In the Mediterranean, where we pretty much all have a variant of the siesta, it gets very hot [1] around the middle of the day. At that point, you have two options:

a) You can stay on and try to work in the heat.

b) You can go home, have lunch, take a little nap and return in the evening when it's cooler.

Option (a) means you spend the next three or four hours in a zombie-like state with your brain addled by the heat and your productivity severely reduced. Basically, you will do no real work at that time, you'll just be filling your chair and pretending to work.

Option (b) is the optimal allocation of resources. You work when you're in your most productive and when you can't be productive, you don't work.

I'm speaking of very recent experience. I spent August and September in Greece, working on my PhD research(80% coding, 20% paper writing, should probably have been the other way around). I'd have lunch around 14:00, then go for a nap around 15:00 when the glycaemic spike would hit (often just from a bit of salad, but with lots of olive oil). I'd set my alarm to 15:20 to make sure I wouldn't oversleep. That's just a quick nap- but I would wake up invigorated and work 'till night time, when friends would appear unsummoned and drag me off to drink and celebrate life like only we in the South know how to [2].

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[1] "Very hot" is over 30°C most of the year, near 40°C in the summer (which lasts most of Spring and half of Autumn, too). That's _on average_.

[2] This is sarcasm.

Shops being closed 14-16 used to be a thing in Israel when I was a child, now with the introduction of air conditioning and modern work ethics it's not really a thing anymore.

>modern work ethics

Don't kid yourself when comparing the present to the past (and for some, still present) with sun-up to sun-down manual labor.

Option C: remember that it's 21 century and turn the AC on. Lived in Israel for a few years with the same temperatures, never seen anything close to a siesta (except the shabbat, of course, but that's a completely different thing).

> when the glycaemic spike would hit (often just from a bit of salad, but with lots of olive oil)

Hmm, what other ingredients did you have in your salad? I would think the relatively low-carb (mostly leaves) and high-fat (olive oil) meal would cause a very minimal blood sugar spike, if one at all.

Normally, tomatoes, onions and oregano, and sometimes rye rusks called "paksimadi" in Greek:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusk#Greece

The olive oil on its own, plus the heat is sufficient to knock you out really. It gets _really_ hot in Greece in the summer.

Over 30 degrees most of the year? No way this is true.

You're right, I overestimated this by quite a bit.

This site shows Athens over 20 degrees (just) on average, six months of the year.

https://www.holiday-weather.com/athens/averages/

These days I only go home in the summer (July to September to be more precise) so I guess I've inflated how hot it is, in my mind.

Now I'm a laughing stock. And rightly so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindos#Climate is about as hot as it gets in Greece, with an average high over 30 °C for (only) three months.

Agree. It snows in Santorini winter...

Two blocks of 4 hours of work with a break of 2 hours between them is not a bad division of time.

You do not need much more time to refocus after a two hour break than after a half an hour break, but the two hours break and the larger meal allows you to work until longer in the evening. In many cases, you can even spend time with your family during this middle of day break, so you do not have that necessity to leave early.

I have followed the two different lifestyles in the south and north of Europe. Northern people tell you how their system allows them to leave early and have more time for family or whatever, but truth is people in the south spent way more time with family and friends. Also, south people usually work more hours, but it's the north people who get the job done.

Unfortunately, having to commute home again basically kills any benefit the "split" work schedule can have. This really works when your house is a five minute walk from your workplace (so it worked great for my granddad), it works less well today with the half hour drives each way.

That's true. It works excellent if you can work from home. We should catch up with the times and make working from home a lot more widespread in the South.

Or of course we could be pragmatic and have siesta booths in every workplace etc.

Finally, there's the nuclear option: air conditioning. I find that in offices where it's constantly 18°C you don't need to take a siesta (but you have to carry your coat with you in the heart of summer to avoid frostbite).

It depends on your definition of "getting things done". I have no illusions about the work ethic of meditteraneans (being one myself, and with the caveat that work ethic is probably the wrong word to use here). This might be just me growing slightly older - but i tend to side more and more on the med side. Nowdays I wish I could take a 2 hour break to go hang out at home, cook my own meal and listen to some music instead of the usual 30/60 minute lunch break. Getting things done means different things to different people, and culture plays a huge part.

It actually means the same thing to everyone except that, as an Italian, you redefine what productivity means as to include "being non-productive".

I'm not Italian, but that's besides the point - if your definition of being productive is punching a card twice a day in 8 hour intervals then go for it. But permit me to be highly critical of you being the arbiter of what the definition of productive is.

Capitalism always makes us focus on productivity. Even more in this startup world ycombinator is part of.

It can be bloody hot so you might as well take a nap.

If everything adjusts to that schedule it’s a nice way to live.

If, however, you run out of water and stumble in to such a village at 12:35 you’re in bad luck.

Only shops (not all, mostly small) close at lunch. Office hours are different. I think this is going to change in the years to come.

They don't.

India is also hot, they don't close for siestas.

I guess they haven't been defeated by the 40 hour minimum work week imposed by modern capitalism. As long as they are happy, who cares when they work.

> who cares when they work.

I'm not demanding change, purely making an observation as a Northern European consultant who happens to drop in to the culture a few weeks a year.

> One sleepy little town basically shut down between 12:30 and 14:30 every day

That's not been true since the 80s.

You're probably confused by the fact that some services shut down at lunch time (service facing offices like banks) for historical reason, we in Italy have a very rigid system of contracts that regulate each category of work in a very precis way, including work hours.

If banks want to stay open at lunch time, they'll have to change the national contract.

But if you go to an hospital or a bar or a restaurant or an IKEA branch, you'll find people working hard even at lunch time.

Source: born, raised and still living in Italy since 43 years ago.

> How do you get anything done??

I don't know, maybe We are smarter than the rest of the World... :)

Getting things done is not about the time you put in them, it's about the effort.

> That's not been true since the 80s.

I'm sorry my person experience doesn't match with your statement?

> How do you get anything done?

By doing things well. ;)

Seriously, ask you colleagues, who has ever done anything good at lunch time, when low sugar fatigue kicks in?