What’s better than the midday nap with a sombrero over your face?
Nada, right?
Why shouldn’t we take a siesta? I mean, Churchill used to catch some Z’s mid biz-day.
He worked from bed in the morning, his study at night, and spent QT with the fam in the middle of the day (during which he enjoyed three course dining before throwing up his signature peace sign at being awake till evening when he returned to aforementioned study).But a catnap – or gorging at lunchtime for that matter – isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. (Plus, I’m led to believe Mr. C. didn’t have the best health – but that may’ve been cuzza some of his other bad habits.)
So… could we improve on the idea of siesta? Especially when we exist in a culture and society that doesn’t make much room for it (if you’re a 9 to 5er)? I mean, for many of us, we couldn’t nap even if we had a full lunch hour. I dunno about you, but I have trouble forcing myself to sleep on command – especially when I know there’s such little time to allow quality rest. Plus, I tend to think the whole idea of a siesta is to have that extra couple’ve hours for both the meal and the nap. So the American attempt to mimic siesta time goes out the window when your seemingly oh-so-generous sixty minute reprieve from work falls short of sufficient; you can either eat or sleep, but not both. So, if we can’t force-quit our brains, we can’t manifest more time, and we’re unwilling to change our whole careers in order to allow for a siesta block which might make us happier… what can we do?
Mimic sleep, I’d think.
I mean – mimic its positive effects.
It dawned on me recently that many of our society’s most successful (which I define as both supporting yourself on a money and merriment level) folk tend to find that happy medium for their midday break. A compromise with the concept of an REM recess. Some sort of activity that sits between “turning off” onto a pillow versus simply powering through till 5, 6, or 7 P.M. (by filling up your I.V. bag with another venti redeye.)
And what’s that?
Well, studies have shown that the type of brain waves and hormones educed during yoga, meditation, music listening, or sometimes even just a jaunt in nature (any of the plethora of rejuvenating practices that “unplug” us from work or technology mode) are often the same effing waves we get when in deep sleep. They refresh us. Recalibrate us. Put our fragmented thoughts back together. Lower stress. Or, if stress reduction and brain-reframing is your main aim, you might do what some of the other greats do: spend lunch making a new connection or hitting the gym. (Note that none of this list includes the masturbatory mental loops that Youtube videos starring animals provide). So, could this be why successful people are so successful? Not that they power through lunch – but that they spend what little downtime they have reveling in restful awareness or stress reduction of some sort? So they can badass through the rest of the day?
“Companies including Google, The Huffington Post and HubSpot realize the power of naps and go so far as to install napping pods and hammocks in dedicated nap spaces. Just 20 minutes of rest or meditation in the afternoon can recharge you for the rest of the day.”
“But that’s when I play ‘catch up’,” you might be saying.
Well, why not do that in the morning instead? You see, one of the reasons a siesta happens at all in other countries is reportedly because they wake up earlier. When you do that, you can fit more productivity into your day during the A.M. hours and allow room for that afternoon whatever-ness before you cap off the day with a tad more work. And, believe it or not, that’s another thing – other than happiness – that peeps about that siesta life have in common with successful folk. While perusing through a Quora post not long ago, I came across a list that showed how prematurely the Zuckerbergs of the world depart their pillows each sunrise. The latest time I could find? Circa 6 or 7 A.M.. They get up early to get shiz done, and then – you guessed it – spend their lunch doing something that puts their brain train back on a steady track so they can go back to the grind fresh later. The bonus? You don’t need to spend three hours Om’ing or Downward Dogging to get similar benefits… which means you also don’t have to work late into the P.M. like a British PM does after a three course meal.
In sum, if you can squeeze a siesta into your workday, fantastic.
But if that’s too extreme for you, try mimicking rest’s effects the way winners with window offices do.
So that you don’t have to mimic wakefulness later.
