Napping – the productivity hack that goes against the grain
Open any website like LifeHacker, Inc.com and the like and you’ll read about how to set up your working day up to be more productive. Ignore all that and try this, nap.
Napping is like a productivity hack on steroids. It’s counter-intuitive, I know. It’s like a McDonald’s salad – goes against logical thinking.
But take 20 minutes out of your day to switch off, do nothing, and rest your brain and watch your productivity levels soar.
You’re not weak for napping every day. The ‘Lunch is for wimps’ 90s-era personality types need to update their thinking. Stopping work for a snooze in the middle of the working day might be anathema but these people. But nappers are ahead of the game.
I love napping. Ten to twenty minutes a day is all I need. This is quite enough rest for my body and brain. The difference in mental awareness after this short period of letting my mind relax is quite astounding. Anxiety levels drop, and an increase in positive thoughts is clearly evident after napping for a short stretches.
Napping is like a reboot of the mind. For technical people, it’s like flushing the cache of the brain. A complete restart of the system and clearing of clutter.
Napping v Dreaming
Apparently, napping during the day leads to a higher frequency of dreams. This has to do with the Non-REM and REM sleep cycles. But I’m more interested in the kind of relaxed stream of consciousness that my mind enters when my body relaxes and I lie down for a nap.
Daydreaming is an essential tool for the creative mind. Daydreaming brings ideas. Daydreaming refreshes the mind and lets non-work related thoughts enter. And sleep helps us process experiences and is a type of coping mechanism for the stresses of life.
Meditation is good. Napping is better. Napping helps the mind and muscles relax.
The writer Neil Gaiman said that the best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored. What he means is that if we remove all distractions, and the incessant desire to be always productive, and we let our minds wander we will be rewarded with new thoughts and ideas.
We are so preoccupied with productivity and performance that we multi-task constantly and spend every non-working second on our mobile phones. Boredom is almost seen as the enemy.
This is
Meditation is good. Napping is better. Napping helps the mind and muscles relax.
I find I can daydream sitting and even walking around but for the ultimate mind massage, I try to lie down. I give in to gravity and let the body relax.
This, in turn, is a signal to the mind to stop worrying about that work-related problem.
Napping and Work
Forward-Thinking companies actively encourage napping. They know it’s good for the business. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of these companies.
In times past, the act of letting your employees sleep ‘on the job’ would have raised some eyebrows, to say the least. More like outrage by the unenlightened.
I’ve worked for many companies that did not have a rest area, a place to nap, or a provision for complete rest during the day. In fact, all of my traditional jobs were like this. Rest areas are usually filled with TVs, junk food dispensers, magazines and music. As a result of not being able to recharge my batteries, I’ve spent countless afternoons in an unproductive stupor, disengaged completely from my work, all the while knowing that a mere ten minutes nap would have made all the difference.
If you work from home, you've likely napped without any prior intention. And I might be preaching to the choir here. It felt good, right? If you work in a traditional environment but have nowhere to lie down try finding a park bench at lunch-time (try to be safe). A beach, a spa, or even the back seat of a car would be suitable as long as you can get up to twenty minutes of undisturbed sleep.
Don’t let the nap time slip past thirty minutes or you might feel more groggy than you did beforehand. Try it and see. I can’t imagine there’s anyone that would not benefit from napping. It’s the ultimate productivity tool.
Apps for Napping
If you live or work in a busy environment or need some help with napping, a couple of apps might help. Brain.fm is marketed as “music for your brain”. The app (which also runs in your browser) fills your ears with what’s called bimodal tones. The company uses A.I. To take human compositions and extend them over long timescales.
The music is designed to have “designed to have effects on neurophysiology”. I suggest you try it out. It doesn’t work for everyone but I can get some serious work done and some hard-core relaxing time in with Brain.Fm.
If you’re the kind of person that needs background noise to relax, try Coffivity or Noisli. The former is more geared towards creating a café environment with a gentle murmuring and chatting in the background. This can create a very relaxing ambience for some people.
Noisli is a white noise generator designed to improve focus or drown out background noise. Great for times when you need to relax or nap in a noisy location. Stick some noise-cancelling headphones on, plug in Noisli and away you go to the land of Nod.
Leave a Reply