The Twenty Minute Nap

There is this glorious event that I discovered in the past couple of months - it's called a twenty minute nap. I used to think that I could only lay down to take a nap if I could devote at least an hour to it. Any less amount of time seemed fruitless and not worth it. Now having two kids, I sometimes don't have quite an hour to devote to laying down. Then I read an article about airplane pilots and how twenty minutes is the ideal time to take a nap - any longer and you get in too deep of a sleep. If it works for pilots, I thought, maybe it could work for me!

I am quite blessed to have (most days) a two-hour window of time that both of my kids are sleeping. During this time I rest, catch up on emails or phone calls, spend a little time reading, occasionally do some chores or start on dinner, and often watch an episode of something on Netflix. I always allot at the end of all of this, 30 minutes to get settled into bed. Sometimes I set my alarm, and sometimes I just allow my kids to be my alarm :) But I have found that it is quite true, if I sleep past 20-25 minutes, I enter a DEEP sleep that is very hard to wake up from.

Adelaide and Charlie, March 2011