Why You Should Take A Nap At Work: Experts Claim Taking 10 Minute Kips Will Make You More Creative
If you’re struggling to be creative at work, taking a nap can help.
Falling asleep briefly can ignite a creative spark, one study suggests, by helping the brain connect to retrieve different thoughts from memory.
Researchers recruited 49 people and got half to think about a tree — to mimic a topic at work they were supposed to have ideas about — while the other half focused on their thoughts.
Half of the people stayed awake doing either task, while the other half took a nap before waking up one to five minutes later.
People in the study took an average of five naps, over 45 minutes, to tap into sleep’s creative “sweet spot” — the first few minutes after they fell asleep.
After a nap, people were significantly more creative than when they stayed awake (stock image)
The study volunteers were then asked to write a story about a tree, which was judged for creativity based on originality, variety and number of ideas.
After a nap, people were significantly more creative than when they stayed awake.
When people were given three minutes to think of possible uses for a tree, and then asked to list verbs for tree-related words like leaf or branch, people were more creative after sleeping.
People got even more creative when they were instructed to think of a tree between naps.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, follows evidence that people are more creative at solving a math problem after a nap.
Thomas Edison, who perfected the electric light bulb, and the great surrealist artist Salvador Dali are said to have used naps to make them more creative.
Kathleen Esfahany, who led the new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, said: ‘People who signed up were very good at napping, and they came to the lab after lunch, when they were more likely to fall asleep.
“People were much more creative after a nap, which shows the sweet spot of the first stage of sleep for generating unusual ideas.”
The study used a glove to monitor when people fell asleep based on biological changes, including falling heart rate and relaxing muscles.
They were randomly woken up one to five minutes later because this is the length of the first stage of sleep, which evidence shows is best for creativity.
Half of the people who took a nap were instructed by a computer to think about a tree before each nap, while half were told to observe their thoughts.
The same two different orders were given to people who stayed awake.
People who took a nap showed, on average, more creativity in their story and in the “semantic distance” of the words they chose when naming trees or verbs for tree-related nouns.
Semantic distance is a good measure of creativity because it shows whether people have used words with different meanings.
For example, people in the study who said a tree could be used as a giant’s toothpick or as a witch’s broom were more creative than those who said it could be used for a tree house.
When the researchers analyzed all three tasks, participants who took a nap and were told what to dream about performed 43 percent more creatively than participants who took a nap without being told what to dream about, and 78 percent more creative than those who stayed awake with no instruction on what to do. dream about.