You can picture the scene, that late afternoon meeting looming on the horizon, filling all participants with a sense of dread. The meeting drifts past in a fug as participants are hit by the dreaded afternoon slump.
It's such a common occurence that even the NHS has come out with various strategies that can be employed to prevent 'the slump', including an afternoon snack (of fruit rather than a chocolate hobnob), drinking water and stretching your legs.
Adding a snooze to the list
New research (pdf) by Dr Matthew Walker from the University of California, Berkeley suggests a nap in the afternoon also boosts brain power. In his experiements those that remained asleep throughout the day got worse at learning as the day progressed, whereas those that had a nap improved their mental abilities as the day went on. In scientific terms this is believed to be because sleep clears the brains short-term memory, thus freeing up space for new information.
Power napping
The idea of the power nap has been around for a while, but I have yet to come across a company that encourages employees to have a snooze for 20 minutes or so in the afternoons. For those that would like to have a go, the ever useful WikiHow has a guide on how you can power nap.
I was quite surprised to see in that Wiki article that 30% of American companies allow employees to sleep at work.
Can you take a power nap at work? As a manager would you be ok for your team to sleep on the job?
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It has to depend on the circumstances. If someone needed to sleep because they had been out the night before then I would be more inclined to send them home with the proviso that next time they were too tired to function in their job because of the night before then they would need to book the day off as leave.
If someone needed a break from a particularly challenging project to refresh their thinking then a short nap or a walk to the nearest cafe for a cup of tea would be just fine. Sometimes I get irritated by the other breaks such as the smoking breaks or bathroom breaks that include long mobile phone chats. However, we expect people to be professional and that should include determining the need for a break
It's interesting isn't it. Science seems pretty supportive of it, yet there is still the overwhelming sense that people have to 'put the hours in', which seems the wrong way round to me. As long as people do the job it shouldn't really matter when they do it. Some people work better in the mornings, some better in the evenings. I don't think a rigid 9-5 should be imposed just because its the norm.
Does having this siesta whilst in a meeting count?