Are "coffee naps" the next productivity hack?

Sleep is good. Anyone will agree that getting a good night's sleep makes you feel better, more alert, and more ready to take on whatever the world throws at you. From an employer's perspective, the amount of shut-eye your staff are getting can dramatically impact your business, since a lack of sleep can lead to stupid mistakes, health issues, and sheer incompetence.

While you can't control how much sleep your employees get at home, what you can do is help them catch up on it in the most effective manner possible. You've undoubtedly witnessed a number of employees snoozing away at their desks during lunch time in an attempt to revive themselves. But dozing off for more than 20 minutes can actually have the opposite effect, as they'll enter a deeper sleep and feel even worse after waking up.

According to some research, the best way to get your sleepy staffers back to productivity is by having them take a so-called coffee nap, Chin Moi Chow, Associate Professor of Sleep and Wellbeing at the University of Sydney, writes on The Conversation.

As the name suggests, the coffee nap exists combines two elements we all know help keep us alert: caffeine and sleep. The idea is that you quickly drink some coffee and then nap for a maximum of 15-20 minutes. Supposedly, once you awake, you'll feel more revived than if you had napped without drinking coffee, or had coffee but no nap.

The result is attributed to the fact that your body needs about 15 minutes to start noticing the effects of the caffeine. If you're awake during that time, you're unlikely to really notice the gradual change. If, however, it kicks in while you're napping, your body will wake up to the full force of the caffeine leaving you to feel much more alert.

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