A personal admission:  I like to take a nap in the afternoon for an hour or so.  I wake up refreshed and ready to go.  I kept this to myself up to now out of concern that others would think me soft, but apparently I’m not crazy.  Or alone.

The Texas Tornado, Mark Bennett, always a voracious reader, has posted about a book he just completed called Brain Rules by John Medina.  The book appears to be a compilation of “rules” about how people work, not exactly new ideas but put together in one place.

Rule #7 caught Mark’s attention:  “Sleep well, think well.”

[T]here is a period of time in the mid-afternoon when most people experience transient sleepiness. “It can be nearly impossible to get anything done during this time, and if you attempt to push through, which is what most of us do, you can spend much of your afternoon fighting a gnawing tiredness. It’s a fight because the brain really wants to take a nap and doesn’t care what its owner is doing.”

Yes! Yes!  Vindication!  Don’t fight the brain!

Had it only been Mark who recognized this basic human need, perhaps one might chalk it up to criminal defense lawyer pandering.  But when David Giacalone, in a post completely independent from Mark’s, agrees, I know we’re onto something big.

A year ago, we argued that law firms have an ethical obligation to provide nap rooms for their aging members. A new survey done in the UK gives us a stellar “quality of life” or “professional civility” reason for more lawyer nap rooms. You see, a poor night’s sleep makes most people rather grumpy the next day at work. “Study highlights bad sleepers” (The Press Association, Aug. 3, 2008). And, a group of lawyers in their 50’s are apparently the most sleep deprived segment of British Society (via: Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch, Aug. 4, 2008). The f/k/a Gang believes that there’s nothing like a good nap to calm an old grump.

I love it.  Not only is it a sound concept based upon the need for clarity of thought (at least for those of us who believe that thought is a helpful thing), but it’s an ethical obligation as well.  You wouldn’t want to be unethical, would you?

The siesta is a time-honored tradition in many countries, though it has often been viewed as a sign of weakness, even laziness.  Oh you fools, so blind in your desire to prove yourselves tougher and stronger than others.  Fighting human nature is a losing proposition.  And why would anyone be proud of being grumpy anyway?  It’s time to face facts, sleepy people are indeed grumpy, and we have become a very grumpy nation.  It doesn’t have to be this way.

Trials lawyers have known forever that the witness who testifies immediately after the luncheon recess is lost.  We never put an important witness on the stand after lunch, and we always try to push the other side’s killer witness off until after the jury returns from lunch to give us the greatest chance of having the jury nod off during the testimony. 

Now that I know that I’m not alone in my appreciation of an afternoon nap, perhaps we can openly recognize this as a basic human need.  Long live the Siesta!