#and now. need nappuccino

[unproduciblesmackdown]

"winston quant billions: like anyone else, an entire universe" or "the good news is it's just that everyone's been terrible to you, the bad news is it's just that everyone's been terrible to you"

[rodmotta10]

The science of timing

Last week, during a conversation with my team about book recommendations, I brought up another great book by Daniel Pink: When: The scientific approach to perfect timing. 

If you haven’t heard of Daniel Pink, you should watch his ‘The Puzzle of Motivation’ Ted Talk. In my opinion, a masterful speech that includes: 

A powerful opening, which establishes a framework utilized throughout 

Well-timed use of humor 

Powerful conclusion 

And superb delivery 

Now back to the book...

You heard the phrase Timing is everything. And for most of us, timing is based on intuition and guess work. 

For a slim book, ‘When’ brims with a surprising amount of insight and practical advice. I highly recommend you read for yourself. This post is a quick overview but this is not going to do its justice. 

There’s one quote in the book that summarizes the whole thing for me and it’s this:  

"We simply don’t take issues of when as seriously as we take questions of what.” 

Pink starts the book by explaining that we all experience the day in three stages: 

• Peak

• Trough

• Rebound

So our alertness in energy levels increase in the morning, they decline around noon and then they ascend again towards the end of the day. About 75% of us experience the peak, trough and rebound in that order and we will get to the other 25% in a little bit. 

For this 75%, research shows that analytical tasks should happen during that morning peak stage, and that during the trough is when we should work on creative analytical tasks where we are most innovative and creative when we are not at our best. 

So what about the other 25%?

Pink refers to people as being in three different chronotypes. He calls them: 

• Larks - Early risers

• Owls - As you can image are late starters

• And Third Birds - kind of somewhere in the middle.

He describes that 75% as being comprised almost solely of larks and third birds. Owls make up that extra 25%. So this can be due to genes or it can also be due to age, for example: teenagers are often owls as you probably know, and older generations are more “larckey” in nature. 

So whereas Larks and Third Birds typically experience their day as a peak, trough and rebound, Owls are a bit different. Owls experience their day as recovery, trough and peak. 

To summarize we all experience something like a peak, a trough and a rebound, and that trough is the most dangerous time of the day. 

Pink even goes through research that suggests that you should never get an appointment at the hospital during the afternoon trough period, which is crazy. There’s a few other stories and again, I recommend that you read this book. But how can we combat those troughs? 

The author gives us some suggestions for that too. He says that we need to take breaks, and if you are looking for the ideal of a restorative break, consider a short walk outside with a friend during which you discuss something other than work. 

Another insight is that lunch is the most important meal of the day and it helps us combat those troughs that we experience and the most important thing: Don’t eat at your desk (he calls this the ‘Sad desk lunch’. 

Oh wait, there’s more: if you are anything like me, you love a good nap. Research shows naps are super valuable. Listen to this quote:  

“Done right naps can be a shrewd response to the through and a valuable break. Naps deliver two key benefits: 

• They improve cognitive performance

• And boost mental and physical health

But you need to limit the time of the nap to prevent, what he calls, sleep inertia, which is when we wake up feeling really groggy and gross. We should only take naps that are between 10 and 20 minutes. 

Dan recommends a great technique called the ‘nappuccino.’ Ideally after lunch, you have a coffee, then set your timer to 20 minutes. If it takes you seven minutes to fall asleep, you’ll wake up a little later, fully refreshed and with the caffeine just kicking in. 

Over the course of the rest of his book he talks about: 

• Beginnings

• Midpoints 

• Endings

Beginnings

It turns out that beginnings are much more important than we realize. For example: the school start time for teenagers and college-age students (the owls) should be later. Some studies even suggest that start time should be as late as 11am for optimal performance with those students. Right now the average start time in the US is 8am and that can have an impact on grades and performance��really interesting data. 

Midpoints

Can cause a slump where we lose interest and we get tired, like when we are in the middle of something where it feels like the end is nowhere to be seen and you’re just struggling alone. But they can also cause sparks, where we become more motivated and propelled forward. 

Our lives follow a general slump, for example, in the late 30s and early 40s and we are actually statistically at our slumpiest in our early 50s but then we rise up again later on in life to get to a point where we are actually in the happiest point of our life. 

There are three ways to turn an slump into a spark: 

Be aware of those midpoints. It will help you get out of it. 

Imagine that you are behind but only by a little bit that we can catch up. It really propels us to move forward. 

And finally, endings

Pink talks particularly about nine enders, so people who are 29, 39, 49 and so on. Apparently there’s a disproportionate number of nine enders who take on things like first-time marathons and things like that. 

We see the end of a period of life and we want to make sure that we are achieving so definitely a food for thought. 

Here’s another quote:  

“At the beginning of a pursuit, we are generally more motivated by how far we’ve progressed. At the end, we are generally more energized by trying to close the small gap that remains. 

I know it’s true for me but I’m wondering if it’s true for you as well? It definitely resonates with me. 

It’s also interesting that in that age-old debate of do you want the good news or the bad news first. There’s a fairly definitive answer based on research, and that’s that you should always give the goos news last. Given the choice, humans prefer endings that elevate. 

Conclusion

Hopefully by now I convinced you that time is not an art. Timing is really a science. And we can use that science to make better decisions. 

[peggyandjudy]

What on earth is a "Nappuccino"?

What on earth is a “Nappuccino”?

I always have more than one book in progress:  One for when I’m tired and need mindless entertainment; one for when I’m alert, is informative and grows my neuro-connections.   I found a book* that addresses both and surprised me with a tip on napping. When I was younger naps were a waste of time.  Now, I appreciate the “restorative power” of catching a mid-day snooze.  Here is a good recipe for…

[judithwesterfield]

What on earth is a "Nappuccino"?

