If you’re looking for an afternoon pick-me-up, the answer is probably a nap, rather than a caramel latte. Sleep researcher Matthew Walker puts this in terms that will be familiar to ProfHacker readers:
“It’s as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you’re not going to receive any more mail. It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder,” Walker said in a release.
Of course, the ProfHacker-endorsed best e-mail practices are fewer e-mail folders, and deleting as much as humanly possible, but Walker’s point remains: if you’re doing lots of brain-work during the day, a nap is a good thing. (Natalie’s one minute-refresh strategy is based on a similar idea.)
Walker’s research is based on the cognitive benefits of a 90-minute nap. Now, you might not have time in your afternoon for that, but researchers at the journal Sleep have good news: “the 10-minute nap was overall the most effective afternoon nap duration” (of 5, 10, 20, and 30 minute naps.) Basically, 5 minutes was too short a span for any real benefits. 10, 20, and 30 minute naps all had lasting benefits for the afternoon, but the 20 and 30 minute lengths were also associated with “sleep inertia,” where it took a half-hour or so to wake up.
This probably doesn’t include falling-asleep time. Like all parents of young children, I can fall asleep on-demand, at any hour, no matter how much caffeine I’ve had, which I think means that I could sneak in a nap between classes. Probably right there in the hall. Seriously, though–10 minutes is often less time than it takes to even get the coffee in the first place, especially if you prefer the fancy drinks.
This Boston Globe poster on napping is pretty cool. And, if you’re the sort who thinks that all ProfHacker posts should come with a technological solution, then let me point you to Pzizz, which will optimize your napping regimen.
(The Sleep and USA Today articles originally seen here.)
Image by Flickr user Tambako the Jaguar / Creative Commons licensed
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