Kick-Starting Your Day

Now I would like you to paint a mental picture. It is 8AM. You have just arrived at the office and you have a long day ahead of you. So, to get things going, you make yourself a nice, large cup of hot coffee. I am sure this is a familiar situation for many of us - it certainly is for me! Coffee is popular as a morning pick-me-up because it contains caffeine, a natural stimulant. Caffeine works to stimulate the central nervous system (CNS), helping to promote alertness and reduce mental fatigue. This can work to raise your energy levels, keep them high and ensure you are at peak performance within your role.

Coffee certainly has its benefits, but the caffeine it contains can create a vicious circle. Being energised and wide awake throughout the day means you can be on top of your game and will be able to perform better for longer. This is fantastic when you are battling your way through a seemingly endless list of e-mails or you have a long line of candidates to interview, but not when you have fought your way through the e-mails or the last interviewee has headed home and you are trying to wind down and recharge your batteries.

For a bit more information on this I decided to consult the professionals, Starbucks, who I am sure you have all heard of. The nutritional information on their website reveals that large cups of their espresso coffee weigh in between 150mg and 225mg of caffeine; Grande Caffe Latte and Cappuccino contain 150mg and Caffe Americano contains 225mg. The recommended daily limit of caffeine is around 300mg. Therefore one or two cups, ideally in the morning or early afternoon, will have no detrimental effects and will help to keep you on your toes. However, exceeding this limit can have a significant impact. Three or four large cups throughout the day will definitely boost your energy levels, but it could also impact upon your sleep patterns. Therefore, you need to consider when you are drinking coffee and how much of it you are drinking. Do you need to be guzzling down coffee late in the afternoon? Is it this that is stopping you getting your seven or eight hours of nocturnal bliss?

So, what are the alternatives? How can you get energised throughout the day and still make sure you get seven or eight hours of shut-eye every night? Black tea and green tea are traditionally popular in China and are excellent alternatives to coffee. They also provide a caffeine boost, but in smaller doses, between 40mg and 80mg per cup. Lipton Tea estimates that a large cup of their tea will provide roughly half the amount of caffeine as a large coffee. However, dark teas offer the added benefit of working to hydrate the body.

Hydration and Performance

You may think that combating dehydration is just something for athletes like Liu Zhang or Zhou Chunwei (winner of 2007's London Marathon) to think about, but you would be wrong - it is something to which everyone needs to pay serious attention. Losing water from the body can have a major effect on your performance. This is certainly true for athletes, but it is also true for you. The problem is that most people often do not even realise they are dehydrated. For instance, the majority of us tend to drink when we are thirsty. That sounds sensible, doesn't it? Well, actually, this is not the case. Thirst is actually a symptom of dehydration. However, the issue of dehydration should be one of prevention rather than cure. If you are drinking because you are thirsty you are only curing the problem. If you need a cure it means the problem may already be having an effect upon your performance.

If you are thirsty and dehydration is having an effect, then you need to ask what impact it can actually have. Perhaps the biggest effect is to increase fatigue by around 25%. It also contributes towards mood swings and muscle weakness. These can have a major effect on your performance, but the frightening statistic is that you need to lose just 2% of the water in your body for dehydration to have an effect. For these reasons, doctors recommend drinking eight glasses of water a day. However, black tea and green tea can have a similar effect. Coffee, on the other hand, thanks to its high caffeine content, is a diuretic, which means it actually works to reduce the levels of water in the body.

Now, I would like you to close your eyes and visualise a really hectic work week. Imagine a string of meetings, a raft of reports, and a herd of approaching deadlines. I want you think how you are going to get through the week performing at your very best and using your time to best effect.