A Quiz Based on My Recent Activity Or Lack Thereof
Posted on September 9, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 118 Comments
Because I need to know.
Whatever
FURIOUSLY REASONABLE
WHATEVER
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Athena Scalzi, contributor – AMS
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They’re either the BEST thing or *I* am SO old. I’m spinning it as positively as possible with my vote!
They are so totally the BEST thing EVER!
There are nap people and there are the rest of us. For us non-nap people, afternoon naps are the worst thing ever. We wake up from them with a headache and feeling worse than before the nap.
We don’t like nap people. We want your naps!!
@ Peter
Er, if naps make you miserable, why would you want ours??
I’m like Peter Cibulskis except that I do like nap people. I sometimes wish I could nap, but mostly I don’t. It would cut into my frittering time.
Maybe I’m getting old too (only 40!), but I have had many, many days where I wouldn’t have gotten through it without a 20-minute lie down around 4:00. Fortunately, I have a lifestyle that allows this sort of thing, which is a blessing.
there is something spiritual of doing a snooze in the afternoon. And your feline community will be in favor of the event…
This is funny, since I just woke up from a 1/2 hour afternoon nap. (and I am old–53)
Good thing, but I am insanely jealous of anyone who gets one. I keep being tempted to schedule a windowless conference room and lock the door.
I simply cannot “nap” any more. I wake up with a ferocious temper and want to absolutely destroy everything and everyone around me for about 2 hours after the nap. Definitely not a good investment of snoozy time. I’m with @Peter.
I would love to be able to nap successfully…it’s just not available to me. Sigh.
I’ve had periods in my life where I napped well (college!) and periods when I did not. I’m in a non-napping phase now, although very occasionally I will have one and it is good. For everyone who benefits from napping, I wish you good naps.
It depends on whether I fall asleep accidentally or on purpose. If I doze off for a few minutes without meaning to on, say, the subway or in the back of a lecture hall, then it’s usually a nice, oddly fully-refreshing surprise. However, if I’m actively trying to fall asleep, I either become grumpy when I can’t force myself to, or I wake up with this heavy, aching, nauseous feeling.
I love mid afternoon naps on the weekend. Weekday naps are more problematic. Can’t really curl up on the floor of my shipping room and nap.
They SEEM like a good thing, but I need to do more research. Maybe I can get a grant.
with three kids under 5, those rare afternoons where everyone is napping or at least playing quietly are heaven.
Mid-afternoon naps are a good thing. There are other mid-afternoon activities that can be the best thing, naps before or after can be part of the best thing. I’m 66, and not old — I’m not even middle aged!
Napping doesn’t work for me, leaves me feeling groggy and awful. A long mid-afternoon read, on the other hand…
It’s not that I object to sleep – in fact, I would really, really like to get more of it. However, mid-afternoon naps, at best, leave me feeling woozy and exhausted after I wake up.
At worst, they result in woozy exhaustion and a weird disoriented state in which, after a quick glance at the clock, I become convinced that it’s 7am the next morning and I am about to be late for work and go into panic-mode trying to get ready.
I’m older than you and only nap if I’ve gone two or three days on less than 6 hours of sleep per night. The cool thing about pushing through sleep deprivation is that you hit the giddy wall after a certain amount of time – everything is hysterically funny, even the fact that you can’t tie your own shoes or get your coffee cup to your mouth without slopping half of it down your shirt.
I can nap SOMETIMES now that I’m older (60). But when I was younger, naps just left me feeling groggy and weird for the rest of the day.
I am 28 and do this, so I don’t think you’re old. It’s a state of mind, anyway.
I love an afternoon nap, but I often end up with a migraine (a sudden change in blood sugar level may be the culprit). So even though I desperately NEED one… it’s too risky. I’d rather be exhausted than in pain.
SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK! (but I work in an industry that seems to hire the caffeine addicted, so self-fulfilling prophecy there)
They’re a good thing, but turn into the Best when shared with a pet. I’m a novice in napping, compared to my cat, so a nap in tandem is actually a training session for me – a twofer – rest and working at leveling up in that skill!
