The empirical data derive from a study carried out in Portugal on the use of medicines and food supplements for performance management, following a mixed methods approach. The use of coffee appears as a legitimate practice in everyday working routines, due to its socializing markers, whereas additional benefits are attributed to the pharmacological properties of caffeine, given the perceived improvement in performance. For this purpose, three intertwined dimensions are explored: (1) the nature of these professionals’ work and the pressures for certain forms and levels of performance (2) sleep problems as both a result of those work characteristics and a constraint on performance and (3) the role of coffee in managing professional imperatives. Focusing on the daily work of three professional groups (nurses, police officers, and journalists), we analyze the social expression of coffee and how it is mobilized to deal with sleep problems, fatigue, concentration, or stress. This paper presents a sociological approach to coffee consumption as a performance management strategy in work contexts, particularly in professions with intense work rhythms and highly responsive demands. The analysis demonstrates how social context impacts not only on how we come to think about sleep and understand it, but also how we manage or self-regulate our sleeping patterns. Collectively, respondents reported using a wide range of strategies, techniques, technologies and practices to encourage, overcome or delay sleep(iness) and boost, promote or enhance wakefulness/alertness at socially desirable times. While shift workers described their efforts to fit in an adequate amount of sleep per 24-hour period, for students, the adoption of a flexible sleep routine was thought to be favourable for maintaining a work-social life balance. However, sleep time is often cut back on in favour of work demands and social activities.
The data show that, typically, sleep is valued and considered to be important for health, general wellbeing, appearance and physical and cognitive functioning. It draws on data, collected in the UK from 25 semi-structured interviews, to discuss the complex ways in which working patterns and social activities impact upon experiences and expectations of sleep in our wired awake world. This article contributes to literature on the sociology of sleep by exploring the sleeping practices and subjective sleep experiences of two social groups: shift workers and students.
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