bach, Beethoven, Lynch, McKinnon, Chamberlain, Voltaire or Scorsese do? Probably seize the moment! After all, that's how coffee changed the world. I hope you enjoy coffee as much as I do and if it's part of your creative process, like it is for me, then please do let us know in the comments. I would love to hear about people's creative processes and if they use coffee or not, how they integrate it into it, what your rituals, what your rout
ines are like. I think it's a fascinating discussion to have. So until next time, keep creating. I hope to see you soon and cheers. I hope you enjoyed the video and you got something out of it and you know what I'm gonna ask you to do if you enjoyed it. Hit that like button, hit subscribe and join me on this creative journey it’s going to be amazing and I can't wait to share it with you. with tips and tricks and creative processes and all sorts of fun stuff. But look, I hope to have you watching
next time. Take care and stay creative.
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