I have just woken up. It’s the middle of the day and I realise that sensible and serious people shouldn’t be snoozing in broad daylight. That said, I am a big believer in a nap when you feel the overwhelming post-lunch tiredness. In fact, napping at any time is good with me.
Years ago when I worked in an office, I remember fighting sleep, trying not to put my head on the desk. But my body was telling me to sleep.
At around about 2pm every day, my brain shuts down and I need to curl up for a snooze. But when I was in the office environment, instead of the quick afternoon nap, I forced myself to drink reservoirs of water to try and stay awake.
The office experience echoed a previous one. The same mid-afternoon sleepiness afflicted me throughout secondary school.
There we were, 35 teenagers of totally different abilities and interests crammed into an oppressively stuffy room. We tried to concentrate as the teacher wrote down things on the blackboard. This we copied into our copybooks and somehow this was supposed to go into our heads.
In the US, a recent Harvard study proved what us nappers already know: taking a nap can make you more productive for the rest of the day. A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34pc and alertness by 100pc. Naps reduce mistakes and accidents.
In Australia, researchers at Flinders University proved that “the five-minute nap produced few benefits in comparison with the no-nap control. The 10-minute nap produced immediate improvements in all outcome measures (including sleep latency, subjective sleepiness, fatigue, vigour, and cognitive performance), with some of these benefits maintained for as long as 155 minutes. The 20-minute nap was associated with improvements emerging 35 minutes after napping and lasting up to 125 minutes after napping. The 30-minute nap produced a period of impaired alertness and performance immediately after napping, indicative of sleep inertia, followed by improvements lasting up to 155 minutes after the nap”.
Despite this scientific evidence and the day-to-day experience of millions of people who feel recharged after a nap, our culture is very much one that regards the nap as a sign of laziness rather than an activity that can boost productivity.
A few months back the excellent ‘Financial Times’ writer Simon Kuper made this precise point – that the person who might snatch 10 minutes kip is regarded in this part of the world as a slacker rather than someone who knows how to re-energise.
We know that a whole array of productive people from Albert Einstein to Churchill and Roosevelt were all afternoon nappers and yet the nap is frowned upon.
The reason I am fixated with the nap today, is because school starts this morning and our house is full of new schoolbooks. After a long summer of hanging out – and yes, napping when they wanted to – the children are about to head into another academic year where they will be expected to cram all sorts of facts into their heads.
This process of stuffing various and, as they would say, random, facts into their heads is what we call teaching. But teaching is something that is done to you and learning is something you do for yourself.
In order to learn, your brain has to be in the right mood to remember things. If you are tired, your brain simply won’t be able to function properly, or at least not at its optimum. Millions of children would find homework much easier if they took a nap before doing it.
A second aspect of learning is how to memorise. This is crucial because so much of our exam system is a giant memory test.
The best way to memorise is not by frantic last-minute cramming but by a constant process of repetition and reminding. Memorising is like a giant fridge door in your head with little notes stuck on it reminding you to do things.
So a little bit every night helps enormously as does paying attention in class.
How often did you daydream in class because you were tired and couldn’t focus? In my case it was every day, lots of times, because all I wanted to do was sleep.
Given that we know now about the recuperative and restorative process of napping in the day and the fact that teenagers need lots of sleep, might it not be a good idea to re-organise the school day to accommodate the nap?
Wouldn’t it be nice to dispel for once the notion that naps are for the lazy and unambitious or for older people with lots of time?
The guy who falls asleep at his desk is ridiculed – I know because I was that worker. When you doze off, you feel guilty. But you shouldn’t, our culture should embrace this.
From schooling to the workplace, our hours are structured in a robotic fashion, placing an inordinate emphasis on presenteeism, on simple measurement and what might be termed head-count management.
For the economy in general, if we are teaching tired children and expecting tired workers to perform, we are doing precisely the opposite of the much-heralded smart-economy. This 19th century assembly line model of school and work is more of a dumb economy.
In order to compete with the rest of the world, we ought to begin by re-organising our day so that we use our brains when they are at their most fit, not when they are most tired.
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I have just woken up
I nap every day and have done for years… even ten minutes is enough to get rid of heavy post lunch nods that could kill an afternoon… There’s always somewhere in/near your office to get them too; just get creative, its worth it…
It is confusing .Had many not been asleep things might have been different eg Cowen and Neary . Perhaps I am dissecting sleep with two different meanings. Maybe others will find more . The English language is faltering badly and not adapting to the key words we really need. My study of primitive man in Ireland showed even though his words were few they were effective and more relevant today .For example he included two words for tax as being Taxation and Cáin and they had different meanings and our Minister does not know it ; They had different words… Read more »
Around 4pm every day for 30 minutes, like clockwork. Then I work until the wee hours.
I find the notion of rearranging the school day amusing, what would the unions say? Strike!!! Disruption pay!!! Inconvenience pay!!! Special nap supervisory pay!!! Strike I say!!!
What about the teachers, we have to keep them happy because one day they will be running this country (into the ground).
I was in trouble with the wife just a few hours ago, having admitted I took a nap while on the job yesterday. She was good natured about it but annoyed none the less. She had 4 children all day so can you blame her? I have been a fan of and used this as a tool to increase my own production since I was about 18. I used to play in a band and even as a teenager and young man I would come home from work, nap, head to a gig or practice. It doesnt affect night sleep… Read more »
I have just spoken to a client from rural Limerick where he tells me that all the young men do is sleep all morning and walk the dogs in the evening .He added that the more sleep they do the more dogs they walk and the more shit they produce along the pathways .
Its a dirty cycle.
