Why power napping is good for someone like you

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What is a power nap? How long should a power nap be? What’s the ideal power nap time? Do you need to climb into a fancy nap pod to get the benefits of power naps?

We’re here to answer those questions in this blog article to power napping. We’ll talk about what power napping is, why it works, and how best to incorporate it into your life and routine.

How to Power Nap to Boost Your Productivity | Casper Blog

What is power napping?

A power nap is a short period of sleep. It’s meant to supplement normal sleep and give sleepers a burst of alertness and energy.

You know how preschoolers lay down in the middle of the afternoon to give their minds and bodies a chance to recharge? The same approach works for adults, too, and research reveils we need it: 1 in 3 adults don’t get enough sleep.

How can power napping help?

We should all get 7-9 hours of sleep a night, say experts. But that’s sometimes difficult. Life gets in the way. We get hooked on a new show and don’t realize our bedtime passed three episodes ago. Work keeps us up late. Our children need us during the night. Anxiety wakes us up and makes it hard to fall back asleep.

When we get less sleep than we need, we build up a sleep deficit. Operating on less sleep impairs almost all aspects of body function. It worsens our reaction time, information processing, judgment, patience, and vision. Extended fatigue can also lead to stress, burnout, and moodiness.

Daytime naps can help us recover from sleep deprivation. They can reset our systems, replenish our energy levels, and improve our performance. A rested mind and body allow us to better engage in the activities that bring us meaning and with the people who bring us joy. Getting enough sleep, whether at night or during the day, helps us be more present in our lives.

Power napping works best if you already have a good sleep routine. If your body doesn’t fall asleep easily, you may want to work on improving that first. If not, taking naps during the day can make it even harder to fall asleep at night.

What are the benefits of power naps?

Quick answer: Return to the day more focused, present, and productive

Reaching for an espresso or a chocolate bar isn’t the only way to combat a mid-afternoon slump. Napping can actually be healthier than compensating for tiredness with coffee, according to the Behavioural Brain Research journal, since caffeine can decrease memory performance. You might get a burst of energy from a latte, but at the cost of lower-quality work.

Power naps, on the other hand, can help replenish energy while improving memory recall. They can also lead to more alertness and better mood.

Power napping and meditation both benefit the mind as well as the body. The benefits of taking a nap include reduced stress, lowered risk of heart attacks, and better concentration.

Healthy sleep is more about quality of rest than quantity of hours. A power nap, while short, can let our minds recharge and heal.

Setting up for a power nap

Many employers have recognized the benefits of power naps on work performance. Several companies offer opportunities to nap at work, including in dedicated spaces with sleek nap pods.

You don’t need fancy equipment to have a good power nap, though. Preschoolers get by with a dark room and a yoga mat, after all. With that in mind, consider these aspects of your napping set-up to get the most out of a power nap:

Location. If you don’t have a dedicated napping space available, find somewhere you won’t be disturbed and that has low noise levels. Is there an office or conference room you can use? A parked car can be a good option. If you work from home, try retreating into your bedroom.

Timing. Set an alarm for 20 minutes and make sure you don’t have anything to do right after it goes off. While you should wake up refreshed, not groggy, it’s best to give yourself a few minutes to transition back into work.

Distractions. Power down your computer and put your phone on silent. If you can’t get away from noise, try noise-canceling headphones, earplugs, or sleep music. You’ll get the best rest in a dark environment, so pull down the shades or try an eye mask.

Comfort. You’ll have an easier time falling asleep if you can lie down or at least recline. Our body temperature naturally drops in sleep, so pull a blanket or jacket over yourself so you stay warm as you nap.

To prepare the mind to get the most out of a power nap, we should approach it the same way we do sleep at night:

  • Start with a relaxed, gentle focus
  • Take a few deep breaths and close your eyes
  • Let your mind slow and your body power down

If you use a guided meditation to help ease yourself into sleep, follow the instructions. If sleep music’s soothing baseline of sound allows you to relax and fall asleep, press play. And if you prefer to let your mind do its own thing, go for it.

As your thoughts fade and you drift off, let your mind and body rest.

Other aspects of power napping

Consistency. As strange as it sounds, napping is a skill — one that many of us have forgotten. It takes patience and perseverance to learn to power nap. Don’t get discouraged if you can’t fall asleep immediately or if your alarm goes off and you don’t feel like a new person. Like meditation, napping is something you get better at with practice. Try again tomorrow.

