Small, Regular Doses of Caffeine Offer the Biggest Mental Boost

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In an excerpt posted at Business Insider, Chatham suggest that moderate doses, say 20-200mg of caffeine per hour, may be optimal for that mental boost you're looking for. Considering an average cup of filtered or brewed coffee has between 100-150mg of caffeine per cup, one cup per hour is more than enough. In fact, you could probably get away with less coffee every hour, if the cognitive benefits are all you're aiming for. (Let's not forget, Caffeine has some health benefits, and definitely does some interesting things to your brain.)

While you have that caffeine in your system, Chatham also suggests that you play to your strengths and do things that you know how to do well and take little mental wrangling. The cognitive benefits you get from caffeine, like we've explained before, help you work faster and harder doing things that are easy for you to start and keep moving on. Caffeine doesn't, however, make challenging problems easier to solve, or puzzling, abstract tasks any easier. Make sure that those early hours where you're nursing a few cups are filled with tasks that are easy for you to tackle and burn through, and your productivity will benefit.

http://www.businessinsider.com/advice-on-how-to-best-use-caffeine-from-a-neuroscientist-2012-6