If an unstoppable sleepiness hits you every afternoon, and despite good caffeination you still can’t fight it, get your TSH levels checked. You may be hypothyroid. That’s how I found out.
They are both the best thing AND we’re all getting older.
Am nine months pregnant and while ordinarily I think naps are the best thing ever, I’m getting pretty tired of not having any choice about needing naps. Because right now I need naps like I need air.
I can’t say they are a good thing, because while they make me feel good in the short term, they leave me unable to sleep through the night. I try to avoid them and just get to bed earlier.
Just any Grey? And Pens are very nice, but they do have an adverse affect on mid-day naps.
The Cure and Warren Zevon
Research suggests short afternoon naps are actually good for many people. Having said that, if the nap comes about from a “carbo crash” post-lunch, perhaps not so good.
They are the BEST thing. I have been a napper my entire life (imagine a mother telling a small child to STOP napping — that’s me!) and plan to continue it.
Naps with kitties are doubleplusgood. I enjoy those about as much as is possible to enjoy something. Like churros, only non-fattening.
My opportunities for mid-afternoon naps are pretty limited these days, mainly on weekends, but I find that they can be refreshing if not overdone. 20 – 30 minutes of light dozing is much better than a solid two-hour sleep, in general.
I work odd shifts, which plays havoc with my circadian rhythms. I’m a grown adult and I’ll sleep when I please, thank you very much.
I am a member of the naps make we feel like hell crew. I’d love it if if I could do that 5 minute zen break.
Unfortunately, I don’t get to nap in the afternoons much; but there are way too many days when the first thought through my head after turning off the alarm in the morning is “Is there a time today when I can take a nap?”
Like Robert I do shift work (although fortunately no overnights), which means if I am sleepy and I am somewhere I can sleep (ie not actually at the office), I sleep. Even when I was on a regular work schedule, afternoon naps made me feel great. And I’m 27, this is not an oldie thing!
Naps might be the best thing, except for chronic insomniacs who only manage to sleep through the night unmedicated by being highly mindful of sleep hygiene. Alas.
They are so important that when we built an addition on our house we included an L-shaped window seat in our master bedroom so that my wife and I could both nap at the same time. Now if we could just find the time to use it regularly.
I love the concept of siestas, and wish businesses in states where the average summer temperature is over 90F and/or summer lasts from April to Octorber would get with the rest of the tropical world and allow them. Because working after lunch on a hot day is nearly impossible.
OTOH, if you live in a normal climate, have a decent sleep schedule and still need to take naps in the afternoon, you might want to have a doctor check you out. My mother-in-law who needed to take naps all the time found out she had a serious heart problem that required surgery to correct before it killed her.
They are the BEST thing, AND I’m so old. ;-)
I’m twenty-four and I’ve had an afternoon nap-habit since freshman year of college, so I’m skeptical of/somewhat resent the implication that only old people take naps.
That said, the main reason I have a nap habit is because I routinely go to bed at four in the morning only to get up at nine, so I’m pretty sure mine is not a sleep schedule you want to emulate.
even my 4 year old nephew agrees, afternoon naps are awesome.
So…I like the idea of mid-afternoon naps, but the sad part is they leave me feeling more befuddled and sticky-minded than before. And resentful that I spent my non-asleep time on sleep. (I like sleep, I just like it at night.)
Something something something gluten something.
Taking a nap in the daytime almost invariably gives me a headache, which is unfortunate, as I sometimes get Way Tired.
For some reason, I have never approved or sleeping in or napping. Not sure why. So I never take a nap, and never have since my mother made me many decades ago. I occasionally fall asleep after a good lunch, but never deliberately take a nap.
I really like naps as a concept, but whenever I try to take one I just end up reading or watching tv while lying down. I find it restful, but I’m not sure they count as naps.
A nap now and then is a great thing. But if you go to bed on time and still always need a nap, consider seeing a doctor. You could have sleep apnea; snoring is often associated with it, too.
