Tune into enough productivity experts, and it’s tempting to convince yourself that napping is a secret weapon: not just a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut towards enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and perhaps improved athletic performance. Professional athletes are all at it – as do musicians, UFC champions & high-profile executives. Yet, when you don't have a dedicated nap-room or a job that encourages daytime sleep, are there *really* sufficient advantages to a quick nap to merit the effort? Does there exist a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? Furthermore, can you honestly promise you will get up feeling refreshed, not worse?
Exploring Your Reasons for Napping
“There are three primary motivations for napping in the adult population,” says an expert sleep science professor. “One is termed compensatory napping, essentially what you do when you’ve had a lack of sleep overnight. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, where you are pre-empting sleep loss coming up, for example during on night shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which basically is about the wish: you get an opportunity to sleep in the afternoon, and it feels nice to indulge.”
The primary task to consider, therefore, is to think about why you want to nap. “Daytime sleep can be really helpful when overnight rest is being disrupted due to causes beyond your control – for example, when you are a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from illness or strenuous activity,” states a sleep expert. “Yet when you nap because your nighttime sleep is unstable or unreliable, that’s often a signal your need for sleep is not where it should be. In those cases, naps can become part of the issue, not the solution. Employ naps as a temporary measure to address immediate needs – the priority must always be a robust and regular sleep at night.”
The Optimal Nap Length
Therefore that napping ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to affect your overnight rest, and preferably shouldn’t take place in the late afternoon (based on when you go to bed overnight). What's a reasonable length? Advice differs. From a prominent study about napping, space agency scientists discovered that astronauts showed a boost of up to 54% in attentiveness and a 34% boost in cognitive performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this included an initial six-minute nodding-off period). “I recommend using an alarm for 20-30 minutes – the majority doze off within 10 minutes,” says a specialist. “There is plenty of recommendations concerning the perfect length of minutes, however, that can make people feel more anxious above all – and the worst thing you can possibly do while aiming to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, bypass the period between 45 and 60 minutes that encourages sleep grogginess, that foggy state upon waking. “Studies suggests it is preferable to opt for an extended nap of one to one and a half hours than a medium-length one,” says the sleep scientist. “45 minutes is long enough to put you into slow-wave sleep and you’re more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – while if you extend it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a full cycle and should wake up feeling more refreshed. Though if you nap for a long period, it may impact the quality of your sleep that night.”
Creating an Ideal Sleep Space
When it comes to specific techniques, advice differs. Some experts propose using the same protocol you use to promote restful sleep: a silent space, a supportive surface and maximum darkness as you can manage. Others suggest that you should merely snooze in a chair with ambient lighting happens to be around – to avoid post-nap grogginess and to maintain your bed as the environment your mind associates with nighttime rest. “Falling asleep is quite challenging to force,” says a sleep coach. “Lacking any drowsiness, it becomes harder to lie down and essentially instruct yourself to go to sleep. You need a natural inclination available to start the process to begin with. Personally, I can often take a nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up without a timer, but what helps a lot of people is to look for a moment that they’re naturally slightly tired and then simply ease into sleep.”
It’s worth experimenting, and should your choices are limited – such as, when aiming to grab 40 winks on a train or at the office – there’s nothing wrong to employ sleep aids. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I advise that they not rely on their own bed for naps, as they’re going to have|they will
