"Typically, mention of our ever increasing sleeplessness is followed by
calls for earlier bedtimes and a longer night's sleep. But this directive
may be part of the problem. Rather than helping us to get more rest, the
tyranny of the eight-hour block reinforces a narrow conception of sleep and
how we should approach it. Some of the time we spend tossing and turning may
even result from misconceptions about sleep and our bodily needs: in fact
neither our bodies nor our brains are built for the roughly one-third of our
lives that we spend in bed.
The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. The
world's population sleeps in various and surprising ways. Millions of
Chinese workers continue to put their heads on their desks for a nap of an
hour or so after lunch, for example, and daytime napping is common from
India to Spain.

....This, despite the fact that a number of recent studies suggest that any
deep sleep - whether in an eight-hour block or a 30-minute nap - primes our
brains to function at a higher level, letting us come up with better ideas,
find solutions to puzzles more quickly, identify patterns faster and recall
information more accurately.

The head of the department of behavioral biology at the Walter Reed Army
Institute of Research, imagines a near future in which military commanders
can know how much total sleep an individual soldier has had over a 24-hour
time frame thanks to wris****ch-size sleep monitors. After consulting
computer models that predict how decision-making abilities decline with
fatigue, a soldier could then be ordered to take a nap to prepare for an
approaching mission.

Most of us are not fortunate enough to work in office environments that
permit, much less smile upon, on-the-job napping."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/op...oc.semityn.www



Employers I've had never liked anyone sleeping, even if on their own time at
lunch or on a break. Personally, I almost always feel rested and better
after a 20 minute nap; especially after lunch around 1pm