How to Take a Nap at Work (and Get Away With It)
Research has shown that sleep improves both cognitive performance and physical brain health , so it’s no surprise that short naps also lead to increased productivity at work. This explains why nearly half of US workers sleep during work hours , and a third admit to literally sleeping on the job.
However, our employers didn’t get the memo , and if you’re caught sleeping on the job, you could find yourself in a sticky situation. If you’re stuck between falling asleep in a meeting or being fired when you’re found slumped under your desk , you need a sleep-at-work strategy. Here’s your guide to sawing logs on the clock (without getting caught).
However, before we get to the strategy, the first rule of sleeping at work is to learn:
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Know yourself. Do you snore? Talk in your sleep? Kicking like a mule and dreaming that you are somehow a mule? You need to know your weaknesses before you engage in a dream battle. You might find the perfect napping spot and ruin it all by snoring like a cartoon dog. Then take steps to mitigate the problem.
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Take a nap. You might think that sleep is a skill that we are all born with. Wrong! There’s a science to napping: Taking a 20-30 minute nap will help you avoid feeling drowsy when you wake up because your brain hasn’t moved into a deeper sleep cycle. If you sleep longer, you’ll have to take a 90-minute nap (or longer) to feel rested rather than like a time traveler not knowing what century you arrived in. The lesson is: Bring your phone to your sleep cave and set an alarm (but set it to Do Not Disturb mode first so you don’t get interrupted).
If you can’t risk setting an alarm, ask a colleague to wake you up, or try a variation of Salvador Dali’s ” sleep with a key ” method, where you doze in a chair while holding something that will make a noise if dropped. As you fall asleep, your muscles will relax and the sound of an object falling will wake you from your sleep state.
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Caffeine hack. If you’re napping because you lose concentration in the afternoon, consider adding caffeine to your nap routine. It sounds counterintuitive, but drinking coffee or another caffeinated beverage immediately before a short nap (20 minutes or less) results in a greater increase in energy . This works because it takes your body about 20 minutes to metabolize caffeine, so you wake up as soon as it hits you.
Now that you have some basic physical knowledge, you just need to figure out where you can take a nap without getting fired.
Sleep strategies at work
If your employer doesn’t want to pay you to sleep (even for half an hour), you need to find a way to doze off without being noticed. The key will not be seen while you are sleeping , so you need to scout out the locations. Depending on the specifics of your work, you have several options:
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Take a nap in your car. If you commute to work every day and might slip away unnoticed, leave a pillow and blanket in the back seat and enjoy a restful night’s sleep. Bonus: Your car will drown out the surrounding noise – it will actually be quite peaceful.
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Unused conference rooms. If your office has conference rooms that aren’t constantly in use, reserve one (or just sneak out) for mystery calls. If the conference room is out of the way, you might be able to just pop in for half an hour. If they’re a little more open, you can try creating a scene: record a real phone call or meeting and play it back along with a video of your typing, so anyone walking by will think you’re in a real meeting. Alternatively, take a chance and put your head down on the table and then pretend to wait for someone who didn’t show up for the meeting.
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Empty offices. Alternatively, unoccupied offices are also a great place to sleep, unless you’re in one of those super modern offices with glass walls everywhere. Just be sure that no one gets close to you.
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Your table. This is the riskiest move you can make, and it won’t work if you don’t have decent privacy. If your desk is out of everyone’s sight, you might be able to sneak under it and take a nap, but if you get caught, you won’t be able to play it off as if you just dozed off, so you better be sure no one is walking around to check on anything.
If you’re going to try the under-the-desk method and you’re in an office with a door, you can set a tamper alert by placing something on the doorknob that will fall when you turn it. This may give you at least a few seconds to come to your senses and imagine yourself lying on the floor searching for or connecting something.