Nap as in the sleeping-napping? In the middle of working day? You bet.

I am interested to what Eben Pagan concept of power naps – 20 to 40 minutes of sleep can increase your productivity considerably.

A bit about power nap – it’s just like pressing the “sleep button” on your laptop that put you on standby mode. The premise is, the nap will help your body to slow down and regain energy – not even in the way that sleeping can offer.

I never attend the much-hyped Eben Pagan’s Wake Up Productive training, but I guess I should attend it somehow :)

Business owner – doing business or busy-ness?

I’ve wrote about this before, but I would like to take this opportunity to revisit, to make my point on napping in the middle of the day :)

Business owners I know said that our 24-hour day is never enough… They wish there were 36-hour day. Business owners are super busy, indeed.

However, business owners are not only busy managing their business – they are busy socialising.

Not that socialising is bad – either for networking or simply hanging around with friends and colleagues, it just that, in many cases I know, they often procrastinating a bit too much, arguing that they need to play hard, as they work hard.

“Work hard, play hard.”

A good motto – But quite often, you over emphasis the “play hard” part, thinking that you have worked hard during the day. The truth is, we are not always work hard – we work ineffectively and inefficiently.

Why we are ineffective and inefficient

Your answer might varies widely from one person to another, but in essence, you are not efficient and effective because:

• You are exposed to plenty of distraction – i.e. your kids bothering you working at home, gossiping with your colleagues, etc.
• You do too many things with too loose work organisation and poor work flow.
• You are too worn out to be productive.

I don’t know about the distraction part, as it is actually each business owner’s endeavour to put an “invisible” mode while they are working.

About work organisation and work flow, you need to seek for productivity tools to aid you organise your time and work better.

This is the most important part of all: You are too worn out. The symptoms: doing a simple task that take 2 or 3 times longer to complete, simply due to you inability to concentrate well.

If that is your case, you need a timeout – napping is the best timeout ever (I regularly do it, and it works wonder!)

Why you need to nap

Your body need the “reset button” pushed – this way, you let your mind and body to reorganise themselves, and believe it or not, yours only need 20 to 40 minutes. Overdo it, you might end up feeling lousy all day with eyes that always want to shut all the time.

Waking up, surprisingly, you feel energised, revved up and ready to do business, better than ever.

This way, you can be on your top condition most of the day, finishing more tasks, pitching new proposals, and pursuing more opportunities.

Have you tried this “productivity tool” of power napping before? Please share your story by commenting on this post :)

Ivan Widjaya
Power napping
Image by bviramontes.

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