Also, you are younger than me so you could not possibly be old! :).
I never used to be able to sleep sitting up, but as my age advanced, now I can doze off as long as where I’m sitting is comfy enough. I could probably become unconscious in John’s awesome new chair in about a minute.
Those naps aren’t deep sleep, so you don’t get the fuzzy head and confusion. I find them very refreshing. And my Chromebook is so lightweight that it doesn’t matter when it’s on my lap and I “rest my eyes” mid-surf.
Naps are under-rated as a form of recreation.
The post-lunch nap is a grand thing.
I’m bipolar2/hypomanic, so I consider any sleep a gift from the gods. Naps? Manna! You are living my dream, please snore for those of us who are woefully sleep-deficient. It’s your duty, as an American.
Jboggess: Thanks for bringing up sleep hygiene. As an insomniac, it took me ages and ages to learn to nap, and I’m still merely an egg. My current dog, an English Mastiff, has been a fab teacher. She’s a nap Olympian.
It depends who you are napping with…
I’m epileptic, for which I’m heavily medicated. Even so, there will still be days at a time where I get <6 hrs sleep, consecutively. When I get that little sleep just once in a while, I'm fine and I don't need a nap. When it happens on consecutive nights, routinely, I'll sleep when I can get the chance because otherwise I'll very likely have at least one seizure.
I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in college. I'd routinely come home from class in the early afternoon, sleep until dinnertime, wake up, have a normal evening, go to bed at my normal time and sleep straight on through til the next morning. Lather, rinse, repeat. When I left college and started working retail, shift work played such hell with me that there were nights I'd go to bed at six or seven and sleep straight on through until the next morning.
TL;DR: Naps are a good thing.
… get you fired.
Also meant to add that I have been victim of the fuzzy head and confusion; that usually happens when my “nap” (usually one of the marathon sleep sessions I described above) gets interrupted. There was one time my mother called and woke me up, and when I looked at the clock, then looked outside, I could have sworn it was six in the morning. Turned out it was six in the evening, but I was just so exhausted when I crashed and burned that I had absolutely no concept of time when she woke me up.
@Steve Kelner: I too have seen research that indicates that the human sleep cycle is supposed to include an afternoon nap as well as ~8 hours at night. We (well, a great many of us, at least) never outgrow this, but the modern work world does not allow for the nap.
I wonder how much productivity is sacrificed on the altar of rigid 40-hour scheduling….
About 45 minutes most late-afternoons on the floor of my office with Sophie the African hedgehog. She almost always squirms her way into my shirt. This is a rare picture. (Home offices rock.)
http://serenebreezes.com/Sophies-pictures/Sophie-53.jpg
I used to be one of those who wake up from naps groggy, disoriented, headachy and irritable. Then I discovered the wonders of the caffeine nap. Prepare one small caffeinated beverage of choice (mine is tea), get into a comfy napping spot with some relaxing reading material. Sip, read, when beverage is done set alarm for 20 mins and sleep. I wake up just as the caffeine is kicking in, with more energy than the caffeine alone would give me and no angry brain fog.
Best thing. I feel charged and focused, and it gets rid of my mid-afternoon period of heavy eyelids and repeated rubbing of eyes.
Thirty minutes to an hour is ideal for me and has been since I was a teenager.
It’s one of the truisms in my house that one of the differences between a child and an adult is when you tell a child they need a nap, they get stroppy and resist, and when you tell a grownup the should go have a nap, they are almost tearfully grateful. Mind you, “nap” here means “go lie on your bed for half an hour or a little longer, maybe doze, or maybe not.” It’s also known as the Disco Nap, as it means you can stay out till the wee small hours. Does for me and mine, anyway.
Afternoon naps give me an upset stomach… I so wish I could nap in the afternoon and not suffer the consequences…
My response: I wish I could take more of them but my biological clock is off. I get sleepy at 4, which is right when everyone else in my household wakes up from their nap.