Managing expectations. Science tells us power napping has certain benefits, but how you experience them will be unique to your mind and body. Let yourself nap with an open mind as to how you’ll feel afterwards.

Find the right environment. Maybe your bed is too comfortable. Maybe your office chair isn’t comfortable enough. Modify your routine as needed: switch up the location, position, or time of day of your next power nap and try for different results.

Happy Power Napping

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The Common Denominator of Burnout

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Your load was apparently greater than your capacity. Have you burned out, do you no longer have any fut, or can you barely concentrate? Do you have a noise in your head or the feeling that your head consists of cotton wool? Do you cry, are you frustrated? You bet you’re burned out.

In ninety percent of the cases, burnout is followed by a non-real fear. It happens to entrepreneurs and managers who often set high standards and find it difficult to accept that they cannot do something.

As a woman, do you have a dual function such as work and family and are you also an informal caregiver? Then you are soon in the danger zone. You get disappointed in yourself, which in turn leads to stress, fatigue, fear of failure, all kinds of other complaints and finally to exhaustion.

Hard to comprehend 

If you are burned out mentally, then your mind can hardly contain burnout. It is going to lead a life of its own and you become increasingly stressed.

“Flip a button”

Not only you, but everyone who is burned out, has the feeling that somewhere ‘a knob must be turned’. If this does not happen quickly, your complaints will get worse! Compare it with a broken leg.

Broken leg

You break it in one go and it is also set in one go. Only then will your healing begin. If you continue to walk with it without having to let your leg get stuck, then it will crochet together.

Put first

It is the same with burnout. First ‘set’ by ‘turning the right buttons’ and then the healing starts. It took you a while to become burned out, but the first symptoms suddenly appeared and got worse.

Unknowingly know

You unknowingly know that you have the ability to change negative or positive in one go. Hence the feeling of that button.

The best approach

A correct approach does not therefore have to take long. Positive change is faster than you think. Unfortunately it does not happen automatically. The condition is that you are motivated and willing to fully commit yourself.

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If the amount of work suddenly doubles

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Sometimes the circumstances force you to take on more work than you can actually handle. How do you cram twice as much work in the same time….

 

In my student days it was a frequently used assessment, the card catalog. The applicant receives an enormous amount of information and does not get enough time to go through it. How the applicant deals with it says a lot about his ability to prioritize. But what if your entire working week is a large card catalog. If you have chronically too much work?

You can be busy and you can be busy. In one case you are focused all day, do lots of work and at the end of the day you have a very satisfied feeling about yourself. You fixed that nicely.

Behind the facts

In the second case of being busy you follow the facts. Every mail that comes in feels like an extra amount of work, colleagues who drop by to ask something(s) are unwelcome , and if someone asks how things are going, you can only produce some sort of incomprehensible murmur. Not feeling satisfied at the end of the day, just the question of what you have done with your time all day. What you were so stressed out, you can’t even reproduce anymore.

It is that second form of pressure that leads to burnout. Because if something leads to stress, it is the loss of control, the feeling of being lived.

It’s hard enough to keep control of your own work. Books have been written full of techniques to increase your concentration, set priorities and close yourself off for distraction. But what if the circumstances are just not going well? What if the amount of work suddenly increases, for example because a colleague is sick who is not being replaced? If a big new project comes in and the people are not in favor of it or if a lot of extra work is just put down for you?

No more hours

Whatever the reason may be, many people have to deal with increasing amounts of work and keeping up with that can be difficult. So how do you prevent this by working more and then buffering in the evening and at the weekend, and in this way working yourself into a burnout? A few simple steps can help.

The first step is to stand still and see how you stand. Are you unmotivated, do your colleagues snub and are you actually always tired? Then there is a good chance that you are already well on the way to a burnout. If that is the case, you must change your habits as quickly as possible. For more about recognizing a burnout in time.

Larger whole

Then it is important to zoom out to get the bigger picture back in sight. Accept that you will not get everything done. So don’t start doing things like a headless chicken, but take the time to set priorities. The chance is small that there are things in it that you can skip, but start with the most urgent things.

Then it is good to remember that you are not alone in your company and that there are people you can ask for help. Even though it’s not what you want, and it feels like you’re failing, it’s your boss’s job to make sure you can do your job well. So make use of that. Nobody can do anything about it if you fall over because of the stress because you did not ring the bell in time.

The team

To prevent you from feeling that you are lazy or to moan, it helps to frame the reasons that you do not want to do extra work in the interest of the team. With all the work you get put on your plate, ask yourself: am I the best person to do this, and who on the team can help me with this?

