The lost art of the nap

  Sun Kissed Morning 
  Originally uploaded by * Honest *.

Here's one of the often unforseen side-effects of being optimally productive: the need for daily naps.

If you're waking up early, exercising, and working with laser beam focused attention during your workday, you'll be ready for at least a few honk-shus well before bedtime.

I understand that sleeping while at work is frowned upon in mainstream society, but I'd like to challenge the bad rap that workday napping has taken on.

I found this on 43Folders (this quote is actually from an article at TheStar.com, but the link is broke, so I'll just quote from Merlin's post):

A good nap is one of life’s great pleasures, and the ability to nap is the sign of a well-balanced life. When we nap we snatch back control of our day from a mechanized, clock-driven society. We set aside the urgency imposed on us by the external world and get in touch with an internal rhythm that is millions of years old.

A nap distils the sweetness of a whole night’s sleep down to a few minutes. Ideally, it starts on a soft bed, in a dark room, with a warm blanket. At first your mind lingers on what you’ve done that day, and what you still need to do. Then your thoughts start to unravel a little, become less coherent, more dreamlike. You feel your breathing deepen, your body relax. You lose yourself; you’re asleep. After a few minutes you gradually become aware again of the bed, the room. You open your eyes, gather your thoughts, throw off the blankets. You’re a new person.

Beautifully said! As you might have guessed, I am a consummate napper. I wake up very early (5-5:30am), then exercise hard, then eat breakfast, then settle in to work around 8am or so for an intense morning work session.

By 2pm or so, after lunch, I am ready to conk out.

Just about every afternoon, I take a short nap of about 30 minutes to an hour.

When I wake up, I'm bursting with energy again, ready to create, write and tackle whatever work I have left over from the morning.

If you work from home, then it's absolutely no problem to mosey off to bed for a quick nap in the middle of the day. This is one of the many perks of owning your own biz and working your own hours!

If you work in a traditional office, however, you might be able to pull this off by closing your office door at lunch time (if you have an office) or perhaps taking a quick snooze in your car.

For those of us with extremist personalities who like to turn perfectly simple activities into full-blown space age extravaganzas, these two are for you (via):

Napmosphere" is meant to be like a cocoon - providing a place of shelter, transformation and re-incarnation. the name as well as the object itself came into being as a synthesis of expression: "NAP"+"ATMOSPHERE"+"SPHERE". The intention is to take the sleeping individual out of their working environment, into a completely different content surrounding, bringing them into the second half of their work day fully relaxed.

and this beauty...

"napshell" is the sleeping capsule as design object. It's powerful shape acts as eyecatcher that attracts Attention to itself. This leads to a playful engagement with the in Germany still unknown topic of Power-Napping.

This photo of the "napshell" appears to have 2 conked out office workers inside, so it's obviously big enough for sharing.

Imagine how much you closer you would feel to the other members of your office team if you could drop your professional demeanor for 20-30 minutes a day, and just climb on into the napshell for a quick shared snooze.

Comments

[Lisa]

I laughed aloud at the idea of napping with a co-worker. I couldn't possibly! In fact, I couldn't sleep, even alone, in full view of co-workers. But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see the napshell come into vogue. Napping is a great way to renew your energy midday.

[Sharon]

I know Lisa! The open sided-ness of it is not appealing to me. I like to feel like I'm in a cocoon. The folks who designed this napping center were obviously not thinking about how weird it would feel to nap in the open with a co-worker!