Get Everything Done

This is why my attempts to cultivate a tea-drinking habit never last very long: I find the cold, bitter teacup three hours later. Timers help, and morning checklists, but eventually they become too oppressive for a simple cup of tea, and I give it up.

Not bad. My trouble ensues as it sits on the desk.

See, a regular drink is no problem, since I begin drinking it immediately. With tea, however, I begin some work while it brews, and soon it's three hours later.

Mark wrote:
<<The simple answer to that is to use tea bags with tea bag tongs ...>>
Can tea really be squeeze-brewed? If anyone would know, it's the British.

Rainer,
The "Teeminator" contraption? Leave it to the Germans. ;) That penguin is pretty cute, though.

Seraphim,
How absolutely unromantic! Much of my tea is decaf though (herbal).

Little & often is having its effect: having complained about tea for the last few days, I now feel like brewing some tomorrow morning! I aso feel like letting go of the outcome completely: no timers, checklists, etc. to make it into an über-production; if I dump it out three hours later, no harm done, and I'll try again tomorrow.

I will think of it as experiment, wondering what will happen. I'm curious to find out!

(... and all this from apple crisp?!)

Mark wrote:
<<De-caf?? Herbal???
No wonder you keep forgetting to drink it.>>

Clearly you've never had a peppermint berry zinger!

I see. Good thing I did not mention the occasional shot of club soda or lime juice!

My grocer will feel relieved to hear about all this, because the blissfully ignorant fool has wasted decades, profitably selling truckloads of improper tea. ;)

As for the caffeine kick, I've personally never felt it much, except when I drink something too late in the day and find it hard to sleep. I spent my first thirty-five years free of any caffeine habit whatsoever, including all my grad-school/silicon-valley all-nighters which proceeded without even a diet Coke (or an apple crisp, just to pretend that we are still on topic!). When I do take on a coffee/tea/energy-drink habit, it tends to implode after a year or two, when I no longer have a taste for the stuff at all, as if my body wants to kick all the caffeine out.

Caffeine or no, I am paying for all those all-nighters now, in symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation!

<<I stand by my earlier comment. If you make yourself real tea, you won't forget to drink it.>>

And I stand by mine: "Much" of my tea is decaf.

That's "much," a vaguely sizable chunk ranking below "all" and "most," in this case somewhere between half and two-thirds, leaving plenty of room for the caffeinated greens, blacks, greys, and even whites. Those varieties fare no better, partly because they are especially bitter when over-brewed, and now apparently because they don't "kick" me the way everyone else reports. Am I unkickable?

But thanks to this discussion, I now know how to beat the system!

I shall discard caffeine entirely and take up nicotine, whose potent kick I will surely be unable to dodge. Not a penny will be wasted, not a cigarette unsmoked, not a petard unhoisted-with!

Thanks, Mark. I just reread parts of Alan's thread "If S happens, I will R" about this book. It sounds like a worthwhile read.

Perhaps it will soon become my "book of the moment" in my Final Version notebook?