Step one to making the most of anything is to understand how it works, and that’s what this video is for. In a nutshell, caffeine can give you a mental boost and a buzz to make you more alert, but its effects will vary by person. What also matters is how and when you take your caffeine.

It should go without saying, but caffeine is indeed a drug—and an addictive one—so no matter how many benefits we read about, we’d all be smart to know its drawbacks as well when deciding how much of it we want to use.

Yes, caffeine is a performance-enhancing drug. It’s just a cheap, legal, and widely accessible one. Researchers have found that caffeine improves athletic performance, so drinking coffee or taking caffeine pills can indeed help you on the day of a big race. And even for non-athletes, a cup of coffee before exercising can help motivate you to stay the course and go further during your workouts.

It seems counterintuitive—drinking caffeine before going to sleep—but for naps, it’s actually helpful. You can think of caffeine as a multi-purpose tool here: In addition to making you alert when you first wake up, it can also help your nap be more effective if you time it right. It’s called a caffeine nap, in which you drink a cup of coffee before a short afternoon nap and get all the brain-boosting benefits of a nap while being energized when you wake up about 20 minutes later when the caffeine kicks in.

Many people avoid coffee or tea past the afternoon for fear they’ll be up all night, and that’s generally good advice: Caffeine can mess with your body’s natural sleep rhythms and levels of alertness. But it’s also possible that this mostly affects morning people rather than night owls. As with any drug, know what works for you personally.

Let’s say you’re only interested in coffee, tea, energy drinks, or soda for the alertness factor. (I know a couple of ER doctors who live on Mountain Dew.) But what’s the most cost-effective way to get that caffeine kick? It’s probably not a drink. And you might be surprised that some types and brands of tea pack more caffeine per ounce than certain types of coffee.

The caffeine in tea tends to affect us differently than the caffeine in coffee: It helps us get alert, but without the caffeine crash. That said, if you’re looking to reduce the amount of caffeine you take in, you can cut about 80% of it from tea with a brief steep of the tea bag, dumping that brew, and then re-steeping the same tea leaves. Conversely, if you want more caffeine from your cuppa, brew it for less time.

You might think stronger-tasting coffee drinks like espresso pack the most caffeine, but it’s actually not true. The degree of roast also doesn’t really matter when it comes to amount of caffeine either. What does matter, then? Drinking Arabica versus Robusta, for example, as Robusta has twice the caffeine content. Know which beans you’re buying and their caffeine content so you can choose your brews accordingly.

The best time to drink your first cup of coffee is not when you wake up. Scientifically, the most effective time to have a cup of coffee is between 9:30 am and 11:30 am, which is when we start to feel that first lull of the day, not earlier in the morning when we tend to feel most refreshed.

If you struggle with caffeine withdrawal and want to cut back on your addiction—while still enjoying your daily coffee—there are several things you can try. You could switch to half-caf or tea, for example, but whatever you do, you should cut back slowly. On the other hand, if you find you’re not getting as much of that feel-good buzz from caffeinated drinks anymore, try cycling your caffeine intake by briefly not drinking any caffeine for, say, a month, to reset your sensitivity.

Finally, if you want the optimal mental boost from your caffeinated drink, try small or moderate doses throughout the day. For a frequent coffee drinker, that amounts to about 20 to 200mg of caffeine per hour, or one cup of coffee per hour. There you go: An excuse to make a whole pot of coffee for yourself (just don’t drink it all at once).

This story was originally published in January 2016 and was updated on April 29, 2021 as a slideshow with new photos and information.