I found myself struggling to focus this afternoon as I was just really tired from all of the meetings today as well as just tired from the week so far. Sitting in the shed working away it was warm and I was getting sleepy. So what did I do, took an 8 min break with my eyes closed and felt as good as new and pushed on though the rest of the day.

To be clear, I don’t like to take naps as people would think of naps. However, a short timed amount like today is perfect for me. I always set a timer because I can’t have it be more than 15 min so today I set it for 10 but woke up before then.

Reflecting back, this is something I should do more when I feel tired in the afternoon and out of sorts. I used to do this all of the time when studying for the CPA (Certified Public Accounting) exam at the library in college. I was fortunate (or unfortunate), to have been able to sit for the two day exam right before we graduated from college so my whole last semester of school was spent taking classes in order to make sure I could graduate and then studying for the exam in my “free time”.

I am glad I had such a drive at the time but I knew that I wouldn’t want to try to study for this once I left school and started a real job. I figured I had to give it my all this first shot to jsut get it done. So I spent my whole last semester of school (or what felt like it) in the Library. I only left for classes, 30 hrs of work, and sleeping at night (when the libray was closed). Since I was there for countless hours I had developed this little trick of just taking a quick nap for 10-15 min and that was long enough for me that I could be back to normal and push on into the evening.

My girlfriend (wife now) was always intreged by this but also wildly frustrated when I would do this as she tried it a couple of times and would either not be able to nap and have wasted 10-15 min or would actually fall asleep and then when waking up would feel 100x worse.

So it probably isn’t for everyone but for me it did the trick and hoenstly got me though that semester and I skated by passing the exam thankfully and hopefully never going to have to take it again.