Most of you did not get enough sleep last night. According
to a new article from National Geographic, the average American sleeps less
than the recommended seven hours a night, but we still need to be up and ready for our responsibilities each day. Most of
us would love to just close our eyes for a second during a really boring
meeting or lay back in our chair after lunch and snooze in our cube. Would the
boss be OK with that? In Japan, they might be.
In Japanese corporate culture, there’s a concept called inemuri,
or ”sleeping while present.” You can doze off in a meeting, at a restaurant or on the
subway and get credit for not technically sleeping since you aren’t tucked away
in your bed. You showed up and you get points for that as long as you don’t
disturb the social situation. If needed, you can be woken up to deal with a
pressing task. If you simply attempt to hide a little by putting your hand over your
face or your head down, you’re covered.
Your boss in Japan won’t penalize you for your public display
of sleep -- as long as you get your work done. In a country where there is also a word for working
oneself to death (karōshi)
you can see how they might let a little nap slide.
I could really get behind this philosophy. As a person who has
only avoided missing my commuter train stop because I ride it to end of the line, I nap easily and often. An office I once worked with even
had a nap room as a perk, but it never felt socially acceptable to use it, so I
suffered in fatigue, longing for an afternoon siesta.
Experts stand by the fact that power naps are great for improving cognitive performance, more so than a cup of coffee. The idea of napping at work in America is still
being tinkered with and companies such as Google, NASA and Huffington Post
have installed special chairs called nap pods to remedy this. Still, there’s a stigma in this country that napping is a sign
of weakness. So until it's totally OK, or until I relocate to Japan, you can catch me under my desk like George
Costanza catching a few zzz's. Just don’t tell my boss.