Powernaps and productivity.

Run­ning a busi­ness means that you always have an end­less amount of work to do, if it’s not reply­ing to client emails, it’s bal­anc­ing the books or work­ing on new designs, and if it’s not that then it’s plan­ning the days ahead or doing marketing.

It can some­times seem over­whelm­ing, but I’ve grown accus­tomed to it and I thank God that I love doing most of it or else I would have gone postal a long time ago and buried myself in a tub of cook­ies and cream.

Why does pro­duc­tiv­ity matter?

Despite that, love for my work doesn’t change the fact that there is always a load to do, there­fore being effec­tive while I’m doing it makes sense — you get the work done quicker, more accu­rately or cre­atively which allows you to either move onto another task, or sim­ply have more free time.

Why does every­one need to work from 9–5?!

Enter the typ­i­cal work day for most peo­ple, the 9–5 monster…I just don’t think it works that well. It’s a dated, blunt force, dinosaur of a tool imposed on a highly non-homogeneous pop­u­lace. Each of us have our indi­vid­ual body cycles, some pre­fer to work early in the day, oth­ers later in the day, some of us late at night while every­one else is asleep.

You don’t work at a con­stant rate unless you’re dead…

Per­son­ally, I have always found it extra­or­di­nar­ily dif­fi­cult to remain at near full pro­duc­tive capac­ity for the dura­tion of the 8 hour work day, it sim­ply stretches far too long with­out a chance to recharge some­where in the middle.

My pro­duc­tiv­ity cycle dic­tates that for the first 4 hours of the day, from 9am-1pm, I am gen­er­ally awake, fir­ing on all cylin­ders and burn­ing through my work. Come lunch time how­ever and this slows to a crawl as my stom­ach is busy digest­ing food and I am work­ing at half mast. My eyes are droopy, I’m on autopi­lot try­ing to stay awake and hop­ing my slurred speech doesn’t make peo­ple don’t think I’m high on drugs. Later on in the after­noon though, I get a sec­ond wind and I am often work­ing up to 12am or later the next morning.

Lots of peo­ple fol­low a sim­i­lar pat­tern, but due to their salaried employee sta­tus, sus­tained pro­duc­tiv­ity isn’t a huge con­cern for them. As a free­lancer who gets paid per hour how­ever, this is a huge con­cern because inef­fec­tive time really is very costly.

This is where pow­er­naps come into the picture…

Being fully aware of this surge-lull-surge in pro­duc­tiv­ity dur­ing the day, rather that fight it, I’d pre­fer to flow with it. I’ve adopted some­what of a bi/polyphasic sleep­ing pat­tern (as opposed to a monopha­sic sleep­ing pat­tern that most adhere to) now that I also live with a part­ner who has a dif­fer­ent work sched­ule from myself.

I go to sleep rel­a­tively late as I enjoy the peace and quiet and can get a lot of my art done dur­ing the night / early morn­ing. Then I usu­ally awake around the same time as my part­ner, which would mean I don’t get the reg­u­lar 8 hours sleep. I work till around lunch time when I will either go to the gym first, or have lunch and an after­noon pow­er­nap for about 25 minutes.

After the power nap, it almost feels like a sec­ond morn­ing and this will help to fuel me through to another 6+ hours of work if I need to. On par­tic­u­larly long days, I will some­times take two power naps spaced about 6 hours apart, and I judge the neces­sity to do so based on my clar­ity of thought.

This sim­ple addi­tion of power nap­ping dur­ing the day helps me immensely, I’m able to learn more, be more pro­duc­tive around the clock and achieve more dur­ing my wak­ing hours. If you’re a uni stu­dent or some­one who sim­ply has a lot of activ­i­ties out­side of the 9–5 day, try giv­ing pow­er­naps a go, they may just be what you need to get more out of each day.

If you try it out, let me know how you go with it in the com­ments

Keep kickin’ ass.

Daz