I think that there are nap people, and non-nap people, and while I’d rather be a member of the nap people, I’m definitely a non-napper. I probably take fewer than 10 naps per year, whereas I have friends who take naps almost daily.
At a happy hour recently the subject of naps and how great they are came up. Three of the five of us admitted to taking multiple naps per week, and often during (9 to 5) work hours (this makes sense, since work hours conflict with prime napping hours, and napping after work is generally called “going to bed”). One of the most positive benefits of the pandemic, I was told, is that working from home creates ample opportunities for naps.
So, when the pandemic forced four of the five of us at this happy hour to work from home, three of us immediately nodded off, falling into regular, near daily napping routines that haven’t let up since. I was the only work-from-home non-napper, while another friend cannot nap because he is in a laboratory environment where people are watching and his work actually matters.
Honestly, napping during work hours never really crossed my mind, but I have to admit I’m jealous. I love sleeping. I just do mine at night, usually right around 8 hours of it, all in one laying.
The times when I do take a nap, I wake up feeling groggy, wondering where I am and what happened, not unlike many of my weekends during college. The feeling usually persists long enough that I simply avoid naps; when I feel one coming on, I get up and do something until the nap need passes. But really, the feeling just doesn’t come up much.
Sometimes I wonder if I might need to do more things to tire myself out. Maybe my friends who nap are working their brains at a much more furious pace than me, requiring a nap to recharge. I should note that all of these nappers are perfectly successful and high achieving. Whereas I often wonder whether my brain is working any harder when it is awake than it does when I’m unconscious, since most of my waking mental activities tend to stray toward daydreaming anyway.
But then just today I read a story, one that could initially have been mistaken for a Viagra advertisement, reporting that “regularly finding time for a little snooze is good for our brain and helps keep it bigger for longer.” These University College London researchers showed that nappers’ brains were nearly one-cubic inch larger than non-nappers—equivalent to delaying aging by three to six years. The same scientists then go on to recommend keeping naps to less than half an hour, probably at the behest of their employers who no doubt have supporting administrative staff working from home.
Most concerning to me about the news is that I wasn’t aware my brain was drying out inside my head, shrinking little by little, just one more indignity of aging, though at least one gracefully hidden underneath a rapidly receding hairline.
Someday, I think and hope that naps will become a more regular part of my day, and that my brain might regain what has been lost in the uninterrupted waking hours. In the meantime, I do think there is hope for me, because I was talking to my mom the other day, and she reminded me, not for the first time, that as a child my head was oversized, as evidenced through the hand-me-down shirts I’d inherit from my brother, two years my senior. “I could never get his shirts over your head when you were little. It was too big,” she said. “And you know your niece also had a huge head,” she added. “When you visit you should see if you can fit into her hat.”
To this day, I still have a giant head. I can only hope that, by not taking naps, my brain appreciates the extra living space I’m giving it to do its thing. Please don’t shrink yet. I’m not done using you. I think.
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