RE: Cold Turkey

I don't really view myself as either risk-averse or a risk-taker per-se. My goal is to just make the decision that seems most likely to have the best outcome after weighing the pros and cons. I view a lot of life decisions as "informed betting", and in that sense, I enjoy the process of deciding what bets to make.

As an example of what many might view as risk-taking, I quit the corporate world when I was 24 to start my first business without any external financial backing (and this was done back when that was a much more unusual thing to do than it is nowadays).

I also kept most of my net worth in highly volatile crypto investments. And in a more recent example, last year I donated ~10% of my net worth to a new charity I set up, just because I believe in the goals, even though that consumed a lot of my "stable" assets.

All these were risks, and I suspect they were risks that most people would be uncomfortable to take. But when I weighed the possible outcomes (good and bad), I decided I could live with the worst outcomes and the odds favored the positive outcomes in a way that made sense for me to take the risks.

But when it comes to software, experience has taught me that even seemingly trivial changes in financial software can have very bad consequences, so changes should only be made if there's a clear reward for the change (and yes, we've also just got a lot of things to do so we need to prioritize what we do). There's also the additional factor that changes to Hive code can impact everyone, not just me, so I need to be extra careful about what changes I propose.

As to the coffee thing: I originally disliked the taste of coffee, but started drinking it when I started working because it was a social thing (2 coffee breaks during the work day) and eventually I grew to like the taste. And I got somewhat addicted to the hit it gave and found that when I didn't get it in the morning I was more sluggish.

But when I started my own company and started working really long hours, I found that while it might make me slightly productive, the "crash" from when the coffee wore off cost me more productivity than I gained from the hit. In the end, I found that I'm much more productive overall over the long run by avoiding coffee, so I quit for the most part (I might drink a coffee once every week or so nowadays).

Also, I didn't find it terribly hard to quit, FWIW, and I don't think it's necessary to go "cold turkey" after you quit, because the addiction doesn't seem to be as strong as ones like cigarettes (but I've never been a smoker, so I'm only commenting on my observation of others).