Is sleeping on the job a good thing?

This week, it has been in the news all over, the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science research by Matthew Walker on why sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of cancer, heart attack and Alzheimers has been picked up by the Guardian, Metro, News Medical, Independent online and diabetes.co.uk. 

Sleeping on the job is a good thing because short naps certainly work better than endless cups of caffeine. Some innovative companies, like Google and Apple, started allowing employees to take naps on the job, and science proves that that's probably a really great idea. Why? This Study, and this one, this one and this one point out that power naps, short 15 to 20  minute naps, improve mental efficiency and productivity, which is a small investment in time for such a big payoff in company morale and production.

Yay to naps! I've been trying to nap on days when I am sleep deprived and think that a 20 minute or 40 minute nap works best during a working day - I wake up feeling refreshed and my brain functions a lot better than if I had drank cappuccino after cappuccino... 


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Image by:

nomao saeki