Bad Coffee Will Make You Happier.
Bad coffee is the best coffee. Or less mysteriously, the lower you can set the standard for acceptable coffee, the happier you will be.
When you like something, it’s uncommon to volunteer to try the worst version. It’s much more common to try the best version as a binge. With coffee, when you don’t have to be rich to enjoy the best foods once or twice, it’s easy to learn to appreciate the best version and come to it every day, until you buy yourself a homemade water cooler with a coffee grinder and bean weights of the same origin, because everyone which is less like stomach acid passed through the dishwasher.
You start to rely on certain coffee shops; you visit friends and refuse the offered cup. The level of coffee you liked before is now disappointing. You knocked the ladder out from under you. You are no longer backward compatible.
What if you tried downgrading instead? Accustomed to a slightly inferior cup of coffee? Splurge for a cheap McDonald’s, Dunkin ‘or wine cellar? Grab some pre-ground beans? Buy a fifteen dollar coffee maker instead of messing around with a pouver or a French press? Your body still values caffeine. And thanks to advances in technology and infrastructure, this cheap cup of coffee is much better than you remember .
If your first attempt at making cheap coffee fails, that doesn’t mean you don’t like cheap coffee! It just means that you need to try more varieties. Some “bad” coffee is burnt; some are watery; some are sour; some just taste funny. There is a good chance that there is “bad” coffee that you are not uncomfortable with.
If you do your best for the worst, coffee sounds silly, consider trying something new is always a mistake. The first time you tried a certain foreign cuisine and had a bad time, you did not vow to try new dishes. Why did you give this experiment less space?
And when you find bad coffee that suits you, what a payback! If you switch to chain coffee, you have the opportunity to grab a hearty cup of coffee in almost any city. If you ditch home brewing methods, you are saving time. If you ditch the drip latte, you can cut your spending in half.
If these experiments fail completely, they will still renew your appreciation for the coffee you are already drinking. With no long term cost, your regular cup of coffee is now an improvement.
Saving time or money on coffee won’t change your life or give millennials the money to buy a home. But once you’ve downgraded a coffee, you’re ready to downgrade anything. In mass production, cheap beer, cheap clothing, cheap furniture have improved. You can even handle a lousy smartphone . But even if you just give up on the little things – do you really need expensive toilet paper? – you will resist the standard “renewal” model. You will develop willpower.
And instead of living like trash, you’ll find the opposite: the more things you stop caring, the more room you have to spend when you really care. Nobody has good taste in everything, and nobody should strive for it . Because if you are not very rich, you will constantly sag and this will be the saddest life of all. So go ahead and try some bad coffee.