Why office workers should wake up to the power nap
Workers need to put a new demand in for enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations: entitlement to a nap in the afternoon.
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Except you can't call it a nap - that sounds too louche and, well, dozy. The Financial Times suggests "optimising cognitive performance" or giving yourself a "neurological reset". It's corporate drivel, I know, but it's the kind of language HR departments love.
Power nap sounds better if your union negotiator can't say "neurological reset" with a straight face.
Despite the flippant tone, I am actually being serious. I used to nap for 10 minutes at lunchtime and I swear that this 10 minutes at lunchtime was worth an hour at night. I could start work seriously early and get recharged in the middle of the day, all the better to power through those tasks in the afternoon. Power naps are good for productivity.
But don't take my word for it. Take Churchill's. While doing his bit to defeat fascism, he would nap for an hour in the early afternoon, what he called in his memoirs, "the refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces".
Or Bill Clinton's: "On the days when I'm a little short of sleep, I try to work it out so that I can sneak off and just lie down for 15 minutes, a half an hour, and........
