Not Getting A Nap is -- Literally -- Stupid

Happy Thanksgiving to all my regular readers. It's great to be able to get up at 9:00 am, take a leisurely run, read the paper, grab a cup of coffee, and head for a blog. Life should be like this every day.

In the interest of work-life (i.e., stop reading a darn blog and start living) I'll keep this brief today. I wanted to share a tip for the holiday season...and again, it comes from the world of sleep research, specifically napping, which I have blogged about several times.

This latest tidbit comes from an AP story (by Lauran Neergaard) on the front page of the Austin American Statesman. The latest news: naps are essential to some of our most sophisticated types of memory building and creativity.

Here are the two key highlights:

• Particularly important to building memory and creativity is the "slow wave" sleep, which comes early in the sleep cycle, before the more commonly known REM sleep (dreaming). That means from a creativity & memory perspective you get more from the early phases of sleep, i.e., the parts you would get from napping.
  
  
• Fragmented sleep disrupts the formation of new brain cells, hindering learning for weeks. That means you can't get the same effects by trying to "make up" for lack of sleep. Trying to run on 5 or 6 hours a night and catch up on the weekends will not help. You'll still be stupider than the folks who get regular sleep and naps.

So, why not use the holiday season to do some serious brain work--all you have to do is take a nap.

Seriously, though, consider this is a larger light. It's the selfirst thing all over again. How many different ways have we said it in this blog? Taking care of yourself is THE KEY to higher performance. Working harder does NOT mean working longer, it means working smarter.

So get your rest. You are quite literally being stupid if you don't.