We are featured on the front page of the The Wall Street Journal today.
Topic: quitting coffee.
When I started MUD\WTR in May of 2018 we were very much living in a ‘but first, coffee’ culture.
Sleep was for the lazy and non-productive.
You know, ‘hustle’, ‘sleep when you’re dead’… all of that.
As a workaholic creative who used to drink 3-5 moderately caffeinated drinks per day with no concern about dose, or how long it stayed in my system — I had a feeling that a lot of people would benefit from evolving their relationship to daily high dose psychoactive drug use (caffeine) as I had.
This wasn’t about being less productive, or about ‘chilling.’
I felt like creativity = productivity.
My productivity is directly correlated to the quality of my ideas, and the quality of my ideas suffered when I was reliant on high doses of caffeine to keep my eyes open.
So I put up an ad that said ‘I’m not mad at coffee, just disappointed, so I made something better.’
It was polarizing.
There were a lot of coffee activists throwing out ‘how dare you!s’ and thinking I was crazy for questioning the sacred bean.
“This is going nowhere.”
“Coffee does not need a replacement.”
“No one is quitting coffee.”
“Drink coffee. Grow a pair people.”
But a lot of people resonated as well.
Fast forward 6 years and the Wall Street Journal reached out to me for an interview for a front-page article.
The question?
“Is quitting coffee a status symbol?”
Turns out a lot of high-profile people are moderating their intake of stimulant drugs to find better performance… who would have thought!?