Coffeedoro: Slowing Down to Speed Up

Life happens while the water boils.

Earlier this year, I broke our electric kettle. Honestly the thing had it coming, what with its insulting blue light and all the calcified hard water that thousands of cups of coffee will do a vessel. It was an accident, but as it turned out, a happy one.

We didn’t replace it. Instead, we unearthed our ancient teapot and began to do things the old fashioned way. Heating water on the stove, like a caveman. As an unrepentant coffee addict, the slow boiling of this relic infuriated me . How could I be forced to wait an absolute eternity, something like ten minutes, for my ninth cup of joe that morning?

But being the cheapo that I am, I couldn’t buy myself a new kettle. I withered days of low grade caffeine withdrawal, barely myself with only four or five cups of black gold in the tank.

But then something kind of magical happened.

I started to enjoy the ritual of making coffee more. I found that slowing down, necessitated by the old fashioned method, actually made me savor not only the coffee more, but also the ritual of brewing it.

And that was lovely. That it helped me cut back on caffeine was also a benefit.

But as the weeks wore on, a new, more subtle advantage to going old school emerged. I was doing things while the water boiled. I threw the kettle on and did just a few of the dirty dishes. And then they were all done. I turned the stove on and sat down to write, just for a second. When the kettle screamed at me, I almost resented it - so deeply had I become immersed in writing that I didn’t need the coffee anymore.

I’ve been experimenting with this now. If there’s something I really need to do, but am putting off for whatever reason, instead of tabling it indefinitely, I “kettle” it.

Don’t want to send an email? I boil the water and find that when it’s ready, I’ve sent 3. Delaying organizing something? By the time it’s ready, a new shelf has gone up, some crusty thing has been banished to the garbage.

I’ve been calling this my “Coffeedoro” method. I could measure out exactly how long it takes our stove to make the water hot, but I’d rather not; my kitchen has never been cleaner, my thoughts and space never more organized. For me, it seems there is something special about having something else in motion that unlocks doing “the hard thing™️.”

Life happens while we wait around for our water to boil. It’s a bit marvelous to find that something that used to annoy the hell out of me has become a pillar in improving my life. Not to mention, that coffee tastes amazing after having “worked” for it.

Just don’t get so sucked in that you burn the house down.