I do love naps: The peace and quiet is so relaxing.
:-|
I’m an amateur at sleep so this is just what I was surprised by a few decades ago: Sleep has a rhythm, and apparently for the first twenty minutes or so one isn’t actually asleep, just resting, and if woken up while just resting? It’s refreshing.
But after about twenty-five minutes the sleeper goes into real sleep, and if woken up is going to have whatever woken up too soon symptoms they expect. Such as ‘oh god it’s fucking dark thirty in the oh please kill me’ thru ‘Oh, It’s a Beautiful Morning!’
As for “The BEST thing.”*
Uh, no. Not.
Way above that is doing something that takes ten seconds or less and costs nothing that gets some stranger who looks down in the dumps to smile, and, on the list, way above that smile is coaxing giggles out of a crying baby.
Note that I’ve totally died from my adoration of hyperbole.
SDT
*My security s’ware was blocking the Polldaddy thing, so I read the comments before allowing it so’s I could vote.
Favorite way to spend quality time with my kitty who wants to be an only cat (she was one of six when we got her and we’re now up to eight, so she’s unlikely to get her wish). She’s just so incredibly happy to be with her favorite person she purrs nonstop. Very soothing, if you don’t mind 23 pounds of cat on your chest. (I don’t, so long as she’s lying down rather than standing.) Sometimes her nine-pound sister will join us.
I do sometimes get that groggy, muddle-headed feeling later, but when I’m really sleepy I don’t care what I’ll feel like later as long as I get to shut my eyes now.
Coming off of your Hugo win, napping means that after you do your mandatory work, you may rest on your laurels. If you don’t have any laurels, you may rest on your bed, your couch, or your chair. Ghlughy should be part of your nap routine.
Hey, I’m more or less a decade younger than you and *I* like afternoon naps.
I’m a huge fan of naps! That was one of my favourite things about having babies, suddenly it was perfectly acceptable for me o sleep in the afternoon!
I have never been any good at them. I wish… (So did my mother when I was little.)
They are a terrible thing. Falling asleep mid-afternoon means I haven’t been getting enough sleep, and will take forever to fall asleep tonight.
Would be the BEST thing – except that I’ve found that when I nap, I almost always get that thing where I’m half-awake, paralyzed, convinced that some malevolent being is standing over me, and I’m trying to move or scream but can’t… (it’s a real and not-uncommon thing, Wikipedia “sleep paralysis”). By the time I actually wake up, I’m so stressed out that any good from the nap is completely negated. So, no naps for me. But good on you if you can enjoy them!
Mid afternoon naps: awesome.
Three year old in the house who you must clean around: nap blocker.
If taking naps is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA – I filled this out after waking up from a five-hour “nap”.
Yawn.
Nap by itself meh. Another story as part of the three favorite things: shower before and a nap afterward
A Very Good Thing, especially when caused by Feline-Induced Narcolepsy. This occurs when a large cat drapes herself the length of your torso, puts her head on your shoulder, and purrs at about 75 decibels. Guaranteed snooze until said cat hears food related activity in the kitchen and launches herself off, kicking her full weight against your bladder.
I am definitely not a nap person. I usually wake up transformed into a ragey jerk face.
I have Ankylosing Spondylitis, a type of immune disorder arthritis that is aggravated by excessive activity or staying still too long, like sleeping. I wake up about every 20 minutes six to ten times a night all my joints locked unable to move. You know that dream where you are running from the monster but you can’t move an inch? That is exactly how it is, except for real. And pain that feels like someone is sticking an icepick in any joint that has any pressure on it, including the sheets on my toes, on a bad night. This is accompanied with physical exhaustion. When I was a young man I dug out my septic field by hand by myself. The ditches were 4 feet deep at the deepest and 50 feet long, three of them. Even then I did not feel as exhausted as I often do now.
Before this I got about 4 hours sleep and felt great all the time. Got lots done, had lots of hobbies. Now I get nothing done and almost never get any decent rem sleep. I get gradually more tired as I go day after day without any decent sleep, until finally my body demands I sleep no matter how much pain I am in.
