Winston Churchill’s Naps

Winston Churchill smoked 10 cigars a day and was hardly without a drink. He didn’t have a morning routine or a cold plunge habit. His secret for getting “the last scrap” out of his body? Naps.

From his Memoirs of the Second World War:

“For this purpose [to stay in-step with the younger lads in the government] I had recourse to a method of life which had been forced upon me at the Admiralty in 1914 and 1915, and which I found greatly extended my daily capacity for work. I always went to bed at least for one hour as early as possible in the afternoon and exploited to the full my happy gift of falling almost immediately into deep sleep. By this means I was able to press a day and a half’s work into one. Nature had not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces. I regretted having to send myself to bed like a child every afternoon, but I was rewarded by being able to work through the night until two or even later – sometimes much later – in the morning, and begin the new day between eight and nine o’clock. This routine I observed throughout the war, and I commend it to others if and when they find it necessary for a long spell to get the last scrap out of the human structure.”