All the research indicates that catnaps can make you more productive – but that’s not the same as making you more creative.
As a young journalist in the days when lunch was regarded as proper lunch, the chief sub-editor of the magazine where I freelanced, let’s call him Rick, would curl up on the floor underneath the subs’ desk for his 15-minute recovery from three pints at the pub or several glasses of red at La Tire Bouchon. Rick would always wake up, return to the head of the table and spend the rest of the day, long into the evening, writing annoyingly clever headlines and transforming copy.
Were Rick not such a smart guy whose career went stratospheric, the raised eyebrows in the newsroom would have given way to far snarkier comments. Nappers were, and still are, dismissed as being lazy and lacking commitment. Rick, however, doubtless already knew he was in illustrious company, including world-class writers.
Famous creative catnappers from history
The working hours of renowned author, Honoré de Balzac, were unconventional. His first nap of the day was between 8.00am and 9.30am, after which he’d write for several hours, eat a meal then have a proper sleep at 6.30pm. He’d get up five and a half hours later at 1.00am and work through the night until his next 8.00am nap.
Strictly speaking, author Franz Kafka’s sleep regime can’t really be described as catnapping. But it’s a fascinating pattern. Like Balzac, Kafka also chose to go to sleep early morning, at 6.00am, having worked all night. He’d then wake again at 9.00am and work for six hours until 3,00pm when he’d sleep for his second burst until 7.30pm before his through-the-night marathon. As a complete aside, if you ever get to Prague do make time to visit the Kafka museum, which is a total gem.
Surrealist artist Salvador Dali swore by a nap which he described as a ‘slumber with a key’. He suggested you nap sitting upright with a key in your hand. You will have already placed a plate upside down underneath the hand holding the key. You doze off safe in the knowledge that you will wake immediately the key drops onto the plate. This might only be a nap of seconds, possibly longer, but even that micronap, Dali insisted, was enough of a refresher.
Leonardo da Vinci was also a prolific napper, apparently a two-hour a night man. He would point out that there’d be plenty of time to sleep when you were dead. Hard to argue with that.
Napoleon Bonaparte reckoned a man needed six hours sleep, a woman required seven (Josephine might have disagreed) – a fool eight.
During a battle, Napoleon also existed on two hours' sleep a night, making up for any deprivation with copious naps during any lull in hostilities. He could happily doze on board his famous Arab horse, named after the battle of Marengo in 1800, an important victory for Napoleon that consolidated his power in France.
Winston Churchill was a vigorous defender of catnapping. “Don’t think you’ll be doing less work because you sleep during the day,” he wrote in his memoir The Gathering Storm, “that’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination.”
Catnappers perform better than non-nappers
All the sleep studies show that catnaps boost well-being and productivity. For example, a major piece of research carried out at The University of California, Riverside, in 2016, proved that those who catnapped performed tasks better than those who did not. The researchers set a memory test to 81 volunteers then divided them into two groups. One group was allowed to catnap while the other group watched a film. Later, the two groups were reunited and were given a second memory test. Those who had napped performed 40 per cent better than those who had not.
That’s an impressive difference but writers will be more interested in whether or not their creativity could be 40 per cent better. And that’s far harder to prove. Sleep recharges our brains and restores energy, which in turn must fuel creativity. On the other hand, if all it took was a quick nap to resolve a sticky plot point, writers would be napping more hours than they were awake.
Sara C. Mednick, PhD, the renowned sleep expert and author of Take a Nap! Change Your Life says: "You can get incredible benefits from 15 to 20 minutes of napping. You reset the system and get a burst of alertness and increased motor performance. That's what most people really need to stave off sleepiness and get an energy boost." And it’s that boost that presumably kickstarts the creative juices? Most creative people work hard (look no further than the above examples) so a nap must, therefore, be helping us graft better?
A catnap isn’t a full-on sleep, nor should it be a routine afternoon nap. The secret of a catnap is only surrendering when you have to, not just when you want to. And only sleeping for the minimal amount of time. Crash out for too long and you’re going to be groggy for at least an hour afterwards which defeats the point. Too short a nap and you won't enjoy the benefits because you still feel whoozy. The idea is to feel sufficiently energised to return to the keyboard without wanting to kill off all your characters, although, of course, all writers have to kill their little darlings eventually.
The magic catnap length
As Mednick says, 15 to 20 minutes is the generally advised catnap maximum length. This enables one part of our brain to carry out some data sorting without another part trying to control it. But what happens if you inadvertently end up napping for longer? It's all good. Anything from 30 to 60 minutes is apparently helpful for the memory, but that could come at the price of the dreaded grogginess. A much deeper sleep, as in 80 to 90 minutes, achieves Rapid Eye Movement (REM), and often accompanying dreams. REM plays an important role in allowing our brain to make new connections and thereby solve creative problems, but REM can’t be described as a nap by any stretch.
Fine tuning your napping
If you’re an early riser (sparrow’s fart as my dear old dad used to call it), the optimum catnap time is around lunchtime. If you’re an owl it’s more towards 2.30 to 3.00pm. I’m larkish but still prefer the later slot although even a few minutes after that 3.00pm limit and the nap doesn’t work. You can find apps to set the maximum downtime and gently bring you round. I’ve never used one because the whole point of a catnap is that you should be able to wake up naturally.
Top tip: if you drink a cup of coffee 30 minutes before you plan your 15-minute nap, the caffeine will kick in as you wake up. This delivers optimum benefits (but not if caffeine keeps you awake at night). Don't plan it too much as it ceases to be spontaneous.
When should you not nap?
There’s a school of thought that says that if you struggle to sleep, try and not give into the urge to nap during the day as it will stop you sleeping well at night. However, I read an interesting early blog by Daniel Tenner who argues that catnapping is not sleeping anyway – and that you can train yourself to get all the benefits without spoiling your sleep pattern.
Anywhere will do
Although the purists say it’s better to lie down, regular catnappers know that location and position don’t matter. Over the years I’ve done the whole gamut from slumping head on arms in the library as a student, to perching on an office loo (near the newsroom mentioned above) to dropping off in the chair I’m sitting on now. As a Londoner, I’ve regularly napped on the tube, some inner sensor alerting me when it’s my stop.
Catnap alternatives
Naps certainly have their place. I don’t catnap every day by any stretch, maybe not even for weeks at a time, but as and when the urge to nap strikes, I surrender. Have I ever then woken up and felt a magic creative surge? No. Felt a whole lot better? Absolutely.
The fastest fix to boosting a writer’s creativity is a simple and immediate change of perspective. If your energy’s sapping, and you're lost for ideas, don't sit around. Stand up and away from the keyboard or pen. Make a cup of tea, chat (not on any kind of screen), take yourself or the dog for a walk, force yourself to the gym, stretch. Focusing on anything but what’s right in front of you will recharge you in the same way as a nap and when you return to your screen or notepad, you'll start resolving that pesky plot point.
Image credits
*This is part of a larger pen and ink image called 'Studies of Cats and of a Dragon' photographed by the author from The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, The Reprint Society, 1963.
** Photograph of Winston Churchill by Nick Thomson