Should Your Employees Take Naps?

I just started my first FT job as the first IT guy. It's the first 9-5 job for me and honestly I feel very sleepy around 1pm. I I've been going to the washroom to take a quick nap. It's a very specific type of nap where at the end, I feel a moment of my body shaking after which point I'm completely awake. I hold my phone loosely such that it drops soon as I have that moment and boom I'm awake, fresh and back at work.

At some point I'll tell my boss and I'm pretty sure he won't have a problem with it. I just don't want to be the guy who started napping in week 1.

We napped at my old DoD contracting gig.

They encouraged us to take a half hour nap if we were feeling sluggish/brain-tired as they knew that half hour of rest would buy a lot more development time than having the developers try to push through the last four or five hours of the day with a groggy brain.

I'm the type that ends up more tired after a nap, so I'd often leave the office if I had a difficult problem and just take a nice half hour walk. I'd usually come back with a fresh mind and a solution to the problem.

Am I the only person who thinks this is a stupid question to ask? Either you are talking about a huge corp where you have employees that you can't trust to be honest about the amount of time they dedicate to the company, or a smaller company where if you can't trust your employees, you hired the wrong ones and just need to let them go. No naps in the former case and sleep whenever the hell you feel like it in the latter.

For those who feel groggy after a "nap" I think there's a misunderstanding.

In this context taking a nap means: closing your eyes, relaxing your brain/whole body, and trying to empty your mind of all the thoughts that are usually racing around in there.

Most often you don't fall asleep in the first 15/20 minutes; and if you do it won't be a deep sleep that makes you feel groggy.

Practical tip: I use a timer App to make sure I know when to "wake up".

When I sleep a bit during the day I wake up feeling more tired than I was before. If I do sleep my productivity goes way down, I do find I'm much more productive when I go play racketball or something like that for a while. Am I the only one like that?

I nap at work, on the floor under my desk. We're in CubeLand. I simply told the intern who sat across from me this summer "If you see me on the floor in the early afternoon, I'm not dead."

I used to get terribly sleepy in the afternoons; sometimes I'd go out to my car and take a 15 minute nap, even in the brutal Texas summer. Then I started taking vitamin D and went on a paleo diet, and now I almost never get tired in the afternoons. Nada. It's a great relief to not always be fighting to stay awake.

What's odd to me is that while napping will improve my energy level if I'm tired, I'm only inconsistently tired.

I would love to figure out what variables contribute to me becoming tired in the afternoon. I'd rather not get tired at all, then take a 20 minute nap to get refreshed.

Encouraged employees and my co-founder to use the futon, and did so myself several times.

There's solid research to show this works - and if you try it, you'll see what a difference it makes. The only reason it's not OK is because of some stupid macho attitude to work and sleep.

If I feel myself dipping then I put on earplugs, cover my eyes and take a nap. I awaken in 20 minutes like clockwork and am good the rest of the day.

I usually get sleepy around 1:45. If I don't get a good night's sleep, then I might have two episodes like this. The nap is the cure.

FWIW Winston Churchill was a great proponent of napping: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/02/opinion/l-churchill-unders...

I'm not sure if there's a direct correlation with age or not, but I noticed that when I hit my 30s, I started getting tired around 3pm. It's like clockwork. 3pm rolls around and my eyelids start feeling heavy.

I don't usually take a nap however, but the few times I did, admittedly, I felt reinvigorated.

But before my 30s and this odd 3pm sleep clock, taking a nap didn't reinvigorate me at all. Instead, I would wake up even more tired than before. Go figure.

I am so much more refreshed and clear-headed after a 20 minute mid-afternoon nap than after drinking any amount of caffeine.

However nap or no, just having a regular schedule and 8 hours of sleep a night makes either remedy less necessary.

Absolutely! Do you have a happy, productive workplace, or are you running a sweatshop? It's all part of the equation. Who naps, how often do they nap, when do they nap, all these things are signals that tell you what's going on in your team. In Europe they have the phrase "soup coma". It's what happens after lunch when the blood sugar level rises and the insulin kicks in and shuts off the brain. Expect it, and work with it, as the company in that article did.

I worked as an intern over the summer at a small startup and had an hour long lunch break. While the other interns would eat out and be gone for an entire time, I would eat the lunch I brought and take a 30-40 minute nap each day. I slept at my desk, right in front of my boss.

I was away from work for an hour, like everyone else, only I would be much more productive after the lunch hour. My boss was amused by my behavior.

A nap after lunch seems to be common in Chinese companies. In both big consultancies, and small entrepreneurial companies, i have seem people put their head down and take a brief nap at their desk. I have read that some companies have a formal policy encouraging this, but it seems widespread anyway.

I don't know about you guys, but I have been napping at work before it was cool!

I wish i knew how to take a 30 minute nap! I just can't seem to, so i end up having to power up on caffeine.... not the same

The suit is back!

Yes.

I don't care if my employees take naps, just get shit done.