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I think we’re past the point of celebrating the fact that Margaret Thatcher allegedly only slept for 4 hours per night.

I think we know now that the myth of multitasking is exactly that, a myth.

I think we might have realised that almost everything is a Gaussian curve (a bell curve). I think we now understand that our Mums were right when they said “everything in moderation”.

The world has gotten so crazy that we now have high performance experts who study the characteristics of high performing experts. One of the things that you can see which is common to high achievers and high performers is their ability to rest and recover when appropriate.

This is not an excuse to eat a bucket of chicken whilst watching a complete series of Game of Thrones but it is a concept of active recovery to allow yourself to move towards peak performance.

It seems (and I have followed this story for decades) that napping is one of the key fundamentals in the active recovery system.

I was first introduced to the concept of napping by research that was carried out a Loughborough University with Ellen MacArthur. When Ellen MacArthur sailed around the world breaking the world record she would, at times, sleep for only 15 minutes 2 x per day.

This formed a fundamental basis of the napping research which was published by Loughborough University which describes two sleep cycles per day (middle of the day and middle of the night) which, if done properly, meant that 15 minutes of sleep could be the equivalent of three hours at night.

The prescription was then given for napping between 12-2pm for no more than 15 minutes to allow you to significantly increase sleep time for minimum investment.

I was fascinated to see that Simon Sinek returns to this in his latest book and the extended research that has happened in this area since I first discovered it.

Much work has been done on the benefits of napping but first you have to overcome the shame.

Sleeping at lunch time for some people seems like a weakness, but as part of the active recovery process and avoidance of the ‘afternoon dip’ it’s essential to improve performance.

More benefits come from napping the more you do it and the more you do it the better you get at it and the faster you fall asleep.

I don’t sleep every day in the middle of the day. I wish I could, but my life is not as simple as that. However, I do have a couch in my office, a pillow and a Do Not Disturb sign on my door. When anyone comes to my office in the middle of the day with the Do Not Disturb sign on they know it’s likely that I am asleep.

One of the other interesting aspects to do with this is if you’re trying to improve your performance in the afternoon (and there is a definite scientific basis for the afternoon) you should drink coffee immediately before you nap.

It takes 25 minutes for caffeine to enter the system fully and it means that when you wake up from your nap the coffee is effected in your performance through the rest of the afternoon.

Improving performance in the afternoon is one thing, but there is also significant evidence to suggest that long term napping is healthy, it reduces mortality from a significant number of diseases and increases the happiness of people who undertake it.

Dental practices are easy places to do this because dental practices have dental chairs.

When my kids were little and I was up every single night it was standard behaviour for me to sleep on the dental chair for 15 minutes.

Longer than 15 minutes is bad because it produces sleep inertia or a sleep hangover which doesn’t happen in naps of 10-20 minutes.

Naps of less than 5 minutes are ineffective.

This is something you can think about and that might consolidate the fact that you like to sleep at lunchtime, I encourage you to investigate this and also to encourage your team to do the same.

I owe a lot to Ellen MacArthur and the experiences she had from sailing around the world. She discovered a lot about sleep but she also discovered a lot about some things that are far more important. If you were interested and brave enough you may want to watch her TED talk which is here. 

Blog post number: 1647