What would a normal day be for an adult? Getting up in the morning, reading a newspaper with coffee mug in hand, getting ready and off to work and back. Is that all? Am I missing something here? Let us rewind and take a closer look – shall we? Getting up in the morning, get the coffee pot going, pack lunch for kids (and for yourself if you wish), get them ready, drop them off to school and scurry to work, hoping that your boss does not catch you walking-in late. You can add a twist to this situation when you don’t have a good night’s sleep the previous night. How? You would be crabby and grouchy, tired and exhausted the whole day carrying on with your chore. You perform poorly at work and you are stressed pretty much the whole day.
In association to what I mentioned above, studies have been conducted in France to see if people perform better if they sleep at work and alleviate the stress endured. In France, normal work week is 35 hours of work compared to U.S. where everyone works 40 hours a week. With 35 hours of work week and generous vacation they get, working class complain about not getting enough sleep and hence poor performance at work. So the health minister is thinking about proposing nap time at work during the day. If this happens, I am sure the productivity goes up but they will start complaining about who took longer nap than the other.
Let us see how this idea will pan out. People at work will be missing in action during the work day to take their naps just as they will be missing during their coffee or smoking breaks. Just as they bring their favorite coffee mugs to work, we would see people bringing their own pillows and throws to make them feel cozy while napping. Every office will have a nap room in addition to kitchen and smoking areas. I can understand the concept of having naps in offices when you are working on a night shift. You tend to be sleepy and you take that occasional nap for 15-20 minutes to freshen you up and you continue your work in the silent night. But to take a nap during the day is pushing the limits. We are stooping ourselves to the level of pre-schoolers with all this napping idea.
Why do I remember the Polyphasic sleeping habit that Kramer followed? Sleep 20-30 minutes every four hours to keep yourself awake for a long time. Similarly, with this napping idea at work, you work for 3 hours and take a nap for 30 minutes along with your hour of lunch-break, running-errands break, smoke-break and coffee-break. As it is in the corporate world, no one puts in 8 hours of actual work every day (except for those really hard working employees such as myself!). Let us say you are in the middle of a meeting and it is time for your nap. Tell your boss that and I am waiting right here to know the results with my all-time favorite coffee mug to boost me to work harder and be productive.
1 comment:
For people who are narcoleptic this would be a wonderful idea but for the rest of us who have a difficult time falling asleep even at night, it can be a burden. We already lose productivity with people going out for a smoke, grabbing a cup of coffee and all sorts of things, if we were to implement nap time then I think you're right, productivity would go way down! Well written arguement!
Post a Comment