The art of the nap: the seven-minute nap is highly restorative, but needs to be learnt

Thomas Meyer

30.9.2020

Translation: machine translated

We get tired several times a day - but instead of lying down for a while, we reach for espresso and energy drinks. A power nap is the perfect way to recharge your batteries.

You know the feeling: it's not even 12 noon and you're already completely exhausted. You pour coffee and Red Bull down your throat. After lunch, you're dog-tired again, and in the evening you literally collapse into bed, where you only recognise your partner's advances as a distant siren song.

Is life that exhausting? Are people that exhausting? Yes, they are too. But your problem is that you don't take naps. Let me show you the way to the wonderful world of naps. You'll no longer need coffee, you'll stroll through your day feeling fresh and you'll be able to set off philosophical and erotic fireworks in the evening.

The definition fallacy: How long does a nap last?

Now many people claim that they can't take a nap at all; they fall asleep for at least two hours and are even more exhausted afterwards than before. But only nap amateurs talk like that. A nap doesn't last two hours, otherwise the diminutive wouldn't fit at all, but between five and fifteen minutes. After that, your mind, exhausted by fruitless meetings and hollow chatter, is awake again and you wake up.

The trick is to use this awakening to get up and not to lie down. Otherwise, you'll actually drift off into the infamous hours-long daytime sleep that torments you with confused dreams.

It's quite simple: you lie down somewhere as soon as you feel the need, nod off, wake up after five to fifteen minutes and get up again. This can be done under your office desk on a yoga mat, on a park bench, in an armchair, on a sofa, even on an office chair with the backrest tilted. You just have to stick to one rule: Get up as soon as you wake up.

With time, you'll become a nap pro and know your perfect slots. For me, they are 9.30am, 1.30pm (which is compulsory for anyone over 40) and 6.30pm. I've even got to the point where I can take a nap on my parents' sofa while my son cheers, my dad is annoyed about Trump, my sister is annoyed about his voters and my mum shouts from the kitchen about who said what.

"How can you sleep with all this noise?" my sister asks after I sit up again, smiling blissfully.

"I've perfected the art of napping," I reply as my mum calls out from the kitchen what we were talking about, "I catch the right moment to start and the right moment to stop."

Good mini night!

Thomas Meyer

freier Autor

tacheles@thomasmeyer.ch

Author Thomas Meyer was born in Zurich in 1974. He worked as a copywriter before publishing his first novel «The Awakening of Motti Wolkenbruch» in 2012. He's a father of one, which gives him a great excuse to buy Lego. More about Thomas: www.thomasmeyer.ch.

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