Japanese napping
As you may have read earlier, lack of sleep deprivation is a major problem for the Japanese economy. Well, the Washington Post and the United Press are reporting that the Japanese have discovered a fabulous half-assed solution to this problem: napping at work!
Images of exhausted executives conked out inside coffeehouses or on buses or subways during long commutes home have long been a fixture of Japan’s urban landscape. But the office power nap was anathema to Japan, even as the concept became popular in the United States and Europe. Naohisa Uchimura, a sleep specialist at Kurume University in southern Japan, said that began to change in 2003 after a bullet-train conductor made headlines by nodding off at the controls. Though automatic train mechanisms prevented an accident, the driver’s inability to get enough sleep at night started a heated national debate.
“People are realizing that our lack of sleep is actually slowing us down,” Uchimura said, adding that Japanese workers get an average of between five and six hours of sleep a night. “To be in top shape well into the evening hours at the office, you need to take a nap.”
Why not insist on your employees work efficiently and go home at 5pm? Allowing some time for a lunch break nap, while still insisting that your employees work overtime every day, is not a solution to the problem. If they could go home, spend some time with their families, and sleep more than 5 hours a night, they would be able to do a much better job. Working longer does not working better.
