Listen to a few productivity experts, and it’s easy to believe that a nap is a powerful tool: rather than a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut to enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and perhaps quicker running times. Professional athletes swear by it – and so are concert pianists, UFC champions & media moguls. However, if you don't have a dedicated nap-room or a job that allows regular snoozing, are there *really* enough benefits to a quick nap to merit the hassle? Does there exist a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you truly ensure you’ll wake up feeling better, instead of groggy?
Identifying The Nap Motivation
“We can identify three main reasons for napping for many people,” notes an expert circadian rhythm professor. “Firstly, there's what we call recovery napping, essentially what you do following a lack of sleep the previous night. The second is pre-emptive sleep, when you are preparing for sleep loss in the future, for instance during overnight shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which essentially boils down to the wish: you have an opportunity to sleep in the daytime, and it's enjoyable to do it.”
The first thing to do, then, is consider why you want to nap. “Napping can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep gets interrupted because of factors outside your control – for example, when you are caring for an infant, or if you are healing after being ill or intense exercise,” explains a sleep expert. “However, if you take a nap as your nighttime sleep feels fragile or unreliable, that is frequently a sign your need for sleep is not as strong as it needs to be. Under those circumstances, napping can become part of the issue, instead of the fix. Employ naps for brief periods to address immediate needs – the focus ought to remain a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Perfect Nap Length
This implies that napping must not be sufficiently lengthy to interfere with your nighttime sleep, and best should not occur in the late afternoon (based on the time you sleep in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. In one of the most-cited studies on the subject, researchers at Nasa discovered that astronauts had improvements of over 50% in vigilance plus a 34% rise in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this included a six-minute long sleep onset time). “My advice is using an alarm for 20-30 minutes – the majority fall asleep within 10 minutes,” says a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations concerning the perfect length of minutes, but that tends to make people feel more worried than anything – and the worst thing you can possibly do when trying to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
If you’re going to nap for a longer period, bypass the 45 to 60 minute range that induces sleep grogginess, that foggy state when you wake. “Research would say it’s better to take an extended nap of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” explains the sleep scientist. “Forty-five minutes is long enough to plunge you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel sluggish when you get up – while if you extend it slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to be on the end of a sleep cycle and should awaken feeling more rejuvenated. Though if you nap for 90 minutes, it can influence the quality of your sleep that night.”
Establishing the Perfect Snooze Setting
When it comes to precise methods, suggestions are diverse. Some experts recommend adopting comparable habits you’d use to encourage a good night’s sleep: a silent space, a supportive surface and as much darkness as is feasible. Others suggest that it's fine to simply nap on a couch with ambient lighting is available – both to discourage sleep inertia and to “protect” your bedroom as the space your brain links with proper sleep. “Sleep is quite challenging to will,” says a sleep coach. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it becomes harder to recline and practically command yourself to nod off. There must be some drive present to bring the sleep on in the first place. For me, it's possible to take a nap in full light and wake up naturally without an alarm, however, what assists a lot of people is to wait for a time that they’re naturally slightly tired and calmly allow sleep to come.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and should your choices are limited – for example, when aiming to squeeze in a quick nap during a commute or at the office – there’s nothing wrong with bringing a few tools. “When I’m working with professional sportspeople, I suggest that they avoid becoming accustomed to napping in bed, as they’re going to have|they will
