Shyamal Majumdar: Take that power nap at work

THE HUMAN FACTOR

When Uttam Manohar Nakate, a helper in Bharat Forge, exercised his right to snooze in 1983, his employers dismissed him. Twenty-two years later, the Supreme Court upheld the dismissal on the ground that Nakate was a habitual offender and had made sleeping during office hours his favourite pastime.

Nakate may have gone overboard but he was certainly not alone. For example, the National Sleep Foundation in the US found that one-third of American workers nap on the job "" whether they're allowed to or not. Nearly one-fourth admitted that they have fallen asleep while driving. But the courts in the US have taken a lenient view so far.

Power nap "" a siesta in between stretches of work "" is gaining acceptance in many companies all over the world and may someday become as accepted as the coffee break for a rejuvenating pause at work.

Although very few companies, including those in India, have formally accepted it as their policy, power naps are becoming common, specially in new economy sectors like information technology and call centres where shifts play havoc with an individual's sleep pattern and the threshold for stress is lowered.

At Infosys, for instance, there are dormitories where employees can retire to refresh their minds. Companies that encourage power napping report that it reduces accidents and errors and increases productivity, even if it shortens the workday a bit.

Studies have also shown that performance increases by 35 per cent if employees take a 45-minute power nap in the afternoon. The nap even improves the ability to judge business decisions correctly by 50 per cent.

The popularity of power naps as a concept is evident from the fact that even the Internet is also selling sleep. Power nap kits, costing up to $ 100, offer special nap music, pillows and promises of relaxation for the ultimate power nap.

Experts say the secret to power napping is simple: take them at the same time each day, but not too close to bedtime so that it would interfere with your sleep at night. And keep naps short "" to about 20 to 30 minutes.

HR consultants say power naps have been gaining popularity ever since the concept was made popular by Camille W Anthony and William A Anthony, who wrote a book called The Art of Napping at Work, which gives you tips on how to squeeze a power nap into your busy schedule. According to them, sleep is the "the no cost, natural way to enhance our work productivity and satisfaction".

An eye-opening study, carried out by Harvard University researchers, found people doing the same task throughout the day deteriorated in their performance by more than 50 per cent. But if those people slept for an hour in the early afternoon, their performances were not only restored, but also improved. If they took a 30-minute nap, their performance returned to the level achieved earlier in the day.

The study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, saw 30 well-rested people complete a task four times throughout the course of a day: at 9 am, midday, 4 pm and 7 pm. The task involved observing the differences between shapes flashed before their eyes.

Ten of the group went throughout the day without a snooze, 10 had an hour's sleep and the remainder had a 30-minute nap. All of them improved at the task through the first session and levelled out during the second. Without sleep, performance slumped in sessions three and four.

The group that had a 30-minute snooze after session two did not decline in performance in sessions three and four. The group that had an hour's sleep became progressively faster and more accurate at the task.

The researchers believe boredom and fatigue did not contribute to the decline in performance for subjects who did not rest through the day. The no-sleep group did not report sleepiness after tasks and continued to decline in performance even when they were offered financial incentives to maintain their level of speed and accuracy.

The researchers repeated the experiment for 24 people who performed the same tasks for the first three sessions but attempted a new, similar task in the fourth and final session. Performance at the new task matched that of the morning session.

The bottom line: we should stop feeling guilty about taking that power nap at work.