20-30 minutes works for me – without fail. For example, when driving, if I ever feel that horrible “nodding off” feeling about to happen, I pull in, set my alarm for 20 minutes, fall asleep and wake up totally refreshed feeling that I could drive for another 10 hours. Interestingly, I do not get the refreshed feeling if I just “take a break” for 20 minutes, go for a walk, read the paper or have a cup of coffee. A 20 minute nap is the only thing that works but it works beautifully every time. I’ve only learned this in… Read more »
Now that I have taken my second nap I would like to share this for this forum’s expert consideration: “Twenty-five years from now, millions of buildings— homes, offices, shopping malls, industrial and technology parks— will have been converted or constructed to serve as both power plants and habitats. The wholesale reconversion of each nation’s commercial and residential building stock into mini power plants over the next three decades will touch off a building boom— creating thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs—with an economic multiplier effect that will impact every other industry.” Rifkin, Jeremy (2011-10-04). The Third Industrial… Read more »
“This process of stuffing various and, as they would say, random, facts into their heads is what we call teaching.” Priceless!
In every job I’ve had, I managed to find a way to steal a quick post-lunch kip. I find I can operate much the better for it, which makes me feel more productive and much less stressed. Off for forty winks right now in fact…
I have a friend who works for Huwaei in China and they have a nap every afternoon for 1 hour. They bring in their own pillows so they can put them on their desk and off they go for a Nap. It is the norm !!!
I have been fond of power snoozes since I worked in Taiwan in 1999.
We would go downstairs for lunch and head back upstairs and put the lights off. Everyone put their heads down and took a 20 minute kip. No talking was allowed.
It is perfectly normal.
I wonder David if your article was prompted by this… http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/21/bank-intern-death-working-hours This for me sums up what is so wrong with this society. What in God’s name was going through this poor man’s mind to be so willing to work 23 hour days and for what…to drive a Ferrari? What emptiness drives such behaviour? This pervasive “normality” we see in the CITY and indeed in a lot of macho led companies has been the lynchpin for society since the beginning of the industrial era and has infected and damaged the structure of education, learning and public discourse. Even the David’s… Read more »
Getting back to why we all come here, to discuss the foibles of our “currencies”, I am more and more coming to the belief that what we call “currencies” today, the Euro and the Dollar for example, will break out into many different types of “currencies” as we enter a new economic age based on quantifiable energy and information. Hydrogen for example does not exist independently on earth, it has to be extracted from composite materials. But once extracted it can be stored and transported in small quantities and used as a flexible energy carrier e.g. in hydrogen fuel cell… Read more »
“A Nap a day keeps the Blues away.” Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. What an utter waste of time they are. After enough years in enough organisations (private, not public) I’m convinced that a national Time & Motion study of a country’s Economy would reveal that 80%/90% of employees are dead wood or more accurately ‘busy fools’. The older I get the more ridiculous the concept becomes when you experience a prolonged bird’s-eye view of the machinations on the ground. To someone starting out I’d say a job/career is a man-made bullshit to acquire man-made bullshit money, that’s all, it’s not a… Read more »
Naps are good, siestas are better.
Winter approaches. I feel the urge to hibernate.
Sleep is that time that allows us to retrieve information from stored files in the basement and then to bring to our consciousness what was in the subconscious .Speed is irrelevant so we must ask the question what is the relevance of the speed of information technology .
What a lovely article! My father used to lie flat out face down in the hall back from the fields after dinner, which was the middle of the day in our house. Happier days them.
A heartening sample of a local initiative in the face of Big Business.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-27/rest-of-world/41496213_1_village-america-movil-afp
I posted this yesterday but it had too many links so was binned as spam. My bad! ” The ancient Greek word schole, which turned into our word for “school”, originally meant “free time”. http://idler.co.uk/ An “ideology of idleness”, a resource for ‘recovering economists’, a useful starting point upon which to build a post Neo-Liberal less-is-more mindset which can bring the planet back from the brink. It’s odd to think that the most productive thing to do is nod off whilst allowing the planet to rewild. Collapse will enable that ‘idleness’. “Presenteeism is a plague on productivity”. But, you know,… Read more »
Apparently 6 out of 10 adults take their laptop, tablet, smartphone to bed. Possibly to do online shopping for melatonin supplements?
People are forgoing a good nights sleep to stay in touch with ‘people around them’. Better to turn off the gadgets and read a book at bedtime. It’s healthier.
In Japan they are sending kids to ‘therapy camps’ where they are encouraged to socialise and take part in activity groups. Internet addiction, lack of sleep, depression and withdrawal are some of the hidden costs of this tech enlightened age
We have all this back to front.
A manufacturing line that you use for 30 mins every day – it is repetitive and satisfying and your brain turns off and the difference is you pay for the privilege and the proceeds of the output go to the community. Who said napping was lazy!!!
When you wake up, you do what you want.
Have a builder friend who has a contract in Canada and is looking for brickies / labourers. He flies out in ten days time and wants top class men. This is a genuine offer. No messing.
“exam system is a giant memory test”
yep, the banksters have taken control of government including the dept of education and have ensured that most people can’t think for themselves, the curriculum has purposely been designed to dumb people down.. so they are easier to control
your students might find this useful in the macroeconomics course. Thanks for informing us that Macroeconomics is about the collective (communist governments love it I’m sure)
Heard you on the radio talking about the naps…. not your area of expertise then. Naps are actually perfectly normal, actually more normal, historically, than what we now do. Spend time sailing offshore on long passages and keeping watch, you don’t get to do 8 hours. You nap. In some cases when sailing solo, for as little as 10 minutes, but if done right you only need to sleep 100 minutes in a 24hr period and you’re good to go. The way it works is your body has biorhythms……. you wouldn’t dare to sleep 8 hours when predators were around… Read more »