After waking up from a particularly restful 3pm nap, I had an overwhelming sense of comfort and lay in my bed basking in the glory of the good old-fashioned afternoon nap. Now in my opinion naps have got a bad rep. They are considered the fodder of toddlers and octogenarians and well quite frankly, I wont stand for it.

Supposedly, when you are growing you need more sleep so it’s ok to nap. Well as far as I am concerned we are all still growing. That’s the whole point isn’t it? To grow as a person everyday. If that’s right I think I am entitled to take a daily nap, without being considered lazy.I think the reason why naps are not a la mode, is because they rely on your ability to take a break from whatever work you do in order to take this nap. And they also have a sneaky way of suggesting life can be exhausting and people don’t seem to like that. They don’t seem to mind being tired but they laugh at my fondness for naps. Well I have made a resolution never to be tired again. I am either up and ready to face the world or sleeping.I understand you might still have reservations, and a whole list as to why you don’t have time to nap in this busy world in which we live. So I decided to list all of the best reasons why you should consider adding a good old nap into your routine:

Number 1: It quite literally breaks up your day. It only dawned on me when I was dosing off at around 3.30pm this afternoon that despite thinking I was reaching the end of my day I am completely not. I had already been up over seven hours and am pretty sure I will be up for the next seven. So in fact I am taking a brief respite slap bang in the middle of my day. How great is that! And what’s even better when you realise your only halfway through your day, the possibilities of what you could do with the next half of your day seem to open up. A golden pathway of time seems to appear in front of your eyes like a magical yellow brick road. Well today my emerald city is cake baking. Before I realised I had more time, I thought I would finish a few things off and then settle down to watch some TV. But not anymore. Hello chocolate cake. Good-bye hours of wasted inactivity.

Number 2: Ok so this is a bit of a cheat as it carries on from where we just left of. But when we are tired we do lots of “relaxing” activities because we have no energy to do anything else. I will let you into a secret, come close; We are lying to ourselves. Watching TV doesn’t give us energy, it takes it away (sshh don’t tell anyone). And whilst sometimes it is literally the best thing in the world, if you’re so tired that all you do is watch TV every evening, you don’t get any more energy, you just get tired. You get more energy from doing stuff and seeing people. So go home take a nap, then go out, bake something, make something, read something, see something. Suddenly you have a life! Hurray for naps!

Finally Number 3 (perhaps the best reason of all): It gives you a rest from being you. I know this sounds little crazy, but when you nap you don’t have to worry about what food you need to go buy, what clothes need washing, how you are ever going to get your epic novel published, if you will have enough money for this month’s rent, or other concerns which quite frankly take up a lot of head space. You can just close your eyes and quite literally take a break from being you with all the stuff that comes with it and instead just be. Arguably meditation is amazing at doing this to0 and I do love a good 15min meditation session. But somehow napping is just that little bit better. Also more often than not when I wake up some of the answers to issues and concerns seem to pop into my head. It’s like getting a fresh new day. Now you can’t argue with that!

I can see I am winning you over. So here are the rules: Pull back the covers and tuck yourself in for a nice 20 minute shuteye. You don’t need to sleep, sometimes lying with your eyes closed is just as good. And remember set an alarm. You don’t want to keep waking up panicking about how long you have been sleeping or alternatively wake up to find its dark outside and you slept for hours, because it might disrupt your actual sleep and nobody wants that.

With those golden rules you will be a professional napper (please note nothing in this article offers any advice on being a professional rapper) in no time.

After all this writing it might be time for another nap. Sweet Dreams.

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