July 07, 2006
Power Nap Can Prevent Burnout
According to this article, a power nap can prevent burnout. If you are feeling overwhelmed, maybe you should try a power nap.
Evidence is mounting that sleep — even a nap — appears to enhance information processing and learning. New experiments by NIMH grantee Alan Hobson, M.D., Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., and colleagues at Harvard University show that a midday snooze reverses information overload and that a 20 percent overnight improvement in learning a motor skill is largely traceable to a late stage of sleep that some early risers might be missing. Overall, their studies suggest that the brain uses a night's sleep to consolidate the memories of habits, actions and skills learned during the day.
NIH News Release--"Power Nap" Prevents Burnout; Morning Sleep Perfects a Skill--07/02/2002
Japan Sees the value of the Power Nap
Even Japan is starting to power nap. Students are now encouraged to power nap at school according to this article. For workers, there are nap salons, where you can rent a bed for a power nap. Now that's cool. I wish there was a nap salon in my city.
For high school students everywhere, the classroom desk is often a place to catch a few winks of sleep. But instead of receiving a scolding, dozing teenagers at Meizen High School in Fukuoka, Japan, are more likely these days to find their teachers dimming the lights, putting on classical music and joining their students for a power nap.
In a nation known for its tireless diligence, the students have joined a repose revolution that has investment bankers and bureaucrats sharing lunchtime with the sandman. Meizen High, in this progressive southern metropolitan area of 5 million, last year became the first school in Japan to promote mental alertness by officially encouraging all students to take 15-minute naps in their classrooms after lunch.......
In the past two years, nap salons, as they're known, have popped up in Japan's major cities. One such salon in central Tokyo, Napia, boasts some 1,500 members. Fatigued office workers can take a brief lunchtime nap on a daybed there for the equivalent of about $4.50....
