Caught Napping
By Neal Anthwal
Yet again judges, toddlers, Dylan from the Magic Roundabout, my dad and the Spanish are ahead of the curve. An afternoon nap can boost productivity and improve your mood.Sara Mednick, of the Salk Institute in California, has been tirelessly researching the power of naps. I say tirelessly as she has doubtless scheduled nap time in to her working day. Somehow, in between snoozes, she’s managed to carve out a career in researching the power of taking forty winks, as well as writing a self-help book entitled, “Take A Nap! Change Your Life”.
Mednick says that napping can “increase alertness, boost creativity and reduce stress”. Not only that, it can also “improve perception, stamina, motor skills, and accuracy”. Is there nothing that napping cannot do? Will napping keep me looking younger? Check! Help me make better decisions? Check! Aid weight loss and reduce risk of heart attack? Check! Elevate mood? Enhance sex life? Strengthen memory? Check, check and check!
Mednick’s studies show that a decent nap can restore the deterioration in perception and memory caused by tiredness, and that napping can be as good as a night’s sleep in reducing the deterioration of learning perceptual skills.
We should reach for blankies forthwith. Time to decommission the coffee rooms of the nation and convert them into sleeping dorms; especially since Mednick has shown in trials that subjects who have taken 200µg of caffeine performed worse than both a napping group and a placebo group in special and memory skills.
All we need now are comfier workstations: soft desks, padded keyboards, mice that can be inflated into desk pillows and stationery cupboards stocked with duvets. Is a reclining office chair too much to ask for? At the very least, I suggest every worker arms themselves with a copy of Mednick’s paper to brandish at less enlightened line managers who find their drones snoozing on the job.
Image: Susan H
More from Neal on his page.
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More from Neal on his page.
If you liked this, maybe you should try:
- News - Trouble sleeping?
- Spoof - Sleep and ex-girlfriends
- Straight - Sleeping on the job
- News - Spit test for sleepy people
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