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  • Modern life moves quickly - too quickly for some

  • - and it's affecting our sleep.

  • According to the National Sleep Foundation,

  • a third of people in the UK get less than the recommended seven

  • to nine hours a night.

  • We all have a smartphone and a tablet.

  • Exposure to this blue light of those

  • devices has negative consequences for our sleep

  • quality and our sleep duration.

  • Elevated levels of stress can have a negative impact

  • on your sleep.

  • You can choose any song you want...

  • What can we do about it?

  • Forgive me for saying that a Sleep Robot sounds a bit weird.

  • And is the answer napping at work?

  • When you feel your concentration waning, sitting at your desk,

  • don't grab the coffee.

  • Don't grab chocolate and sugary drinks.

  • Have a nap.

  • Sleep is important for well-being and for business.

  • But our minds are overstimulated.

  • We stay up too late, bingeing on box sets,

  • as smartphones and other screens are never too far away.

  • We are in the middle of a sleep crisis.

  • Globally, the WHO has declared that sleep deprivation

  • is a huge risk, not only on our health,

  • but also on our economy.

  • So I'm going to look at some of the latest solutions on offer.

  • Ostrich pillows, nap pods, wearable devices,

  • and sleep robots can all supposedly help.

  • So you've developed a Sleep Robot to try and combat

  • this problem.

  • How does it work?

  • You hold it during the night, like this, as a Teddy bear.

  • It will start to mimic the physical sensation

  • of the falling and rising of the breath, which

  • will be synchronised to you.

  • And it guides you to a meditative state of breathing.

  • And in combination with a speaker that is in there,

  • you can listen to guided meditation or a lullaby.

  • It doesn't look like a robot, it is fair to say.

  • What makes it a robot is the fact

  • that it can detect your sleep stage.

  • It detects your breathing pace.

  • And based upon the breathing pace,

  • it will tailor its behaviour to get you to sleep in a personal

  • way.

  • I hope that every bedroom in the world

  • will one day have Sleep Robots in them.

  • Well, I'm not sure there's space for a sleep robot in my bedroom

  • just yet.

  • You're supposed to hold it of this.

  • But It just doesn't feel right.

  • I tried it for a few nights, but I tend to sleep on my front

  • and I couldn't get comfortable while cradling it.

  • Can I fall asleep like this?

  • I don't think I could.

  • But this lack of sleep is adding up.

  • Marco Hafner, chief economist at Rand Europe,

  • produced a report looking at the economic costs.

  • If you have less than six hours a night,

  • over a kind of longer period of time,

  • this is where negative consequences

  • on your health and your well-being,

  • but also on your productivity, can set in.

  • Sleep deprivation costs the UK economy somewhere between 1

  • per cent and 2 per cent of GDP every single year.

  • That's roughly about £40bn.

  • People, or individuals, or employees

  • who don't sleep enough, they're more

  • likely to be absent from work, much

  • more likely to get a common cold or a flu.

  • Or you come to work, but you're not as productive

  • as you could be.

  • An individual who sleeps, on average, less than six hours

  • a night, loses an average of about five working days

  • more, compared to an individual who sleeps somewhere

  • between seven and nine hours.

  • So if you were to add that up, what

  • does that look like at a sort of national level?

  • It's probably in the hundreds of thousands days lost in the UK.

  • So we're losing hundreds of thousands of days of work

  • each year due to sleep deprivation?

  • Yes.

  • But do we all really need eight hours sleep every night?

  • Some successful CEOs and politicians

  • are said to survive on much less.

  • The question is whether all these politicians and business

  • leaders who claim that they only need two hours of three

  • hours of sleep a night are within this group

  • of natural short sleepers.

  • It's questionable.

  • Potentially, if they do this over a longer period of time

  • that will have negative consequences

  • for their health and potentially,

  • their productivity.

  • Even if you're lucky enough to be one of those people who

  • get the recommended seven to nine hours sleep a night,

  • a daily power nap could still boost

  • productivity and well-being.

  • Cara Moore, founder of ProNappers,

  • is on a mission to change attitudes

  • to napping in the workplace.

  • So as a nap fanatic I want to evangelise about napping.

  • Set a timer for 20 minutes, because you

  • don't want to nap for more than 20 minutes.

  • If you do, you'll get into what we call the sleep inertia,

  • and you'll wake up feeling groggy.

  • But, I mean, I'm a nap pro.

  • I can even nap for 5 minutes or 10 minutes,

  • and it makes such a difference to my productivity

  • in the afternoon.

  • We want to normalise napping in the workplace,

  • and to make it acceptable and accessible for all.

  • That all sounds great.

  • But where do you go to nap in the office?

  • Weird, or...

  • The reality, according to a ProNappers survey, is grim.

  • Three-quarters of our survey told us

  • that they had napped at work.

  • When we drill down into where they had napped,

  • the results were staggering.

  • This is somebody napping on the toilet, by the looks of it.

  • Yes.

  • So 23 per cent of our survey who had napped at work,

  • had gone to loo to take a nap.

  • Wow.

  • The most common place that people

  • went to nap during the working day was in their car,

  • or at your desk, or under your desk.

  • I mean, how on earth does somebody's nap

  • under their desk?

  • Well, I can nap anywhere.

  • So if really there was no alternative

  • and I was in an open-plan office and there was really

  • nowhere else to go, then I would just put my head down

  • under a desk.

  • So just legs poking out then, just

  • sleep a bit longer for my nap.

  • Don't mind my legs.

  • A little trip hazard, maybe.

  • A UK start-up, Podtime, says it has the solution.

  • It's sold 600 nap pods to companies in over 20 countries.

  • So you go in there, you slide the door.

