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March 6, 2023

15 Minutes

Move over, gecko and Andy Warhol

The first in our series preparing for National Napping Day, one week from today (Monday the 13th)!


Fifteen minutes. An amount driven into the parlance of our times by a certain insurance company that will not be named unless they pay up for the exposure to all our followers. This ain’t free, lizard.

15 Minutes (2001) - IMDb
No rights asserted, other than the right to share the following. I found this image by Googling “fifteen minutes.” I was pretty sure I’d seen this movie but didn’t remember the story…so I read the plot on Wikipedia, and it sounded familiar as I was reading it…but when I finished reading it, I wasn’t as sure as I’d been before I read the plot…so I spent another minute or two Googling the actors in the movie, and when I saw pix of one of them, I knew I’d seen the movie and recalled liking it. I hope it’s randomly lurking in a streaming service that I subscribe to so I can watch it soon without having to pay to rent it (though it’s probably a relatively cheap rental). True story.

So clearly something of value can be done in that amount of time. But it has always struck me as an odd amount of time. The 15 minute classes on the Peloton — who takes those? Too long for a warm up or a wind down, and not enough for an actual class.

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So it is with the 15 minute nap. I’ve always been reluctant. It normally takes me 5-10 minutes to settle in. If we aren’t pulling the Dalí and are really trying to lose consh, is it worth going through it for the crumbs at the end of the settling in? Will I be too nervous about execution to settle my thoughts? If I do and only get 7-8 minutes of lost consh, will I even hear the timer go off? Will I be groggier for the effort? So many questions. So much at stake. Good thing we care enough to find out.

I recently had a 15 minute window and a real need for a reset. Caffeine, jumping jacks, freezing cold air…or give it a try. YOLO. I laid down, it took me about 5 minutes to settle in, and when the timer went off…it worked. I felt refreshed, revived and rested. Fifteen minute naps are officially an option.

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