back to article Kipping at your desk is highly productive, say boffins

Splendid news for those among us who occasionally wake up with a snort at our desks, hastily wiping drool off our chins and looking around guiltily. Boffins have annouced that a brief zizz during the day enhances performance and makes people more efficient and productive. According to Matthew Walker, a psychologist out of UC …

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  1. GrahamT
    Pint

    nap enhancer

    I always said beer was a brain food.

    Beer makes me snooze in the afternoon; an afternoon nap makes one more productive; ergo, beer makes me more productive.

    I'll drink to that.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Do not disturb

    You woke me up to say that?

  3. Anonymous John

    So.

    If the hippocampus had an effective spam filter, we wouldn't need to sleep?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      effective spam filter

      forward all emails from Gordon Brown to /dev/null

  4. sandman

    More productive?

    Did they research the bit where you're nodding off and typing garbage first?

  5. Matthew Ward

    REM

    Daysleeper anyone? I'll get my coat...

  6. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I'm most productive..

    ..when I'm asleep.

    1. Blofeld's Cat
      Boffin

      Re: I'm most productive..

      I have had at least one boss who made the team far more productive by being asleep. We were at our most efficient when he didn't bother turning up at all.

      One extreme example of this was the Team Leader who regularly mixed up GO 27 and GO 25 on the George 2+ OS we used.

      (For younger readers: That's the difference between restarting a stopped job and restarting a stopped job - from the beginning.)

      The effect on a two-day processing job could be spectacular.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        George

        You've made me go all nostalgic, even though George III was where I started.

        Load xpck....

  7. Ginolard
    Pint

    Beer is brain food

    I agree that beer makes you more productive. However, it also makes you more intelligent by killing the weaker brain cells. We all know that alcohol kills brain cells but much like a lion tracking a herd of wildebeest across the plains it will go for the stragglers, the weak, the ones who can't keep up with the rest. By killing these weaker brain cells first it makes the "herd" stronger, making me more intelligent.

    This is plainly evident when I've had several beers in quick succession and become an expert on everything and am compelled to tell everyone so. Loudly.

  8. The Original Ash
    Thumb Up

    Siesta

    There's a scientific reason for it.

  9. Albert Gonzalez
    Happy

    How much time ?

    The big question is:

    How long has the nap to be to become productive ... without spendig the whole afternoon snoring ?

    Between 5 and 10minutes, or 10' to 30', or between 30' and 1 hour ?

    Sleeping minds want to know ...Viva la Siesta !

  10. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Unhappy

    If I slept

    at my desk, I'd find a P45 next to me when I woke up

    1. Thomas 18

      but visiting el reg

      at 12:15 is ok ;p

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: but visiting el reg

        >at 12:15 is ok ;p

        I think 12:15 is the time the comment was posted (accepted by the moderator) not when it was written.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So what do I do with all these Viagra offers??

    They are cluttering up my hippocampus, making it impossible to concentrate.

  12. Blofeld's Cat
    Thumb Up

    Zzz

    At last I have a use for those "progress" meetings the boss schedules just after lunch.

    "What? Well yes I probably was, but I was only boosting my productivity."

  13. Marvin the Martian
    Troll

    Metaphors and koans

    The "inbox" simile seems an awkard updating of the old zen "teacup" story, where you cannot add tea to the cup until you have drained it.

    A more appropriate comparison would be, thanks to Tom Lehrer, that the brain "is like a sewer --- what you get out of it depends on what you put into it". But some brains are more like sewers than others.

  14. /dev/me
    IT Angle

    Hmmmm sleep

    I fell asleep during a meeting once (probably because it had no IT angle). My boss had assigned me to that commission, but I had no idea what I was doing there. Voices of people discussing vague ideas and minor details, just fading into the background. Hmmmm sleep.

    The weirdest thing though, when they woke me up I was laughed at by ~20 people or so. And I didn't care. I wasn't at all ashamed, like you'd expect. And I wasn't kicked out of the commission either, my boss wasn't notified. Nothing. It seems sleeping during a commission meeting is considered only a minor loss of decorum, no worse than spilling coffee. Heh

  15. jake Silver badge

    Speaking as an alumnus ...

    "According to Matthew Walker, a trick-cyclist out of UC Berkeley in California"

    I suspect the key phrase is "out of" and not "UC Berkeley" ;-)

    Pardon me while I go get another cup of coffee ...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Siesta a good idea? That's new...

    Half the planet has accepted the benefit of a brief midday siesta fro as long as anyone can remember - we didn't need 'boffins' to state the bleedin' obvious.

    I'm retired now, but for 40 years my lunchtime habit - often to the scorn of colleagues - was a very light snack lunch and half an hour with my feet up. On my own time of course - in my day sleeping on the job would have you outside the building, cards in hand, before you'd woken up. That half hour's doze (rarely full sleep) was almost like a drug - on the few days I missed it, I just wasn't the same man.

    That said, I've worked for quite a few bosses in my life whose only purpose seemed to be to promote drowsiness in their subordinates - one of the few things which more recent 'management science' generations seem even more effective at than their forebears.

    1. Ammaross Danan
      Alert

      Siesta

      Many people have lauded the boost in performance a Siesta can deliver, but many people ignore a minute detail: a Siesta "power nap" should NOT exceed a MAXIMUM of 30 minutes. Ideally, it should be 15-20min. This is the "power nap" time parameter used in most research (Google it if you must). So, the "up to 3 hours" of Siesta that some people prescribe to does more harm than good in productivity terms.

  17. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    FAIL

    It was

    12.15 I posted

    And I was on my lunch break, since el reg is safe for work so long as I stay away from the playmobile recreations

    <<just got in at 00.30

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