  • You're in there and no one can see you.

  • So this is going to help change the culture at companies where

  • people maybe aren't used to napping, perhaps

  • because of a lack of privacy.

  • This is giving them that privacy to feel relaxed enough in order

  • to drop off.

  • Yes, indeed.

  • It's actually quite a small footprint.

  • Once you're in there, it feels quite spacious.

  • There's more space inside the pod than I imagined,

  • but I'm not convinced claustrophobic people would

  • agree.

  • It isn't soundproof, either.

  • But it's comfortable and private.

  • Nick Taylor uses the Podtime Nap Pod in his workplace about once

  • a week, and he encourages his staff to do the same.

  • Sleep is a natural part of a human's life.

  • And it's important that we are well-rested for our brain

  • to function well.

  • So I don't see any reason why we wouldn't want people

  • in the workplace to take time out and take a sleep for 20

  • minutes or something.

  • And then come back in feeling more alert and more engaged.

  • A cynic, though, would say that this

  • is about keeping your employees at their desk for longer.

  • It's not about a 9-5 day anymore.

  • Your emails don't stop at 5.00pm.

  • They don't start at 9.00am.

  • The lines are blurred between the office and home.

  • So I think it's about empowering employees actually,

  • to offer them a place to rest.

  • I don't think it's about being cynical and...

  • Not about getting their pound of flesh for the employer?

  • Absolutely not.

  • OK, but wouldn't a more progressive company maybe give

  • the staff that flexibility maybe to work at home

  • rather than to nap but stay in the office for longer?

  • Yeah, working from home is more and more mainstream.

  • But for example, if your client facing,

  • you cannot tell an employee, OK, come at 10.00am

  • if you're tired.

  • If you have to actually be there for a client at 9.00am,

  • that's not going to work, I think.

  • These days, it isn't just the big tech companies or start-ups

  • that provide nap stations.

  • Even The Financial Times has a relaxation room.

  • OK, so it's a small space with room for just two people

  • in a building that holds several hundred.

  • No nap pods here, for now.

  • So I wouldn't say that there's a widespread nap

  • culture at the FT just yet.

  • I can't imagine relaxing enough at work

  • to drop off, when a colleague could walk in at any moment

  • to find me snoring away.

  • The ProNappers provide me with an Ostrich Pillow, a temper eye

  • mask, and a nap aroma inhaler.

  • So it's now or never.

  • I think I did just drop off there, which surprised me.

  • I wasn't sure I was going to be able to,

  • wasn't sure I'd be able to relax,

  • sitting at work with a camera pointing at me.

  • But I think I probably did.

  • I've been in here for about 20 minutes.

  • And despite the noise from the traffic, noise from the road,

  • I think I had about 10 or 15 minutes there.

  • According to my Fitness Tracker, I was asleep for 13 minutes.

  • It doesn't sound like much, but I leave the relaxation room

  • feeling refreshed and alert.

  • It's never been easier to monitor

  • the quality of our sleep, thanks to wearable technology.

  • Fitbit devices analyse sleep and provide a score based

  • on resting and sleeping heart rates,

  • and the amount of time spent in each sleep cycle.

  • A score of over 90 is generally considered excellent.

  • Anything over 80 is usually good.

  • I'm struck by my own scores, though.

  • I tend to get less than the recommended seven hours

  • a night, sometimes a lot less.

  • While my Fitbit sleep score is usually fair,

  • rather than good to excellent.

  • But according to Fitbit, I'm not alone.

  • The global average is just a little bit short

  • of seven hours.

  • If we could move the global average up 30 minutes,

  • I think that will be a big benefit.

  • And will that apply to me, personally?

  • I'm getting somewhere between six and seven hours sleep.

  • My sleep score is usually somewhere around the 75 mark.

  • It would be nice if you're able to get more sleep.

  • When you talk to people about why they do not sleep enough,

  • a lot of cases, it's not a lack of desire or interests.

  • It's that they have to deal with the reality of getting

  • a kit to school or they've got an early start at work.

  • What we're trying to do is provide, at least, information.

  • But there's a danger that access to too much information

  • could have an adverse effect.

  • If you're someone who suffers from insomnia,

  • or generally you worry about your sleep

  • and you start tracking your sleep,

  • and you see that you potentially sleep

  • less than the recommended seven to nine hours,

  • you may start actually to worry.

  • And due to this worry, you sleep even less.

  • Yeah, there's a danger that we have too much data

  • available sometimes, perhaps.

  • It can be very important to track your sleep and your sleep

  • quality.

  • At the same time, if it's really negatively affecting

  • your sleep, then it's not a good thing

  • if you start worrying about it.

  • It's also important to mention that while some of the sleep

  • trackers, and generally trackers,

  • they become more and more sophisticated and better

  • in tracking your sleep, they're still potential not necessarily

  • 100 per cent accurate in measuring your sleep.

  • The way work is going today, people

  • have more autonomy and flexibility

  • about how they work at their best and get their job done.

  • So for some people, it will be going for a run.

  • For other people, it's having a nap.

  • And I think if you're one of those people who absolutely

  • feel that sort of compulsion to shut your eyes,

  • rather than just powering through, or having a coffee,

  • or going out for a cigarette, have a nap.

  • It feels like there's some way to go before work naps catch

  • on everywhere.

  • But there are still many ways we can try to improve our sleep.

  • Going to bed earlier, cutting the blue lights at bedtime,

  • or trying the latest tech gadget could

  • leave you feeling refreshed and more productive.

  • It won't all work for everyone, so a holistic approach

  • might be the best bet.

  • I'm going to get on the case - just as soon

  • as I stop feeling so tired.

Modern life moves quickly - too quickly for some

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