New to the Coffee Break? Start here.
A short weekly break: It's not just for coffee drinkers – tea lovers are welcome too!
The Coffee Break Newsletter is your midweek pause—filled with book recommendations, book-inspired reflections, and interviews with talented writers to help you rethink life, work, and everything in between.
To keep things interesting throughout the month, here’s what’s included:
Week 1: Book-inspired essays
Week 2: What to Read—Discover books you'll truly enjoy.
Week 3: Behind the Substack series—Interviews with fellow Substack writers & their stories
Week 4: A Life in Drafts—my long-form attempt to report on how writers do what they do, where they get inspiration from, what books they recommend, what their routines are, and strategies for dealing with overwork and rejection. This is part of a 12-chapter challenge I signed up for this year.
You can catch up on all the previous posts in the archive.
📅 Coffee Break Newsletter is published every Wednesday at 11:00 GMT.
Why join?
📚We're book nerds. We raid non-fiction books, steal their best ideas, and experiment with them in real life. All while dreaming of becoming writers and maintaining optimal caffeine levels, obviously.
About Me
I work as a manager, but I don’t always feel super motivated during my 40-hour work weeks. Taking a coffee break is my way of escaping the daily chaos. It gives me the opportunity to pause, reflect, rethink, and, most importantly, read and learn something new.
I tend to overthink everything and am genuinely curious about why we do what we do.
While I may not know much, I do know I love coffee and books. I love coffee—any type—and I enjoy reading anything from the non-fiction genre.
During the toughest moments of my life, I have always turned to books for answers, and I continue to do so today.
I started "Coffee Break" while enjoying a caramel macchiato at a Starbucks in July 2023, which explains the name.
It's an invitation to stop, think, and maybe drink coffee that costs too much while we figure out what matters and explore some interesting ideas that could really change the way we see things.
What others say about the Coffee Break:
I've also been trying to make rent from making words so, this is super inspiring to me, and I cannot wait to continue reading! I really appreciate the diverse array of things that you are doing, and I look forward to hopefully connecting more!
Been meaning to subscribe for a few weeks now. This post re-confirmed why. Cheers on the publication Jana! I'll be seeing you in the comments...