Why labs need a napping room to help you work, rest and play

Joseph Jebelli believes burnout and overwork has reached pandemic levels, telling Holly Newson that it kills 750,000 people annually, with three out of five workers struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

His 2025 book, The Brain At Rest, proposes that regular bouts of doing nothing can change your life. Finding time to let your mind wander and take a daily 30-minute nap can make you more creative and efficient, he argues.

In the fourth episode of a six-part podcast series focused on books about the scientific workplace, Jebelli describes the "productivity guilt" he felt during his neuroscience PhD at University College London, where he studied the cell biology of neurodegenerative diseases, followed by a postdoc at the University of Washington, Seattle. "It's the guilt in which you equate your worth as a human being with your output, with how many hours you're in the lab. If it were up to me, there would be a napping room in all laboratories. We have to get it out of our heads that we’re switching off, shirking, or being irresponsible or reckless. We’re actually helping our brains produce our best work.”

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