What on earth is a “Nappuccino”?

I always have more than one book in progress:  One for when I’m tired and need mindless entertainment; one for when I’m alert, is informative and grows my neuro-connections.   I found a book* that addresses both and surprised me with a tip on napping. When I was younger naps were a waste of time.  Now, I appreciate the “restorative power” of catching a mid-day snooze.  Here is a good recipe for…

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/from-nappuccinos-to-more-weekend-zs-strategies-to-catch-up-on-lost-sleep/

From 'nappuccinos' to more weekend z's: strategies to catch up on lost sleep

Listen Story audio

6min 28sec

Editor’s note: If you like this article, you should check out Life Kit, NPR’s family of podcasts for navigating your life — everything from finances to diet and exercise to raising kids. Our new sleep guide is out Monday. Sign up for the newsletter, or email us at lifekit@npr.org.

There are lots of reasons why many of us don’t get the recommended seven hours or more of sleep each night. Travel schedules, work deadlines, TV bingeing and — a big one — having young children all take a toll.

• MPR News Presents: A neuroscientist explains the power of sleep • Kerri Miller: What we’re learning about the science of sleep

Research published recently in the journal Sleep finds that up to six years after the birth of a child, many mothers and fathers still don’t sleep as much as they did before their child was born. For parents, there’s just less time in the day to devote to yourself.

So, can you catch up on sleep? That partly depends on how much sleep you’ve missed.

A study in the current issue of Current Biology points to just how quickly the adverse effects of sleep deprivation can kick in. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder recruited a bunch of young, healthy adults who agreed to a stay in a sleep lab. Some were allowed to sleep no more than five hours per night for five consecutive days.

“After five days, people [gained] as much as 5 pounds,” says study author Christopher Depner, who studies the links between sleep loss and metabolic diseases. Lack of sleep can throw off the hormones that regulate appetite, he explains, so people tend to eat more.

Depner and his colleagues also documented a decrease in insulin sensitivity among the sleep-deprived participants. “In some people, it decreased to a level where they’d be considered pre-diabetic,” he says. Presumably, that rise in blood sugar would be only temporary in these young, healthy people. But it’s a striking indicator of how much a lack of sleep can influence metabolism.

And, even after a weekend of catch-up sleep, the participants still gained as much weight as those in the study who had not been allowed to get the extra weekend sleep.

So, bottom line: It can be hard for our metabolism to recover from a week of sleep deprivation, and — over time — chronic sleep loss can increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

These findings are eye-opening, but they don’t paint the full picture. After all, many of us who lose out on sleep miss only a few hours here or there. Our sleep loss is occasional, not chronic.

Consider this scenario: You have a long day of travel and arrive home late, say, at 2 a.m. And you’ve got to wake up at the crack of dawn for an early meeting the next day. Is that a big deal?

“The short-term effect is that you’re a little more sleepy — your concentration is poor, or [you may lose] words on the tip of your tongue,” says Dr. Chris Winter, a sleep specialist in Charlottesville, Va. But what’s the long-term effect of one night of partial sleep loss?

“I don’t think there really is one,” Winter says.

Winter says our bodies are good at compensating for a poor night’s sleep. “That correction is probably going to happen fairly quickly,” Winter says. “You only got four hours of sleep last night, so you’re probably going to sleep quite well the upcoming night.”

So, while it’s ideal to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, it’s not always possible to stick to this routine. And, a recent longevity study suggests this is OK. “We’re very adaptable,” Winter says.

Researchers in Sweden looked at how the amount of weekday and weekend sleep was associated with life span. The study included about 44,000 people who were followed for 13 years. The researchers found that people who tended to get less sleep during the week, but who made up for it with extended weekend sleep, did not have an increased risk of premature death. The researchers concluded that “long weekend sleep may compensate for short weekday sleep.” They published their findings in the Journal of Sleep Research.

“If you’re somebody who needs seven hours of sleep a night, then you really need 49 hours a week,” Winter says. In other words, it’s probably OK to vary your sleep a bit over a short time period, as long as it averages out to what you need.

“Yes, I do think you can make up for lost sleep,” Winter says. “I don’t think I’ll ever make up for the sleep I lost in medical school and residency, but I do think in the short term you can.”

Still, there is one potential drawback of sleeping in on the weekend: Too much sleep can throw off your body clock. So, an hour or two of extra sleep is fine, but you don’t want to sleep in so long on a Sunday morning that then it’s hard to fall asleep Sunday night.

Another way to recover: Take a nap.

“A 20-minute nap can make up for one hour of lost sleep,” says Jim Horne, a sleep researcher and professor emeritus of psychophysiology at Loughborough University in the U.K. He published a study in 2011 demonstrating the benefits of a 20-minute nap.

Horne also points to a review study that concluded that daytime naps can help boost performance — everything from improved memory recall to being more alert. But, here’s a tip: Don’t take a nap after 3 p.m., or it’s likely to interfere with your nighttime sleep.

And Horne has another nap strategy for those times when you want to wake up feeling very alert.

“People call it a caff nap,” Horne says. The idea: Lie down to sleep immediately after drinking a cup of coffee.

“That coffee takes 20 minutes to kick in,” Horne explains. That’s just enough time to catch a few Z’s, and it has been shown to be “a very effective combination” for sleepy drivers, he says.

The caffeine-plus-nap strategy now goes by several names. My favorite (with a hat tip to writer Daniel Pink): the nappuccino.

Follow NPR’s Allison Aubrey at @AubreyNPRFood.

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