Napping screws up my sleeping schedule and makes nights completely unbearable leaving me no longer tired enough to sleep despite the pain. That is despite some heavy duty amounts of pain killers, tylenol and the occasional sleeping aid.
If I could just close my eyes for 10-20 minutes a day, I would be refreshed and so much more productive in the afternoon. To those who find an afternoon nap makes them groggy, you may be sleeping too long. If I took a 2 hour nap, I’d wake up groggy, too.
It’s a super good excellent thing, this midafternoon nap idea. It’s not QUITE the best, but it’s very, very close. But it can’t be a long nap, because then I have Weird Nap Dreams, which are always terrible because one of my characters (in the RPGs I play or the stories I write) ALWAYS DIES. That’s why midafternoon naps can’t be the BEST thing because they might accidentally be too long. Then someone dies. (True story: after one weird nap dream, I marched into my Spousal Unit’s man cave and accused him of trying to kill my character in the game he GMs. That was fun.)
An impossibility — cuz, y’know, when you have the kind of sleep disorder that requires medication any time you want to catch a little shut-eye, naps just ain’t happenin’. Ever. Again.
All of the above!
I routinely take power naps during the day. Sharon above is correct. A 15 to 20 min nap is usually all that is required to rejuvenate that mind if at work.
However, when I get “old”, I certainly plan on much longer naps.
Naps are good, but not as good as sleeping late in the first place. I need 9-10 hours of sleep a night to feel rested. If I don’t get that I sometimes nap. In general, I find I don’t get that heavy, groggy feeling from a nap if it is relatively short and thus usually not in my bed. By the way, I am 33 and do not yet have a kid, so there’s that.
Midafternoon naps tend to leave me completely disoriented for the rest of the day. I should consider trying some of those shorter “power naps”, though…
I go off-schedule too easily to enjoy napping. It takes me 3-4 days to get back to normal if I miss regular sleep, and if I nap I’m pretty much guaranteed to miss that night. My dad and my gf are both somewhat insomniac, so I know it could be way worse, but between the schedule drift and the sleep apnea it’s bad enough as is.
I discovered the joy of mid-afternoon naps in University and absolutely loved them. Nowadays though, I tend to be running on not enough sleep and a mid-afternoon nap can quickly turn into “Ah shit, how did it get to be so late, and how will I sleep tonight?”
A sign that either I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, in which case they are a good thing, or I’m really, really sick, in which case they are the BEST thing.
Sometimes naps are needed, but then I feel like a zombie afterwards and can’t sleep that night. I wish I could do the ‘refreshing’ nap thing.
Afternoon naps are a very good thing. Friendly afternon naps are the BEST thing.
I’m torn. Because I could probably use an afternoon nap nowadays, being old and cranky now. But I’ve always felt cranky and weird after afternoon naps. Unless some canoodling can be arranged.
Given the presence of a 5 month old they are practically the best thing ever
They are not so awesome if you’re driving after lunch.
I meditate for 15-20 minutes after lunch. Days where meetings/work deprive me of my recharge time seriously damage my productivity in the afternoon. Ive been meditating for more than 35 years.
I can’t take mid-afternoon naps without having nightmares, so they don’t work for me. But if they work for you, more power-naps to you!
I like afternoon naps and I am taking them more frequently. A curious thing about sleep patterns is that it used to be more common for people to sleep twice during the night, a first period of deep sleep, followed by a period of being awake, and then a second sleep so called.
I only nap when sick – or I have insomnia. At which point, my nap starts between 3 and 4am. Otherwise, naps either leave me feeling Blah or ensure I don’t get to sleep that night.
I’m 11 weeks pregnant, sick, and potty training my 2-year-old son. Naps are fantastic right now! But normally I find them to be hit-or-miss. Often I wake up feeling worse than before the nap and then I can’t sleep at night.
Naps sneak up on me in my dotage. Here I sit, perfectly relaxed then Wham – nap attack.
