LOS ANGELES — In kindergarten, we learned that sharing is caring, 1+1 is 2, and napping after lunch is a good thing. Most of those lessons from our youthful years still apply, except for that latter one. For some reason, despite our protests, we were forced to take a nap. And now that we need a nap, it’s difficult to find the opportunity.
Nap4Change is a new tumblelog I stumbled across that features pictures of none other than nappers going about the business of napping. It reminds me a bit of the Sleeping Chinese web site and Asians Sleeping in the Library Tumblr that made the rounds. It follows up on the success of Asleep On The Subway in demonstrating that sleeping anywhere is a universal trait.
“No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap,” as the site’s slogan goes. Those are big words, but how can you refute them? Indeed, if you’re struggling in the studio, trying to find inspiration, sometimes all you need is a nap. According to a study discussed in The New York Times:
“Sleep makes a unique contribution,” explains Mark Jung-Beeman, a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies the neural bases of insight and creative cognition.
Some sort of incubation period, in which a person leaves an idea for a while, is crucial to creativity. During the incubation period, sleep may help the brain process a problem.
What Nap4Change shows is that napping is possible everywhere, whether at one’s desk, waiting for the plane, even at a TEDxSummit. Those precious few minutes of shut-eye could be a great thing.
Of course, this might be seen to contradict an earlier post of mine, where I pointed at studies showing that getting drunk and losing sleep are good for creativity, but hey, creativity is still a mysterious field. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to stretch out and take a rest.