Abstaining from caffeine for one to two days prior to learning, and then ingesting caffeine immediately after the learning session, can enhance memory encoding.

“If you really want to see the maximum performance-enhancing effects of caffeine, you will do either one of two things. You will either abstain from caffeine for a few days or three days prior to ingesting caffeine, or you will use caffeine on an empty stomach.”

“There are even some studies showing that you can abstain from caffeine for just two days, for just 48 hours. And, in particular, if you are a regular user of caffeine, this allows you to, on day three, ingest caffeine at the dose that's appropriate for you and do the physical, or I should mention mental performance task and perform significantly better than those that have been taking caffeine throughout the entire period leading up to the challenge.”

“And here we can look to a really interesting study. The title of which is "Time course of tolerance to the performance effects of caffeine." And what I like about this study is that, while yes, it does say that abstaining from caffeine and then returning to caffeine intake can enhance physical performance in a very specific way, it also says that, if you take caffeine regularly, you can still see the physical performance-enhancing effects of caffeine. Although they are not quite as robust as they would be had you abstained from caffeine.”

“it's very clear that a five-day abstinence from caffeine however painful that might be will increase the performance-enhancing effects of caffeine when you take caffeine on that sixth day.”

“Well, if you're somebody who's a regular user of caffeine, the performance-enhancing effects of caffeine are going to be most dramatic if you take two or three days off from drinking caffeine.”

“So if you decide that you want to try and extract this performance-enhancing effect of caffeine, what I recommend would be to try and abstain from caffeine for a day or two prior. But if you can't, you just continue with your normal caffeine intake. But then when you sit down to study or learn something to not ingest any caffeine as you do that but then afterward to ingest caffeine.”

“In which case, you might want to do five days of abstinence as we talked about before. And then on day six is the day that you ingest caffeine and do the physical task.”

“If you want to get the maximum physical performance-enhancing effects of caffeine, you abstain from caffeine for 20 days. Then on day 21, when you're going to do the physical thing, the task, you ingest caffeine about 30 minutes to an hour before you do that physical challenge.”

“Well, in that case, abstaining from caffeine for five days will greatly exacerbate the pro-performance effects of caffeine when you take it on that sixth day, although admittedly, those five days are likely to be pretty painful if you're a regular caffeine user.”

“So if you decide that you want to try and extract this performance-enhancing effect of caffeine, what I recommend would be to try and abstain from caffeine for a day or two prior. But if you can't, you just continue with your normal caffeine intake.”

“turns out that if your regular caffeine user you can still derive the cognitive enhancing and focus enhancing effects of caffeine if you ingest caffeine every day but if you were to take two days off from caffeine completely and right now I hear all the caffeine addicts out there just kind of cringing at the idea and then take caffeine in the 30 minutes prior to some especially important event physical or mental event where you really need to focus and be able to sustain that Focus for long periods of time it would have an even greater effect than it normally would but since most people are taking caffeine in a kind of ongoing regular way I just want to emphasize that it still has Pro cognitive and pro-focus effects even if it's taken every day or even multiple times per day”

“Now, for people that want to get more of a true cognitive-enhancing and performance-enhancing effect from caffeine, again, you're going to have to abstain from caffeine for about four days.”

“If you use caffeine daily, periodically taking short breaks, anywhere between 2 to 7 days, can actually reensitize you to caffeine, making caffeine more effective when you return to it.”