Interview by Claire Ané, in lemonde.fr (04/17/02)
Tens of billions of dollars. It is the cost of fatigue on the annual activity of the United States, according to the United States National Commission on Sleep Disorders. But the introduction of the nap at work costs nothing, or almost, and brings a lot in terms of productivity, strike scientists. The publications follow and resemble each other.
As William and Camille Anthony, a couple of researchers from Boston University, recall in The Art of Sleeping at Work, a nap of 15 to 30 minutes is enough to cheer up an exhausted employee, increase their concentration and memory skills. and save him a few blunders.
Sportsmen, foremost among them footballer Zinedine Zidane, and a certain number of politicians practice daily naps: Winston Churchill did not hide it; George W. Bush campaigned for the US presidential election with a pillow under his elbow; Jacques Chirac “testifies”, in a preface to Eloge de la sieste, by Bruno Comby, that “the nap grants, to work, the extraordinary windows of intellectual activity of the night”.
But companies in the northern hemisphere are reluctant to get started. On the grounds that a snooze is too “lazy”. That it’s not in their culture. However, a thrill was felt, three years ago, in the United States. Gould Evans Goodman then set up a tent with sleeping bags and an alarm clock in his design offices in Kansas City. In Pittsburgh, Deloitte Consulting now offers a rest room. Nike too. Consultants invest the niche; thus, Tom deLuca, teaches the “Power Napping”, a concept which he deposited.
Europe is converting very slowly. After Berlin and Hanover, Zurich inaugurated, last spring, a “restpoint” or “ruheraum”: 5 Swiss francs open to stressed executives a haven of silence, lockers and berths, right in the city center. In 2000, the municipality of Vetcha, Germany, where work rained but not the funds to hire, introduced a twenty-minute break after lunch, coupled with a course on the art of the nap. Big success. The mayor of Hilleroed, Denmark has just adopted, on a trial basis, the principle of a nap in turn. It goes without saying that these twenty minutes are part of working time.