Super siesta

Gavin Newsham on the joys – and benefits – of napping

If you’re usually office-bound, Christmas is the perfect time to take advantage of the pleasures of a daytime nap. For those like me, who work from home, taking a nap whenever you like is one of the few things that makes home working worthwhile, alongside the short commute, relaxed dress code and colleagues not sidling up to your desk and asking if they can “borrow you for a minute?”. And let me tell you, I’m very, very good at napping.

For me, a daytime nap is one of the most civilised distractions ever invented. It’s what made renowned afternoon dozers like Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein the geniuses they were. It’s why sports legends like Muhammad Ali and Usain Bolt rewrote the record books. And why Benjamin Franklin and JFK became political visionaries. And probably why Donald “No naps for Trump! I don’t nap!” Trump didn’t.

Me? I look to another famous day sleeper for my inspiration, Sir Winston Churchill. A vehement proponent of the afternoon nap, Churchill believed that it wasn’t nature’s design for mankind to work all day “without the refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces”.

I’m not saying we wouldn’t have won the Second World War if Churchill hadn’t been a napper but you have to wonder, not least because Adolf Hitler was the polar opposite, a night owl fond of late-night cake binges and indecently long lie-ins.

Science is certainly on Churchill’s side. William Dement, founder of Stanford University’s Sleep Research Centre and perhaps the world’s leading authority on sleep, argues that we have merely learnt to limit our sleep to one period of the day, despite the overwhelming majority of mammals sleeping in short spells instead.

It’s his belief that humans were designed to sleep in the middle of the day, primarily as a way to get them out of the midday sun, and that the very fact we still all tire in the afternoon, especially as we hit middle age, shows us that we’re actually just fighting a natural instinct not to snooze, armed only with strong coffee and snacks.

And yet the daytime nap is still frowned upon, especially in the workplace. In the United States in November, there was a crackdown on federal employees who had taken to dozing at work, with the General Services Administration issuing a Federal Notice stipulating that no employee would be permitted to sleep in a government building “except when such activity is expressly authorised by an agency official”. Good luck with that request.

Some companies are ahead of the curve. Google and Nasa have installed “Energypods” at some of their offices so staff can slope off and sleep. At Ben & Jerry’s, meanwhile, they’ve introduced “Nap Rooms” for their staff, the only stipulations being that there’s a 20-minute time limit and you have to remove your shoes when you use them. Cynics might argue it’s just a ruse to keep employees at work longer but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Besides, if smokers get three or four cigarette breaks each working day, why shouldn’t someone have a short snooze? After all, we all know what’s better for you.

The benefits of a power nap are myriad, and a short sleep during the day can not only improve your mood and alertness but can also increase creativity and productivity. It goes beyond the workplace, too.

Not only are daytime nappers less likely to be involved in car accidents on the way home from work, but a recent study of 3,500 adults in the journal Heart revealed that those who took at least two naps each week were 48 per cent less likely than nonnappers to suffer serious cardiovascular problems in life.

Another study, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, found that nappers maintained lower blood pressure than those who didn’t hit the hay during the day. But what is the optimum length of a daytime doze? Well, it’s best to think in terms of a short, sharp snooze, not a full-on siesta.

And while Nasa reported that the responsiveness of their pilots and astronauts increased significantly after a 40-minute nap (presumably not mid-flight), the research journal Sleep concluded that even a 10-minute nap could result in considerable improvements in cognitive performance. Any longer than 30 minutes, however, and you’re likely to suffer from sleep inertia, that is to say that groggy feeling you get when you come round from a deeper sleep.

I know the feeling. I might be an Olympic-standard napper now, but stealing a snooze is a skill I’ve had to learn, an art that needed to be mastered. My tips? You need to avoid the dangerous crick-in-the-neck threat of the armchair and you must always set an alarm. And never, repeat never, actually get under the bed covers or your entire day will disappear in dribble on the pillow. Follow these rules and you’ll soon be napping with confidence, enjoying the sweet bliss of that “blessed oblivion”.