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(Marie arrived back from Maternity Leave this week after looking after her twin boys for the last few months and this one is for her.)

 When I was a lad it was Thomas the Tank Engine – plastic, blue, red handle with a matching flask.

There were lots of different things went in that flask, sometimes it was soup, sometimes it was a drink and the box was filled with sandwiches (in cling film) and a packet of crisps. It was well organised.

I even had a lunchbox at University - as a joke - but I still bought my lunch in it.

You can tell a lot about someone; the type of person they are and how they live their lives by what they eat at lunchtime.

In Dan Pink’s latest book ‘When’ he argues that lunch is the most important meal of the day.

Historically it’s always been about breakfast time, but in fact lunchtime is key because the afternoon dip is terrible in some industries and catastrophic in others.

Reduction in performance in the afternoon has been measured across many fields but it most starkly disastrous in healthcare where, in some of the studies carried out, non-accidental injuries (NIA’s) increased by 80% in the afternoon.

One of the strategies people are talking about is napping in the middle of the day and the next one is caffeine prior to a nap in the middle of the day.

This is a strategy I have tried to force into my life time and time again and, when I’m at my best, is lodged for many days of the week in my office on the couch.

The concept is known as a ‘Nappuccino’ and the principle is this:

Caffeine as a shot of coffee or even a can of diet coke (some people hate that) and then immediately get your head down for 15 minutes. It takes 25 minutes for the caffeine to take effect and you’ve already had a sleep, which is allegedly worth at least three hours at night.

Once this is done the afternoon is a much easier proposition with much less of a dip and is much less of a problem.

I suspect that in our practice (and we haven’t measured this yet) that more people run late in the afternoon than in the morning and I think the lack of a Nappuccino is probably the reason.

But back to lunchboxes…

If lunch is the most important meal of the day and it helps to reduce the dip then the most productive people eat the best lunches and are the most organised as far as what they put into their body at that time of day.

Look around you at work and match it to the different characters.

The last four to six weeks have been particularly difficult for me for one reason or another (don’t worry, I’m fine but it’s just been rough going) and throughout that time I almost never brought my lunch to work.

Today I wrote a blog about lunchboxes after I’d eaten oatcakes with peanut butter and a lovely salad that I made this morning.

I didn’t manage a nap but I did have caffeine and I’m raring to go.

I didn’t see what Marie bought for her lunch.

(Note from Marie – I had coffee for my lunch! I have 10 month old twins, what can I say?!!)

Blog Post Number: 1680