Another reason I love France

Besides making excellent wine and croissants, and having an aesthetically pleasing country, today I read a story on Slate.com that gave me another reason to love the French:

France's health minister may encourage napping at work. According to the AP, he "called for further studies and said he would promote on-the-job naps if they prove useful." Translated quote: "Why not a nap at work?" Rationale: Most French people say bad sleep at night has impaired their job performance. Critique: You want to know what impairs French job performance? Try their 35-hour work week and a gazillion weeks of guaranteed vacation. Napping is par for the course.

The writer seems to be making fun of France’s health minister, but I for one salute him. My first post-college job was at as a research assistant at an excellent company, Policy Studies, Inc. They truly respected their employees and offered health club membership, great benefits, three weeks vacation AND…a nap room! To show for it, PSI had a loyal and productive team. The nap room was my favorite part of the perks. I loved that room. Being that I had also just started performing at Impulse Theater and stayed up late three nights a week hanging out with the cast after rehearsal and shows, I became good friends with the nap room, and frankly, I don’t know how I could have done my job without it. All I needed was 15-20 minutes on my lunch break to catch up, and then I was a new woman. Of course, the better option would have been to not stay up until the wee hours half the week, but I was 22, so that’s what I did.

Now I’m 30, and because, I’m so old, I get tired midday even with consistent and healthy sleep patterns. Since I work from home, the past two days I started a new thing and been allowing myself a 20-minute nap, and I have to say, my nap-experiment has proved highly productive: I’ve been getting as much work done in the afternoons as in the morning, instead of dragging and feeling unfocused.

I say, the French have it right on this one. Hooray for naps!