The Retirement Nap

I've always been an early bird. I rise before the chickens, and retire to my comfy bed with a book and nightcap early -- drifting off when my eyes are tired with talk radio chirping in my ear. This has been my pattern my entire adult life.
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I've always been an early bird. I rise before the chickens, and retire to my comfy bed with a book and nightcap early -- drifting off when my eyes are tired with talk radio chirping in my ear. This has been my pattern my entire adult life.

One of my adult daughters whose biological clock is the opposite of mine, told me she thought there was something wrong with her when she was a teenager. She was a night-owl who wanted to sleep late while her mother jumped out of bed early ready to charge through the day. Based on recent studies of teens' need for sleep -- to include starting school later -- we now know her biological clock was perfectly tuned to her age and developmental stage.

When I initiated my first retirement in summer, 2013, I still rose early. I saw my husband off to work, then went to water aerobics. I also jumped into painting projects in our condo in order to prepare it to sell. But each day around 1 pm, my body told me to go to sleep. So I did. Sometimes the rest would be a 20 minute power nap; other days the nap would be an hour or more.

I was puzzled by this biological phenomenon. One day I was charging through full workdays (and evenings) as a powerhouse nonprofit Executive Director; the next day, I was a youthful retiree whose body needed a battery charge to get through the rest of the day.

That was two years ago. I am now working part-time teaching at a local Career College four mornings per week. One of my colleagues is a semi-retired attorney from Seattle. He also teaches in the mornings and both of our days conclude around noon. One day I asked him: "What are you going to do this afternoon?" I expected an answer like, "play golf". Without hesitating, he said: "Take a nap." Me too, I thought.

I decided to explore this phenomenon further by doing my own research on why Boomers and Seniors need their daily nap. Here are some thoughts based on my exploration:

1) Older people have disrupted sleep. This topic was explored in my previous HuffPost column on retirement insomnia which you can see here. I think it is reasonable to conclude, if a person has tossed and turned at night because of little aches and pains or medication side effects, a peaceful nap is welcome the next day.

2) Because we aren't working full time, we now have the chance to get in touch with our circadian rhythm. In a column for the San Francisco Examiner titled "Aging Boomers Discover Power of Afternoon Nap", John Flinn wrote: "Don't look at it as a sign that we are turning into a nation of drooling old codgers. Look at it as a sign we are finally getting in tune with our bodies' natural rhythms."

3) Importantly, we now know our alertness and mood tend to crash twelve hours after we wake up in the morning. Stanford sleep specialist, Dr. William Dement, calls napping "a heroic act." (Source: John Flinn).

4) Airline crews experience disrupted sleep as part of their job description. Federal researchers studied 200 airline crews who experienced eight, nine hour international flights over twelve days. Half of the crews did not take naps; the other half snoozed away when they felt the need to do so. The study concluded that napping showed improved alertness and performance. Personally, I hope any pilot in the cockpit flying me to Europe has had a nap.

So long as your retirement nap does not cause insomnia, I say surrender to the experience. You've worked hard and arrived at a stage where these little privileges are your payoff for a life well-lived. John F. Kennedy took naps and so did Bill Clinton. And what we are learning about the value of rest, maybe corporate American will wake up (pun intended) and encourage employees to embrace the afternoon siesta.

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