Nodding off? Power naps can be great refreshers

Some are beginning to catch on. Long-haul British Airways pilots are encouraged to rest in the air to make them more alert on landing. Doctors are calling for nap rooms to help them through night shifts. Britain's round-the-world yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur seems to survive on napping alone while at sea.

And two London business men recently set up Zzed Sheds, a private club where city workers can take naps in sleep pods similar to those set up at New York City's MetroNaps three years ago.

"We know from personal experience that people who work in the city work very long hours and are exhausted a lot of the time," says Nigel Mitchell, a founder of the company that is pioneering the Zzed Sheds, which he says are used mainly from late morning through the afternoon. "If you get to your desk at 6 in morning, by 11 o'clock you are ready to shut your eyes for half an hour."

The idea has caught on in at least a few European cities. MetroNaps pods debuted at Copenhagen airport last year, and Barcelona businessman Federico Busquets is doing brisk business in Spain with his napping-parlor franchise.

Yet it's one thing to nap in a private club with sleep pods, and quite another to doze at work.

Few British employers appear to be entering into the spirit of National Nap at Work Week. Perhaps this is not surprising in a country with the longest working hours in Europe, where the average lunch break is now just 19 minutesand the "siesta" is still something for Continental Europeans - though even among that set, the tradition of long afternoon breaks is fading.

An impromptu (and rather unscientific) Monitor survey of employees at a dozen British companies, small and large, found only one that had a "chill-out room" for power napping. "It's really not the done thing," says Anna Harrison, an editor at a London publishing house.

Professor Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, says there's a good reason for such suspicious attitudes. Workplace napping is easily open to abuse, particularly for people tempted by the many nocturnal distractions outside office life.

"I'm not in favor of napping if you've had a night out for social reasons," he says. "Why should employers provide beds for people who didn't get enough sleep because they've been watching videos or out clubbing?"