Arianna Huffington’s ‘Sleep Revolution’: Why Sleeping On The Job May Be Ideal | TODAY

now to a new series dedicated to

something we could all use a good snooze

we talk a lot about sleep around here

we're not alone study show most

Americans aren't getting enough today's

Erica Hills here with a new mission to

change that Erica good morning hey guys

good morning to you Ariana Huffington of

The Huffington Post is launching what

she calls the Sleep Revolution she's

just written a new book by that name and

it's not just that she's advocating a

solid night's rest she also says

sleeping on the job can be a good

thing does your morning feel like this

this or more like

this for millions of Americans a solid

night's sleep is just a dream I think we

need to dispel the myth that we can

function perfectly on four or five hours

Ariana Huffington founder of The

Huffington Post is on a crusade to

change the way we sleep studies show

more than a third of Americans say they

don't get enough how did we get to the

point where lack of sleep exhaustion

push pushing yourself to the Limit

became a badge of honor it all started

with the first Industrial Revolution

believe it or not when we started

believing that human beings could become

like machines and we could minimize a

downtime so sleep became a luxury what

emerged was a kind of overachiever

high-powered American notion that sleep

is for Slackers and a scant 5 hours a

night is the sleep of Genius Huffington

believes we're ready for change we

already see CEOs like Jeff Bezos from

Amazon like SAA Nella the CE of

Microsoft openly talking about needing 8

hours of sleep to be super effective

most of the time we would have CEOs

bragging about how little sleep they get

the push for more better sleep is also

personal after collapsing from

exhaustion years ago Huffington

encouraged employees to unplug at night

and added nap rooms to her office

when we

first opened them there was a lot of

skepticism people were worried that if

we were seen walking into a nap room in

the middle of the afternoon it would

mean they're not as dedicated not as

hardworking we have completely

eliminated that stigma and it's very

clear now in our entire

Newsroom that having a nap in the middle

of the afternoon is actually a

performance enhancing tool and the

science backs those findings Sarah

mednick a researcher at the University

of California studies sleep and brain

activity she says power naps during the

day turbocharge your memory and boost

productivity the benefits that we find

for napping include alertness motor

memory um which is your ability to sort

of play piano or play baseball um and

also declarative memory which is your

ability to remember things like my phone

number or my name the benefits differ

depending on the time of day research

shows a short nap in the morning can

boost creative thinking in memory in the

afternoon it can help you feel better

physically a 20-minute nap in the middle

of the day is going to be the best kind

of nap because you're not going to get

into deep slow wave sleep and make you

feel groggy when you wake up before

Society began to shum those extra Z's

plenty of successful well-known leaders

embraced the ritual as did sports stars

and now more companies are cozying up to

the idea Google

all offer nap rooms similar to those at

The Huffington Post it's kind of just

ingrained in our company culture to take

naps and it's kind of the same thing as

if you would take an hour lunch break

I'll find myself naturally waking up

after 20 minutes you kind of find that

that is a good sweet spot for feeling

recharged a feeling Ariana Huffington

predicts will catch on fueled by the

science that shows more sleep is not

only better for your health but also the

bottom line I really predict that in in

the next few years nap rooms in offices

are going to be as common as conference

rooms ARA says she's looking now to

bring the discussion to college campuses

so she's going to be visiting 50 schools

with leading Sleep Experts to spread the

message about the importance of sleep

she wants to get people thinking about

it at a younger age so that it becomes

just a normal part of who they are I

like the mission to kind of change our

concept you know they used to be oh I

only need 4 hours I'm so strong it's

like we need sleep embracing the fact

that I need

I have such a hard time napping I nap

for like 2 3 hours I'm like a midday

sleeper wow

that's I nap when the baby

naps Erica thanks by the way Ariana's

book once again it's called The Sleep

Revolution comes out tomorrow you can

find an excerpt at today.com hello today

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