Caffeine makes you better at doing while making you worse at thinking. Yes, caffeine can increase dopamine release, elevate mood, improve alertness & reaction time. But its benefits are strongest for tasks requiring speed, not tasks requiring intellectual power. Research described by Stephen Cherniske — biochemist and author of Caffeine Blues — found that assembly-line type work can improve on caffeine while more complex reasoning gets worse. Michael Pollan — author and journalist, who abstained from caffeine for 3 months as part of his research for This Is Your Mind on Plants — noticed this firsthand when he drank coffee again for the first time. He described himself as compulsively getting things done, focusing on each task with single-minded intensity. “Another task suddenly demanded my attention: it was time to tackle my closet. This is not something I have ever done of my own free will, but at that moment I wanted nothing more than to take all my sweaters off the shelf and sort them into four piles.” That same trade-off shows up in memory research. In one study, non-habitual caffeine users received 0, 100, 200 or 400 mg of caffeine. As little as 100 mg increased false recall and false recognition — while true memory did not improve. Meaning, caffeine didn’t improve what they actually remembered. It increased the number of memories that weren't real. Another study gave subjects 100 mg before an auditory-verbal learning test. They listened to spoken word lists and were asked to recall them. The caffeine group recalled fewer words. Working memory shows the same pattern. Working memory is what you use to hold information in mind for a few seconds, like a phone number or a short list. A 2013 behavioral and fMRI study found that caffeine’s effects were more consistent with a detrimental effect at higher working-memory loads than with enhancement. The same pattern appears in creativity. In one experiment using caffeinated gum, creative fluency significantly decreased compared with placebo. The pattern is consistent: caffeine trades depth for speed. Caffeine makes you feel switched on. It makes you attack the task in front of you. But that is not the same as thinking better. For a founder, in the AI era, that distinction matters. Pushing through tasks is not the scarce skill. Judgment is.