And an important lesson that I am now learning: no is also an answer. So is there a colleague next to your desk with a request for something he could do well himself? Does your boss have a nice plan again that will give you a lot of extra work? Just say no. That not only works best for you, but also for your team. If everyone knows where he stands, you will get further.Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Entrepreneurs : More clarity as a secret weapon against burnout?

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailLiberation, also called enthusiasm, enthusiasm or enthusiasm, has become increasingly popular lately. After all, many employees are convinced that advocacy helps to reduce absenteeism and increase work performance. That’s certainly true, but how do you put your enthusiasm for your private life? How can you live and exercise life so that you have a vital and fit feeling?
You are reading this article about this “secret weapon” against burnout!
What is freedom?
Before we get into the depths of diving, we have a definition of freedom. Because what exactly is it?
Many definitions have been found for clergy at work, so therefore, with this introduction, I write about job satisfaction at work. Later on in this article we go into a happy life and how you can keep it vital and healthy.
Concentration is actually a combination of several factors:
• Commitment
• Energy
• “Flow”
Definition of Liberation
Wilmar Schaufeli, Dutch Labor and Organization Psychologist, Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Occupational and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University, Utrecht, gives the following definition of enthusiasm:

“Liberation is a positive, affective-cognitive state of supreme satisfaction, characterized by vitality, dedication and absorption. This is accompanied by energy bubbles, feeling strong and fit, able to work long and tirelessly with work and have great mental resilience and great perseverance. ”
How does a burnout occur?
Very short through the bend you could say that a burnout occurs if day after day more energy is consumed than you get back.
See it as a kind of savings account , you get constant money but do not occasionally make a deposit. Well, then your money will be on. Or worse, you’ll get red.
That’s how it’s with your energy too.

If you consume more energy month after month, and you get little to nothing for back then your energy level drops every month. After that, it takes a lot of effort to replenish your energy reserve.
If you consume more energy for a long time than you build, you will be in a burnout. Your energy reserve has been burned. You do not have a puff more and no willpower to take business. Simply because you literally do not have the energy anymore. Why freedom helps to keep a burn-out remotely If, on the other hand, you also take activities every month that makes you happy and give you new energy, you’ll keep it for longer. Even better: do so much every month of such activities that, as it were, you make big savings on your energy savings account. You will then build a reserve for times when your skin is less well.
If you do things that you like, what you get excited about, or where your blood will flow faster, you’re likely to get new energy. But how do you find the things you’re getting energy from?And how do you create enthusiasm at work?
Liberation at work
Previous research has shown that about 1 in 5 people are really happy. How can you make sure that you become a fellow employee?
What was previously thought was that the workload was too high when one no longer got the job is now thinking about support and motivation . Sometimes it’s not just work pressure, but just the last two factors that matter. One must be intrinsically motivated and able to work autonomously to be inspired.
Some items to be a fellow employee do not have your own hand. It is nice and conducive if the management clearly communicates clearly. Also praise prizes help the enthusiasm.
Those things are not entirely in your hands, they are external factors.
Yet, to some extent, you can awaken your enthusiasm by addressing your own energy sources. By monitoring your energy level and adjusting your workflow, you can create the perfect match.

Job demands versus energy sources
Job requirements are specific tasks that you must perform , they belong to your job.These can be physical tasks, but also organizational, social or mental tasks. Performing these tasks takes energy. However, that does not have to be a negative thing in itself.
It will only be stressful if your job requirements are not related to your energy.
That is why you speak your own energy sources so that a good balance of work and workload is created. These are sources that give you energy.
Examples of this are:
• High self-esteem
• Optimistic attitude
• Can work effectively
• Stress resistance
• Can work autonomously
• Feedback from colleagues received
• Valuation of colleagues and supervisors
• Support from colleagues
• Opportunities to develop and grow
As you can see, there are both personal and business energy sources. Do not think of yourself that you can not be inspired if you are not fainted by nature. Everyone can become a happy person, if you know the right sources of energy and find the match between what you want and what you can.


The benefits of enthusiasm at work
The paid employee offers not only benefits for himself but also for the employee. This employee is brushing the energy, is well in his skin and is in a hurry. His happy mood makes him easy to do something extra. He is going to work happily and quickly gets into a flow . He undoubtedly issues problems during the day, but then he does not stop trying. He feels healthy and energetic. He is both involved and connected with the organization. Due to its energy and optimism, this inspired employee offers innovative solutions and improved performance. He is more customer-friendly than his poor-humored colleagues and experiences his work as useful. He is not often sick, makes few mistakes and feels balanced.

