Can you work effectively without caffeine?

I saw an old friend today (yes – all my friends are now old) and as we ordered drinks he made a reference to my caffeine-free beverage. Whilst it’s true that orange juice doesn’t contain caffeine and his Coca Cola did, it wouldn’t be true to say I’m caffeine-free these days. Which surprises me as much as it surprises a few others.

The reason is simply that on many occasions during the day I feel I need a bit of an energy boost.

Caffeine came back into my life during a particularly stressful few months with long days and not quite enough sleep. Caffeine seemed a reasonable reaction, and it sort of stayed. And it makes me wonder whether other people have tried and failed to banish caffeine from their work-a-day lives.

In theory I would live without caffeine. But in theory I would get enough sleep and banish deadlines. In practice my working life is often stressful and doesn’t fit into the hours I would like to allocate to it.

So I’m wondering, in a blogging type way, what do others think? Have you tried to give up caffeine and quietly gone back to it? Can man (or woman) work effectively on peppermint tea alone? And if you never want me to mention caffeine ever again, that’s also a reasonable response …