The management meetings were scheduled to last two full days in the first week of July, just before the holiday weekend. We were meeting to plan how we were going to reorganize our manufacturing floor to add a couple of new machines and eliminate smaller, less efficient ones. Space was tight. We were measuring down to inches.
We needed to relocate QA/QC and possible shipping. That’s where the discussion were when lunch arrived. I had been looking forward to a delicious tuna sub for the better part of two hours. Now that the sandwich arrived my mind made that shift from hangry to voracious.
The team worked through lunch pouring over drawings and sketches. The machines coming in were just too big to keep all our operations centrally located. We were going to need to spread out a little further. The QA manager started to complain that she needed space immediately adjacent to the production floor. Her reasoning was long winded and delivered in a monotone voice reserved for computerized robocallers.
That was when I first felt my head pop. It must have sagged for a split second. You know what I’m talking about. At first, you don’t even know it’s happening. You head just bobs and snaps back. You’re eyes become alert, frozen at attention. You shake it off and you’re thinking that tuna sub feels good sitting in my belly. And, BOB it happens again!
Now you pinch yourself as a way to keep your body focused, but your blood is flowing away from your brain and into your belly to digest that delicious tuna sub with melted Swiss cheese. Then, you snort and the game is up. The whole meeting is staring at you and all you want is to grab a blanket and take a nap.
Welcome to Swimming in the Flood; a podcast where we develop the resilient leader’s mindset by navigating difficult currents in business. My name is Trent Theroux.
I have always been a good napper. As a child, my mother would lay me down on the floor of Filene’s while she went shopping and come back to find I hadn’t moved. I was such a good child.
Sometimes, my ability to nap has caused problems. Starting my freshman year of high school, I took the public bus from Providence to Bristol, my hometown after school. There were a couple other kids from my town that took the same bus. It helped pass the time. In the winter, during swim season, I needed to take a later bus after swim practice. It was a 5:35 bus that got me to my stop around 6:10.
My head bobbing was on full display for the riding passengers. The exhaustion after swimming and a full day of school, coupled with the early darkness and the bus lights dimmed was the perfect condition for a quick nap. Then, BANG! My head would bob off the bus window leaving only minor bruising in some instances. One day, I didn’t bang my head. I woke up and tried to understand where I was. I didn’t recognize the farm we were passing. Farm? There are no farms on the way to my house.
I walked to the bus driver to ask where we were. He replied, “Middletown.” Middletown, is two towns past where I live, on an island. “Can you please stop somewhere there’s a pay phone?” I asked. Probably not his normal request.
My next call was collect to my mother asking for a ride. Think, this was decades before cell phones. Calling from the Island cost the equivalent of a car payment. My mother willingly agreed to take the 25 minute drive to get me. However, I think I pressed my luck when I also requested her to bring dinner in the car.
Have you ever been hit in the head with a piece of chalk traveling over 50 miles per hours? That’s what falling asleep in Biology class did to me. I had a white divot just above my right eye. Dumb luck that my biology teacher was a former minor league pitcher who was known for throwing strikes.
Falling asleep seems to be coded in my DNA. Unfortunately, the constant demands of email and texts come with the expectation that we are always on at work, and at home. Our phones call to us – in a siren’s call way – to constantly check in. Check to see if we have new emails, check to see if someone sent a file, check to see if someone responded to my meeting request. This constant stimulation would make anyone stay away through a boring biology class.
How can we as Developing Resilient Leaders position ourselves to manage the constant flow of electronic stimulation?
I am now going to give you my unscientific, non-peer reviewed, resilient leader theory on a taking risks. Are you ready? Got your pencils out? Here’s it is. Take An Afternoon Nap. You heard it. Take An Afternoon Nap.
Josh Bersin, founder of Bersin by Deloitte (yes, the accounting firm said in a New York Times article, ““Companies are suffering from tremendous productivity problems because people are stressed out” and not recovering from the workday. They’re beginning to realize that this is their problem, and they can’t just say to people, ‘Here’s a work-life balance course, go teach yourself how to manage your inbox. It’s way more complicated than that.”
In a paper titled, The Restorative Effect of Naps on Perceptual Deterioration, published by Nature Neuroscience, the authors engaged office workers in a four times per day study on perceptual performance. Their research found that there is a constant detioration as each day progresses. However, they found that subject that took a 30 minute nap between the second and third test stopped deterioration in performance. Even better, they found that those that took a 60-minute nap reversed the deterioration.
The results are astounding. A nap during the workday can improve your mental performance through the balance of the day. But, can you imagine the stigma one would receive for putting their head down to sleep in many offices. This would like a sign a weakness, a sign of being soft, not caring about results. Maybe you would even get taunts about going back to kindergarten.
However, this science is getting traction. Let’s talk about some companies that embrace napping. The National Sleep Foundation, of course there’s a National Sleep Foundation, in a 2008 study they found that 34% of U.S. companies allow workplace naps. In fact, some companies even have designated napping areas.
Google as “nap pods” that are designed to block out light and sound and provide a restorative quick sleep. The Huffington Post, Cisco and Facebook also have these units. Uber hired an interior designer to layout quiet spaces at their San Francisco headquarters. Zappos has a communal nap room named The Tank. The room contains a 25-foot, 3,500 gallon saltwater aquarium. Each of the room’s massage chairs has a curved hood so employees can lie back and watch the fish swim above them or just fade into a nap.
Some corporations get it and provide accommodations. In other companies, the resources aren’t there to create a tanks large enough for Shamu. What can people do in those companies? Nap anyway.
Every day at lunch, I take a two minute drive to the park to enjoy my lunch. Turn off the radio and read the Wall Street Journal while eating. Then, I recline my chair all the way back, insert a small pillow I keep in my backseat under my head and set my alarm for 25 minutes. That’s it! 23 minutes doesn’t get the job done for me. 27 minutes, well, I need to get back to work. 25 minutes of relaxation. Most days I fall asleep. Some days, my mind just quiets. Every day I pop up with the alarm ready to roll. I feel great. Better than great. For those constant listeners, I’ve never felt better in my life!
The second half of my day starts off as productively at the first half. I tackle some of my hardest problems because I am fresh, my mind is fresh. Resilient leaders, part of the reason we are resilient is because we can overcome obstacles. Taking an afternoon nap is one of the ways to help us improve our resiliency.
And, for me, the best part of taking my afternoon nap in my parked car…is not having to call someone collect to get me.
Folks, thank you for listening to Swimming in the Flood. Resilient leaders face challenging currents and it is tough navigating, but with one tack or another, we can get there together.