How do you create enthusiasm as a human?
Work for yourself and think now “Well, what can I do with this?”
As a human, you often have no colleagues around you who can support you. You can not get a manager’s appreciation. What then? What else can you do to work?
One of the benefits of working for yourself is that you can do things in your own way. So you can work autonomously – one of the ingredients for a happy life. In addition, you do not need anything, this enables you to work extremely effectively. After all, you can do whatever you want to do, there is no boss that needs this or yours.
These are two major benefits of working. Furthermore, it is very dependent on your personality. Are you naturally an optimist or a pessimist? How do you deal with setbacks? Where do you get energy from?
Further in this article I treat the ways to lead a flown life, so not only will you be a fellow employee but you will feel a fellow person.
Work addicted or fought?
But before you read about this, I would like to give this to you: liberation is something different than work addiction.
Work addiction leads to burnout. Hard work is not necessarily needed to be inspired.Mettering work is rather a sign of work addiction than freedom.
You undoubtedly know people who seem to stop their soul and bliss in their work. They are at the office and arrive for the rest and they go last. They are constantly busy, but at the same time attend all meetings and always finish their work. This has the effect that the laptop is still busy in the evening and almost non-stop. This employee will even be in charge of his weekend even.
Is it good or bad now?
Without further context, I would say: bad.
This seems more like work addiction than on clarity. Liberation begins with yourself. It’s intrinsic as it’s called. Work addiction, on the other hand, arises from the urge to prove yourself or to reap the appreciation of others.
Liberation is good, provided it is not a work addiction in disguise.
Liberation at home

It’s nice to be a fellow employee, but there’s more to life than just work.
How can you make sure that you become a happy partner or grown up at home? How can you make sure you always have a vital, fit and strong feeling?
‘Priming’
One of the ways to raise energy is through a so-called morning ritual.
Performance coach Tony Robbins uses a 9-minute meditation ritual. He calls it priming . This comes from the English word prime , which means excellent. It means that you give yourself an excellent feeling.
His approach looks like this:
1. Gratitude [3 minutes] : Be thankful for three different things for three minutes. Think about simple things like the sun rays on your face or the smell of fresh coffee.
2. Inner Power [3 minutes] : Tony then focuses on the body for three minutes. You can focus on your emotions, your thoughts or your “soul.” Whatever name you give to it, keep calm with body and mind. Visualize a liquid substance that slowly fills your body with light. This light gives you energy and power. Feel how this energy takes away your stress and ensures success. Visualize how you are going to be successful today.
3. A day of prosperity [3 minutes] : The last three minutes focus on what you are going to do today. Visualize these things as if you already did them. How does that feel? What do you see? What do you hear?
This is a powerful way to start the day and bring you to the correct mental state. Why is it so effective?
Gratitude exceeds the other emotions. You can not be grateful and angry at the same time, says Tony Robbins. In addition, he uses visualization because the brain does not distinguish between what it sees and what you see the laughter for the brain are both real situations. By imagining how you will be successful and stress free today, substances in your brain are created as if the actual situation is already.

Other ways to start your day are:
• Listen to music where you get an energy boost .
• Go to the morning sports . This gives you more energy for the rest of the day.
• Take caffeine-free periods . So your body becomes less resistant to coffee and you naturally have more energy.
Energy is just one of the ingredients needed for a happy life. But the base might go even deeper. Ultimately, it’s about finding your passion and your goal in life.
Find your calling
Want to get more out of your life, but do not you know where to start?
The following questions can help you wake up to dormant dreams and to revitalize it.
• What are your hobbies?
• What is the most significant part of your day?
• What are subjects that you could easily write about a thousand words?
• What are you doing dearest?
• What performance would you make extremely proud?
• What parts of your current job do you like?
• What dreams did you have as a child and what dreams are you still talking about?
• If you could only choose one thing you could remember, what would that be?


Conclusion
Work takes up much of your time. Therefore, it is important that you work with enthusiasm.But what if your job does not fully match your wishes? Then rely on your own energy sources and find the things you like about your work.
And remember that work is only one part of your life. You also have a private situation where freedom is just as important. A passionate and vital life can only lead if you are fought.
Resilience in your private life can create you by solving energy or by introspecting and looking for the things you get excited about.

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