Coffee Naps Better For Alertness Than Coffee Or Naps Alone

An anonymous reader writes: Caffeine is a staple of most workplaces — it's rare to find an office without a coffee pot or a fridge full of soda. It's necessary (or at least feels like it's necessary) because many workers have a hard time staying awake while sitting at a desk for hours at a time, and the alternative — naps — aren't usually allowed. But new research shows it might be more efficient for employers to encourage brief "coffee naps," which are more effective at returning people to an alert state than either caffeine or naps alone. A "coffee nap" is when you drink a cup of coffee, and then take a sub-20-minute nap immediately afterward. This works because caffeine takes about 20 minutes to get into your bloodstream, and a 20-minute nap clears adenosine from your brain without putting you into deeper stages of sleep. In multiple studies, tired participants who took coffee naps made fewer mistakes in a driving simulator after they awoke than the people who drank coffee without a nap or slept without ingesting caffeine.

Comments

Employers don't want employees who LOOK lazy.

[i kan reed]

Every metric that says not doing work at certain times can be good for your work overall can and will be overlooked by the kind of people who want you working 60 hour weeks. They want to look good for their boss, and butts in seats are the best way to do that.

Re:Employers don't want employees who LOOK lazy.

[i kan reed]

I don't know if most of us got into tech to avoid manual labor. I personally got in it because I like the idea of solving problems, rather than taking care of them for a short while.

I'd appreciate more physical activity at work, 40 hours a week of physical idleness(on top of sleeping) is not what the human body evolved for.

Re:Employers don't want employees who LOOK lazy.

[poetmatt]

Of course an employer can do what they want which includes busywork, but that doesn't mean the employer isn't a complete failure when it comes to defining the scope of a job position. Most employers are too lazy to do this well.

Any employer who can't accept that you won't be busy every second of the day is not an employer worth working for in any country in the world.

Re:Employers don't want employees who LOOK lazy.

[Infiniti2000]

When my engineers are low on actual tasks, I encourage them to learn. Go read up on some new technology, play around with that game engine, read some technology magazines or books, etc. That increased knowledge is incredibly useful to the company in the long run, it makes for happier employees, and they are even more marketable. Sounds counterproductive, but I prefer more marketable employees because it means not only do I have a strong team, but now the company is far more appealing to other marketable employees when I have an opening.

Shape up, science!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This is supposed to be the future! Why do I need 'sleep' to clear this adenosine from my brain when swarms of nanites in my bloodstream could be doing it instead? So much for progress.

Re:Anecdotal verification

[LocutusMIT]

Was it drink coffee, set 20 minute alarm, nap, jump to work like in the story?

I'm not the GP, but I do this on long drives if I start feeling a bit bleary. I'll pull into a rest area, drink a bit of something caffeinated (maybe a couple of good pulls on a bottle of Dr Pepper or Moxie), and put my seat all the way back. No alarm needed, as the caffeine slowly takes effect and wakes me up in about 15 to 20 minutes.

It leaves me feeling awake and alert again, and I'll repeat the process every couple of hours.

Note that I broke my caffeine addiction in college when it started giving me miserable headaches, and I rarely consume anything caffeinated today, so a little bit goes a long way for me. If you drink caffeine regularly, you may need more than I do to make this work.