I didn’t get enough sleep one night recently. I realize that’s scarcely a big confession, but it’s a rare event for me. Because I’m acutely aware of how critical sleep is to my mood, focus, creativity and even my motivation, I’m usually vigilant about getting the sleep I require to wake up fully rested.
On this occasion, I felt fine through a series of morning meetings. By midday, however, I noticed my energy dropping and my mind slowing down. I had a challenging piece of work left, but I couldn’t imagine taking it on. Instead, I decided to take a nap in the lounge chair I have in my office just for that purpose.
I gave myself 20 minutes and was asleep for probably 15 of them. When I awoke, I felt refreshed. I had no trouble throwing myself into the work I’d earlier dreaded.
I understand, of course, that a vast percentage of employers don’t sanction naps. If your company is one of them, show your boss some of the statistics that follow.
No single behavior has more power to influence overall well-being and productivity, I’ve come to believe, than additional sleep, assuming you don’t currently get enough. For all but the tiniest minority - perhaps 2 or 3 percent - “enough†means seven to eight hours. Almost no one can sleep fewer than five hours and feel fully rested, but we don’t necessarily recognize that limitation. Many among us are so chronically sleep deprived that we’ve lost the connection to what it feels like to be fully rested - and how much more that would make possible in our lives.
But a growing body of research suggests that even short naps can be a powerful and highly efficient way to temporarily compensate for an inadequate night’s sleep, specifically in the hours following the nap. The exception is among those who are already severely sleep deprived.
In one study, subjects who had slept five to six the previous night were told to take naps of five, 10, 20 and 30 minutes. The five-minute nap didn’t have much impact. But the subjects who took 10-, 20- and 30-minute naps consistently improved their performance on cognitive tests of memory and vigilance conducted in the subsequent two and a half hours.
Subjects who took 20- and 30-minute naps experienced some grogginess upon waking - a phenomenon known as sleep inertia. But those who took 10-minute naps awoke fully alert, as I did from mine, and experienced immediate performance improvements.
No two people are exactly alike, of course, and the challenge is to find a balance between a nap time that generates the greatest restoration and one that requires a long return to full alertness.
Sara Mednick has done some of the most compelling research about the power of naps. She has found, as other researchers have, that longer naps may induce more sleep inertia, but they also have more impact on learning. For example, in one experiment, those who took a 60- to 90-minute nap experienced just as much improvement afterward on a memory task as did those who took the test after eight hours of sleep. One lesson: Mix naps with studying when you’re trying to learn something new.
The best naps are those that last 90 minutes, in part because it’s during the final REM stage of sleep that we embed the most complex learning, as well as build perceptual skills. In practical terms, these long naps are likely to be possible only on weekends, when they can also make up sleep debt.
But what if you simply can’t fall asleep any time but in the late evening? The simple answer is that it pays to take time to just rest quietly. Focus on simple meditation - counting your breaths in and out, or breathing in to a count of three and out to a count of six. Your brain will slow down, your body will relax, and you will experience some restoration and even better memory consolidation. Over time, you may well begin to fall asleep.
In a world of rising demand, rest should no longer be demonized, but celebrated for its intimate connection to sustainable high performance.
Tony Schwartz is the chief executive of the Energy Project and the author, most recently, of “Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Live.†Twitter: @tonyschwartz
