This posting is from Rick Reis and his tomorrows-professor Digest
Research has repeatedly shown that when supplementing 7-9 hour
of sleep, 20-30 minute naps do offer these benefits, particularly when
taken between the hours of 10 to 11 a.m. or 2 to 4 p.m., when human sleep
rhythms trigger a natural slump with grogginess and lack of focus.
The posting below looks at the importance of taking naps during the day to
make us feel better and more productive. It is by Allie Grasgreen from the
January June 3, 2011, issue of INSIDE HIGHER ED, an excellent - and free -
online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. You can subscribe by going to http://insidehighered.com/. Also for a free daily update from Inside Higher Ed, e-mail
[scott.jaschik@insidehighered.com]
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu PHOENIX -- Did you get a complete and restful night's sleep last night? If
not, and if right now you're reading this article rather than focusing on
work, your time might be better spent on a short nap to boost your focus
and productivity.
That's what the National Sleep Foundation says, and it's a message that
health education professionals at the University of California at Davis
have been spreading to their students over the course of a four-year
campaign, encouraging napping to boost academic performance. They shared
their strategies here Thursday at the annual meeting of the American
College Health Association.
"We're familiar with the benefits of sleep," said Amelia Goodfellow, a
student assistant in sleep and stress at the UC Davis health center.
"We're not as familiar with the impacts or positive effects of napping,
which are very similar." For students, the benefits of increased
productivity and concentration will translate to better academic
performance, the presenters argued -- even though they acknowledge having
no data to back that up.
However, research has repeatedly shown that when supplementing 7-9 hours
of sleep, 20-30 minute naps do offer these benefits, particularly when
taken between the hours of 10 to 11 a.m. or 2 to 4 p.m., when human sleep
rhythms trigger a natural slump with grogginess and lack of focus.
So for Goodfellow and her co-presenter Jason B. Spitzer, a health educator
at Davis, encouraging students to take naps and improve their state of
mind -- not to mention stay awake and alert during classes -- was more
important than proving through research that they correlate with better
grades. (They also haven't tracked whether more students have started
napping over the years, saying the focus up to this point has been more on
perfecting the message. But now they're starting to "think creatively"
about how to track campaign outcomes, Spitzer said.)
Gathering data from the National College Health Assessment and a
9-question assessment called the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, they
discovered that while 33 percent of Davis students didn't nap at all,
three-quarters of those who did nap did so for too long -- more than 30
minutes, to the point where they'd wake up groggy and negate the whole
point of the nap. (Although males napped more than females -- about 80
percent versus 70 percent -- the gender proportion of students who napped
for the appropriate 30 minutes was about even.) That told the educators
that a napping campaign would have to address two distinct populations:
non-nappers and long nappers.
While each subset would need its own targeted themes -- for non-nappers,
focusing on the reasons why they should and the lack of time and effort
required to do so; for long nappers, strategies to limit sleep and
suggestions for nap locations other than bed -- the key message was the
same: take naps, get better grades.
The campaign has evolved over the years, and today involves multiple
platforms and strategies. Health educators hand out "nap kits" at the cost
of $2.75 apiece; they include earplugs, an eye mask and a tip card with
directions to additional resources online. They advertise with fliers and
advertisements in the student newspaper featuring napping tips and
benefits, and they team with the student government to spread the word on
napping during National Sleep Awareness Week. And tapping into social
media sites such as Facebook and Twitter gets the educators "a bigger bang
for our buck," Goodfellow said.
Napping campaigns are far from common; the only other two the Davis
educators know of are at Oregon State and San Diego State Universities,
the latter of which pioneered the idea and inspired the Davis "nap map,"
which records the best places to nap on campus, "rated and evaluated by
students, for students" Goodfellow said.
The nap map is a key component to the campaign (it's received more than
16,000 hits online) because students can be resistant to napping on
campus, and this resource includes photographs and descriptions of dozens
of prime napping spots, both indoors and outdoors.
The best locations have comfortable furniture and low light, and aren't
too loud. However, one should not sacrifice safety for the sake of
privacy. "You have to kind of weigh both of those criteria," Goodfellow
said. "You want someplace that's private where you won't be near too many
people, but isn't so private that it's unsafe."
Goodfellow and Spitzer said departments across the campus have bought into
the campaign, and some -- particularly offices like the Student Academic
Success Center, which is designed to support struggling students -- even
distribute materials themselves. The only resistance was anecdotal,
Goodfellow said. "We've had a couple interesting encounters with
librarians not wanting people to nap." (She jokingly noted that she
herself at first resisted the nap map: "I was kind of reluctant to share
my own napping spots because I didn't want them publicized too much," she
said.)
The Davis campaign is still being revised every year, as student barriers
to napping either emerge or don't break down. "Again, we're seeing that
students are napping for too long, and we want to improve their napping
and their sleep quality," Spitzer said. Hence the next step for Davis: a
campaign on good sleeping habits, because napping is only beneficial as a
supplement to -- not a substitute for -- a good night's sleep.