@Jboggess, mintwitch: Like you both, I am also a fellow insominiac (generally get 2-3 hrs on a good night) and I have to tell you learning to nap was tough! However my cat has been a good teacher and we both usually have a nice nap around 5:30 when I get off work for about 20-40min :) Just long enough to recharge the batteries and make it through the rest of the day. To be honest I don’t know who I survived so long without them.
In theory, they’re the best thing ever. However, I always wake up with a foggy headachey head that lasts the rest of the day.
SO,
In theory, best thing ever.
In reality, not worth it. Instead I go to bed around 9pm. Which makes me SOOO OLD!!
Nothing wrong with napping. If you’re having trouble staying awake (not sleeping enough), it can even help to have a 20 minute date with the pillow. On weeks where I am seriously sleep deprived, an hour to two can do wonders. Having said that, I don’t have sleep issues in general. I sleep like a log. Problem is I need to go to sleep at 9pm as work starts at 6:30am, and sometimes I don’t wanna do that.
My theory is that John is following Paul Ryan’s example and doing the P90X exercise routine. When he finishes his 90 day routine, he will post before and after pictures and show the world his manly ripped body. He is doing this to show the ‘dudebros’ that he is a real man.
We have not gotten an update on his diet lately… so I’m starting a conspiracy theory. My chiropractor is trying to get me to do P90X. Supposed to be an effective workout routine. P90X would do wonders for John.
If you can do them – DO THEM!
I’m of two minds about naps, possibly three. (how many can I cram in here?)
I was never a napper when young — I just didn’t go to sleep in daylight, despite being tired. Because “nap time” was on the schedule, I resorted to books as a suitable substitute for sleep.
Sleep and I have always had our difficulties. When things are good, I sleep like a champ, and when the are not, I play a lot of computer solitaire (can’t concentrate enough to read).
In the last couple of years, I have found that naps sneak up on me. I’ll be reading or petting a cat or a dog and *wham!* it’s an hour later and I feel groggy and vague with no memory of how it happened. I’m working on this, though, and save naps for when I know I can have a day to straighten my sleep schedule. Also, that “caffeine nap” mentioned above seems to work, although I take longer.
My father was famed in our family for his ability to nap any where and any time, including a few places and times where we were afraid to wake him for fear he’d roll off the dock into the lake.
So….you’ve never written Helprin’s Memoir from Antproof Case?
Susan R:
Well, he wrote it before I could.
Naps invariably leave me worse off than I was. I’ve not had a nap since I was a teenager where I woke up feeling refreshed; I either never really go to sleep or I wake up feeling more tired, groggy, and disoriented than I did before.
The sitting up naps (which others of a similar age also suffer/enjoy, I see) has one great advantage: you don’t sleep deeply enough to dream, so no weirdness there. However, it’s a great disadvantage to wake up and find that your head and neck have fallen over at an angle they really weren’t meant to stay in.
Sleeping kitties put out some sort of electromagnetic field (that sounds more SF than “cat vibes”) that greatly assist in dozing off. If these fields could be replicated by something that wasn’t a furry little poop generator, there’d be no need for sleeping pills. Such things are common in SF, and I want one now. Chop chop, science people.
I have learned this year that the appropriate length for me to nap is 20-30 minutes – just long enough to start dreaming, or maybe have a couple good dreams. Any longer than that and I remember why I always thought I couldn’t nap, because then I can’t wake up properly for the rest of the day and I’m hateful as a result.
So. Short naps only, but done properly, they’re awesome.
Seconding MVS’s hypothyroid comment.
A pipe dream for me.
Dude, you’re so old – cause I’m older than you and I’m jealous that I don’t have a job that allows me to nap in the afternoon :)
@Annie: I know I’m really late to the party, but I had to sympathize because I’m in exactly the same place! I was not a napping person before I got pregnant, and then bam! Naptime! Right now! Not optional. I’m lucky in that my pets both nap prodigiously, and enjoy joining me, so at least I have company.