Afternoon Coffee Can Keep Working Long After Bedtime Approaches

A DEV Community piece describes how a late-afternoon coffee can still affect sleep at midnight, even when the drinker feels fine at the time. The author explains that caffeine masks fatigue rather than removing it, and that its effects linger for hours after it is consumed. Research cited in the article notes that caffeine can shorten and fragment sleep, sometimes without the person noticing. The costs tend to show up the following morning, which makes the link easy to miss. The author recommends stopping caffeine roughly eight hours before bed and moving demanding work away from afternoon slumps.