Snooze but don’t lose

Iwoke up specially to write these words. No, it was not at midnight in a panic over a forgotten deadline. It was instead in the mid-afternoon, following an emergency nap with my head on my desk. Emergency naps are my thing. My first workday emergency nap ever was in the loo when I worked at a bank, with my head cushioned on the toilet roll dispenser. Five minutes and I was good to go again. The next – and the first of a desktop trend – was in a newspaper office with my head on my desk, although this snooze was broken early by a colleague rushing over to see if I was alive.

Nowadays, I warn people beforehand and I recommend it heartily to others, too.

This is not laziness. The proven benefits of a short nap – short, please note! – include better moods, memory, alertness, patience and faster reactions, as well as improved creative thinking. Apparently.

Unfortunately, South African labour law lists sleeping on the job as serious misconduct – a final written warning offence – which makes sense if you’re a truck driver or surgeon or knife juggler, I suppose, but not for the rest of us.

The thing is, we are mammals, made to nap: babies know it; old people know it; insomniacs watching the clock in the night, waiting for the red numbers to turn to morning, know it too.

When I was growing up, my mum had a little lie down most every afternoon, recharging before swinging, refreshed, back into action.

The Spanish have even declared afternoon naps mandatory and called them siesta.

There are few jobs that would not benefit if folk stopped to rest when their eyelids became heavy.

Some companies are now coming around to the benefits of “power” naps – presumably what executives take; it’s all about how you market these things.

The trick is to keep it under half an hour. More, and you’ll wake up groggy. Now, I admit one’s desk is not the most comfortable place for a siesta, but that is part of the charm: if I put my nodding head down, I’ll clunk out quickly, and wake up 20 minutes later because my arms have gone numb, or my stapler is jabbing into my temple.

A short snooze like this taken as needed, with the duration constrained by the inevitable discomfort, means I awaken refreshed and ready to go – albeit with QWERTY imprinted on my forehead.