It’s Time to Stop Nap-Shaming

Western culture has a very unhealthy attitude towards sleep in general. There is only one socially accepted sleep pattern: Eight hours a night, in one block, starting at between 10pm and 11pm and ending between 6am and 7am. This "early-bird" rhythm is celebrated in to the point of fetishisation and held up as the goal to which all productive adults must aspire. To behave otherwise is to be lazy, slothful, and not putting forward your all.

That cycle works for many people of course, and for them life is easy. The world is modelled after them. But for everyone else it sucks. This covers both napping as this article discusses, but also other "chronotypes" both earlier and later (i.e., "night owls"). For these people they have to either force themselves into the "early bird" cycle (often by strict working hours or social pressure) and suffer for it, or go against it and find either flexible employment or even move to night-shift work if their chronotype is sufficiently late.

> might take up simple tasks during a wakeful period in the middle of the night, between two distinct bouts of sleep.

As I recall, this was more or less debunked.

I've been remote for 12 years, and with the exception of the last year, I was in the habit of napping for an hour a day in the middle of the day, every day. Kids has thrown a wrench into the works on the weekends, but I've just started to get back to that and feel at my best once again. YMMV

Yea... so I used to do the whole nap thing too. I still always felt groggy and had a head fog. For the last 2 years I decided to discipline myself to get roughly 8 hours of sleep every night (a sleep mask to block out excess light has been a God send). Also no caffeine after 5pm and only 2 cups of coffee max per day. Oh and less carb, more protein diet with daily exercise. In essence, I quit giving myself excuses for being a lazy whinner. Other than the Thanksgiving food coma, I dont take naps because, and sit down for this revelation, I dont need to since I get a proper amount of rest nearly every single night. Look, sometimes life throws shit in your face and a nap is a great stop gap remedy to pull you through. Nothing wrong with getting stitches when you get a cut. Theres a problem when you keep cutting yourself because you jump into a pool of knives everyday. It's just weird that we are fetishizing piss poor health habits and then glorifying the bandaid fixes instead of simply addressing the main problem. But hey, that's the great evil self-responsibility everyone wants to avoid.

Nap-Shaming...what a ridiculous word, must be one of those US problems no one else has.

Up next: Pacifiers help 45% of stressed adults to cope anxiety, says study.

The New York Times is on it.

The reason why some of the largest ever companies in the world have sleep pods at work is because there's a direct relationship between sleep and performance.