Of power naps and non-conformity

It's after lunch. My eyes are droopy. My head is doing an elaborate dance. My mind is fighting a losing battle to stay awake.

At my previous job, I used to set aside like 15 mins to nap. I tried to impress upon anyone who asked about the power and benefit of napping, but they all just thought I was a somewhat mentally unstable guy with narcolepsy. I happen to believe in the powers of sleep and relaxation. I remember when doing my final year project in campus being completely stumped by bugs in the evening and getting such enlightenment the next day that I would often wonder what I was thinking the previous evening. The difference in thought was absolutely astounding. Given, a lot of the difficulties I faced where due to pointers and recursion but I have always believed sleep performs some kind of background processing. I even infected my roommates with the habit of reading in bed. I've never subscribed to the idea of being uncomfortable so as to read and understand things. None of that feet in cold water, coffee to repress sleep, seat on a hard chair stuff. I read in bed, with music playing, and if I fall asleep, as I always did, then the stuff I'm reading is still absorbed. By osmosis.

In the wonderful world of the office though, things aren't quite as straight forward and I can't even try to convince my boss of these theories of mine. Instead, I have to struggle against my instincts to take a couple of those 40 winks. I have to pretend to be doing something useful when I can hardly make out what is on the screen. I'm reminded of a scene from a Japanese office where everyone is doing yoga/meditation/relaxation exercises. Traditional ways of thinking would regard such things as a waste of company time. I would be a much more productive, happy, relaxed employee if I could take 15 mins and do just that, without everyone looking at me funny and my boss giving me a warning letter.


ps: I thought getting paid to do nothing would be a good thing. It's not. Doing nothing is hard.