In Australia you see billboards along the highways urging you to pull over and take a power nap if you feel tired.
As a touring musician I learned to take power naps (aka cat naps) long ago.
It started with early morning flights. I would try to catch up on the sleep I missed by dozing in my seat on the plane.
I would wake up confused and check my watch, only to discover that I had been asleep for less than ten minutes...yet I felt utterly transformed...refreshed...as if I had slept a whole night.
Last weekend I played an afternoon show at a festival in the south of England and then drove 457 miles to my home in Scotland.
I was extra-tired during the drive so I took two ten-minute power naps at motorway services along the way.
I arrived home at midnight feeling great.
Power naps enable you to leave everything behind for a brief moment in time, release stress, and recover perspective.
They give you energy.
The power nap is not only a useful tool for traveling (it's the best way to catch up with a new time zone, for example) and safe driving, but an important creative tool as well.
These days I take a power nap whenever I need to solve a creative problem. I always emerge refreshed, focused, and with a new point of view.
I compare it to re-booting a computer. You just run better.
Is it lazy, self-indulgent etc., to stop what you're doing and take a power nap?
Absolutely not.
It might be a difficult thing to get away with socially, as in an office environment...but if you run your own business and/or have the flexibility to set your own schedule, it can improve the quality of your work and increase your productivity.
Whatever you do, a power nap can help you do it more creatively and efficiently.
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Good advice, Preston. I am a driving instructor who knows all too well about the dangers of driving continuously for periods of longer than 2 hours. What I hadn't considered however was the creative potential of this expediency. I will bear this in mind when I next get writer's block: I haven't worked on a piece of original music for a couple of years but I know it's just a matter of time.
ReplyDeleteProbably not your taste, but I've stuck a couple of my home recordings on ReverbNation. The name is Martin O'Keefe-Liddard if you want to check them out. The first one was inspired by my happy relationship with my wife Sharon, the second was written after my cousin died in a car crash. You never know, something in these pieces which so few people have heard may serve as inspiration to you.
As you will see, I am a strict amateur and have no wish to acquire a fan base etc in this field of endeavour.