Power-napping is not just for cats (as those people lucky enough to support a cat can attest to). Da Vinci did it. Edison did it. Churchill did it. Millions of less-stressed-than-you people do it and managed to keep their lives running smoothly, you can too. See,it's not really the difficulty of taking a nap in the middle of your work day as it is getting over the intense urge to Do Something More Productive, and the guilt that comes with laying this urge aside.

Circadian rhythms govern our resting and active periods. Modern life lets us control this (somewhat) with various drugs of choice, the most common of which is caffeine. Napping can bring you back to the rhythms of your body, leading to better performance.

Remember nap-time when you were very young? Children needed time-outs from the frenetic activity their enormous energy levels could give them, so, boom, nap-time. Adults usually get to control their energy slumps with quick-fixes like coffee, but why not try implementing a small nap in your daily cycle to re-charge yourself?

Some of the following sites were recommended by a JROX resource, MakeUseOf.com. I visited the sites and here's my take:

NapSounds offers 20 minute soundtracks for your napping needs, in 3 flavors of soothing music: electronic, classic and nature. I have to admit I was a bit startled when I tried it out, since I didn't expect a human speaking along with the sound-track, but apparently they put that in for a reason.  The site offers free downloads, and if you sign up for their iTunes podcast (you can still use other podcast-ware), your PC automatically downloads a free nap mp3 each day.

RainyMood.com has a 15 minute sound loop of a relaxing thunderstorm, which rapidly became a personal favorite. Some people might find it boring, since it's only the one track, but to each his own.

White Noise 24/7  offers streaming audio of white noise in 2 flavors, nature and mechanical. The latter include tracks of a running ventilator, dishwasher, laundry machine, and radio static (Who knew people could find sounds like these relaxing?). There's also the standard flowing river, and the ever popular rain. At this point, the site offers 7 three or more hour-long streams available for a total of over 21 hours of free online white noise.

Note: They weren't kidding about file size.  I was surprised when I downloaded a rain-sounds file for testing purposes, (145 MB, zipped). Now I have almost 3 hours of soft rain to listen to.

Sound Sleeping offers relaxing music serves as sleep-aids and relaxation tools.  No free downloads, which is a downer, and while the site ostensibly offers previews of the tracks, there's something off with their previews page because there's no way to find the working preview button.

I found Atmosphere Lite (software, 11 MB) in a click-by on LifeHacker. Haven't tried it yet, but it seems promising. The commentaries are favorable, and it has more than 17,000 downloads. You can customize background and random sounds with it (think crickets, frogs, and rustling leaves) and tailor it for various settings, including desktop appearance (Full specs are here). What's also nice is that it also has an alarm clock in case you drift off at work.

I hope you find something to help you when you get to try some of this stuff out. Until next time, happy napping!