Information Overload

Wow — in what was one of our most unpopular polls ever, we asked last week whether people nap at the office and whether they have a system to it.  The poll is still open, but the initial results were split pretty much in thirds:

- 32% said that yes, you had napped at the office more than once

- 30% denied ever napping

- 38% said they’d only napped once and weren’t proud of it.

As various articles report, napping for just 20 minutes can increase your productivity by clearing your mind’s clutter, as well as improving memory, stamina, and motor skills.  One article even weighs the different benefits of naps lasting anywhere from 2 seconds to 90 minutes.  Some companies are even installing “sleep pods” to help their workers recharge:

Some articles to consider, if you’re not currently napping:

• How to Get the Perfect Nap [Stepcase Lifehack]
• How and Why to Power Nap [Lifehacker]
• How to Nap like a Pro [Boston Globe, via HuffPo]
• Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better [Lifehacker]

Photo credit:  Cat nap, originally uploaded to Flickr by Mr. Miyagi. Note that there’s actually a difference between a cat nap (which one does on a lazy Sunday) and a power nap (which one might do at your office).

In this feature, we’ll explore one tool that makes the busy woman’s life easier in some small way.

Every busy woman’s got a growing pile of things to do — immediate things to do at home and at the office. Things to do at some point in the future (update the resume, congratulate Theresa and Ben on their 5-year anniversary, get vacation photos printed). It helps to corral these things into a list. Really! We’ve unfortunately left our copy of Getting Things Done, by David Allen, at home, but there’s a lovely passage in it where he talks about how all these tiny things that must be done nag at your brain, tugging at your conscious (and subconscious) mind until you’re exhausted, worrying about all the things that need to be done. His solution (which we’ve found really does help) is to write EVERYTHING down. Build a system, and trust the system.

We’ve been fine with using Outlook for office tasks, but we truly love using Remember The Milk for personal tasks. Some great things about it:

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- Ask a Working Woman Survey: Indeed! You’ll learn all sorts of stuff. Such as, nobody likes pantyhose. But seriously, go take the survey! [Feminist Law Professors]

- WaPo thinks Vogue’s shoots of lady politicians is a window into how these women would like to be perceived. [WaPo]

- Uh oh: Barack has now been caught calling women “sweetie” twice. [Chicago Trib, bastard.logic]

- Wired tells us how to hack our brains to get smarter, including which drugs to take. [Wired] Oh, and Real Age advises us to drink lots of tea. [Real Age]

- Information overload? Part of the game is knowing when to give up. [NYT: Shifting Careers]