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Fitness & Health

07th Jul 2017

Science says your boss should be letting you power-nap on the job

Try to keep your snoring at the desk to a minimum, though.

Rory Cashin

If you wanna work hard, then you gotta be able to play sleep hard.

We’re beginning to think more and more than pre-school teachers had the right idea, with the enforced mid-day nap sessions that would then re-invigorate everyone for the second part of the day of drawing and Lego and stuff.

Those pre-schoolers are now grown-ups and part of the full-time work-force, and nobody loves a nap in the middle of the day more than someone who is working 39 or more hours per week.

With that in mind, it brings us great joy to tell you that scientists agree with us, as a recent study published by Nature Neuroscience tells us that we’ve already reached our peak performance within the first hour of arriving at work, and that just deteriorates as the day goes on.

So far, so duh.

However, the study shows that those who took a 30-minute power-nap during their work-day put a stop to that productivity drop, and those who managed to somehow squeeze in a 60-minute nap into their shift had an actual uptick in performance afterwards.

Anything over an hour will cause a BIG collapse in that productivity all over again though, as anything over 60 minutes will cause your brain to fall into the heavy, REM-type sleep that will make you all groggy when you wake up from it.

But even if you do somehow manage to collectively convince your management that being allowed to sleep on the job is actually a good thing, what are they gonna do, build a new nap room for all the staff to use?

Well, we’ve got you covered (pun alert!) there too, because some absolute genius and perhaps Nobel Prize Winner (we assume) has already invented a convertible napping desk.

Clip via B60

Reckon you could fall asleep in the middle of your office?

Definitely worth a shot, right?