Everyone knows about the horror stories of working 100 hour weeks and the fun ride of a startup. One of the overlooked secrets of maneuvering through the mental stress and personal risk trauma of making your startup successful that every entrepreneur goes through, is an afternoon Power Nap. Many of our employees take a 15-20 min nap 2-3 times per week at the office just after lunch. With www.Alice.com being my 4th startup and napping being part of our hard working and really fun culture, I thought I would get a little more savvy this time around about the nap process. After countless wake ups and interruptions through the years, I decided to implement a high tech and innovative solution to allow me to have an uninterrupted nap to fully achieve all of the wonderful benefits. Adding the colored rubber band to the door handle means that there is a nap in session so please do not enter. I am not going to tell you what it means if you see two rubber bands on the handle 
I highly recommend the 20 minute power nap. When I suggest it to people they usually give the following excuses:
1. I could never get to sleep in 5 min’s
2. If I took a nap, I would sleep for 10 hours and never be able to get back up
3. I take naps on the weekends and have no time to nap at the office
4. The office isn’t a daycare where we have nap time and story time (At Alice we actually do both..hehe)
I am sure there are many more excuses that I have heard over the years that I am forgetting. The common theme with most of these excuses is that usually the person has never really attempted to nap or are in an office environment where this is not acceptable. This has to change
Well I am here to tell you to give it a try and that the 20 min power nap actually works. People too quickly look to caffeine before considering the more healthy nap option. The Two Studs over at getclicky.com apparently have the same philosophy as we do. This video discusses many of the nap benefits including, focus, alertness, weight loss and more creativity to mention a few.
Napping enthusiasts have included Albert Einstein, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Edison and at least three presidents: John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Other good reads about the value of naps here and here.
Why not give napping at the office a try? Will it help you perform better at work or possibly lead to a more successful startup?
September 12th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
The afternoon power nap is great, sadly I don’t think it’d fly here at $COMPANY.
I don’t want this to sound like I’m spamming but I’ve used software called Pzizz for both napping and sleeping over night. How I feel in the morning after I fell asleep listening to the software and when I didn’t is extremely noticeable. I feel like I have more energy and I’m not nodding off at various points of the day. And for the afternoon power nap it has an alarm that wakes you up at the end of the nap.
September 13th, 2008 at 3:02 am
Hey sleepy head! Are you sure you aren’t confusing the power nap with the power walk? Which is probably much more acceptable in our society. As long as you are productive, good for you! Clock those Zs! But while your at it, crack open the window and breathe in that fresh air. In Sweden there are daycares where babies and young children nap OUTSIDE, year round and of course they are bundled up nice and cozy but just imagine what all that fresh air does to those little developing minds.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:10 am
where would you put the rubber band if you work in an open plan office?
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:28 am
[...] is a good example of this. It’s not just that we have a ping pong table and encouraged nap time, but that our co-founders consistently encourage and compliment employees, partners, customers, [...]
July 15th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
[...] love. One of the bloggers at Brazen works at Alice. Not only is the company cool (can you say nap-time and employees being assigned representative animals?) but the service looks useful. Alice allows [...]
February 5th, 2012 at 9:03 pm
[...] love. One of the bloggers at Brazen works at Alice. Not only is the company cool (can you say nap-time and employees being assigned representative animals?) but the service looks useful. Alice allows [...]
May 25th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
[...] is a good example of this. It’s not just that we have a ping pong table and encouraged nap time, but that our co-founders consistently encourage and compliment employees, partners, customers, [...]
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