Shnatz (שנ״צ) in Hebrew (the tz as the zz in pizza) is an abbreviation of two Hebrew words, שנת צהריים, which means noon sleep. In the US, this is known as Siesta, borrowed from Spanish, because the concept of a noon nap is as alien to Americans as a baconless breakfast, so we don’t have a word for it here.

Auto-generated description: A man in a checkered shirt is sleeping on a desk next to a pair of glasses and an open laptop.

The photo above by Svein Halvor Halvorsen, “Last day before final exam,” licensed as CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

In Israel, where I grew up, this was a sacred time in the day. You weren’t allowed to play soccer with your friends; you weren’t allowed to make noise. In kindergarten, you’re “strongly encouraged” to take a nap, or else.

This is slowly becoming a sacred time for me too. As time goes by, my struggle with the need for a “power nap” after 4.5 to 6.5 hours of night sleep is becoming something I’m comfortable with, a ritual I’m looking forward to. As a morning person whose creativity mostly takes place in the morning with a cup of coffee, which is why I blog in these hours usually (you’re welcome), it dawned on me last week that with a Shnatz, I get two mornings in one day. When I wake up from my nap, which is usually about 20 minutes, I’m energetic enough to exercise or tackle the more challenging tasks at work.

For too long, I’ve treated my need for an afternoon nap as a weakness or a problem. It’s been an issue I have to deal with, bundled with my insomnia. I started looking for a medical intervention but stopped at the last minute and asked myself for the 100th time: “Is taking a short nap really that bad, or are you just led to believe it is?”

I started to embrace it. It was hard, but I managed to turn off my phone for 30 minutes (isn’t that nuts when you think about it?) during my workday. Why 30 minutes? I give myself 5 minutes to fall asleep and 5 minutes to fully wake up.

No surprise, it’s working well - the difference is that now I feel better about it. I’m going to start scheduling it in my calendar. I’m going to stop being ashamed of it and start calling it a “life hack” instead, even though some of my friends call it “you’re just getting older, ya old fart.” Whatever! The result is the same.

This break is useful for additional things. One of those is to signal the time for exercise, as indicated earlier. I exercise at home, so I can do other things in between sets. I can also use this time to cook for myself, which I enjoy. A quick second shower, especially on hot days, is also a good idea, and with it, a good time to charge my Apple Watch. At the very least, it’s a good time to “reboot” my brain (hmm… a chance for meditation? Not a bad idea) and let my internal programming start fresh, with a new set of priorities.

If you get tired in the afternoon, I recommend you try it if you can escape somewhere for even 10 minutes. It doesn’t have to happen at exactly the same hour on the same day. I take a nap in between meetings or instead of my lunch (don’t need that much time to eat anyway). Sometimes I wake up rested after less than 10 minutes, other times I want to keep sleeping - but I find that 20 minutes or so is the sweet spot, and I usually wake without an alarm. So give yourself a Shnatz. You’re worth it.