Listen to enough self-improvement podcasters, and you'll be tempting to convince yourself that napping is a secret weapon: not just a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a path to a better memory, improved mood and perhaps a faster 5k run time. Elite soccer players are all at it – along with professional piano players, fighters & business leaders. Yet, when you lack a room for napping or a career that encourages daytime sleep, are there *really* worthwhile perks to a short sleep to justify the kerfuffle? Can you find a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you honestly promise you will get up feeling improved, instead of groggy?
Exploring Your Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three primary motivations for taking a nap among most adults,” explains a professor of sleep and circadian science researcher. “Firstly, there's what we call make-up sleep, which is what you do when you’ve had a lack of sleep the night before. The second is prophylactic napping, which involves anticipating a sleep deficit coming up, such as when working graveyard shifts. The third reason is “appetitive drive”, which essentially boils down to desire: you get a chance to nap during the day, and it's enjoyable to do it.”
The initial step to do, then, is to examine why you want to nap. “Naps can be genuinely useful when overnight rest is being disrupted due to causes outside your control – for instance, for a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from sickness or intense exercise,” explains a sleep physiologist. “Yet when you take a nap as your nighttime sleep seems unreliable or unreliable, that’s often an indicator your need for sleep is not as strong as it should be. In those cases, naps can become part of the issue, instead of the fix. Use napping as a short-term solution for short-term problems – the focus must always be a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Ideal Snooze Time
Therefore that daytime sleep shouldn’t be long enough to affect your overnight rest, and best are not recommended in the late afternoon (depending on the time you sleep in the evening). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. Among a prominent study on the subject, experts discovered that space travelers experienced improvements of over 50% in vigilance and a 34% increase in cognitive performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this involved a six-minute nodding-off period). “I recommend setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – most people doze off within 10 minutes,” says a specialist. “You'll find much recommendations concerning the perfect length of minutes, yet that often lead individuals to become more stressed than anything – and the worst thing one can do while aiming to get to sleep is worry about it.”
If you’re going to nap for a longer period, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that induces sleep grogginess, that foggy state upon waking. “Research suggests it’s better to have an extended nap of 60 to 90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” says the expert. “45 minutes is sufficient to send you into deep sleep making it more likely to feel sluggish when you get up – however, if you nap for a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to be on the end of a sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more refreshed. But if you nap for a long period, it will affect your sleep in the evening.”
Finding an Ideal Nap Environment
When it comes to precise methods, suggestions are diverse. A few professionals propose adopting similar routines you’d use to encourage restful sleep: a peaceful area, a supportive surface and maximum darkness as is feasible. Some advise that one could just doze on the sofa with ambient lighting happens to be around – to prevent that groggy feeling and to preserve your bedroom as the space your mind associates with nighttime rest. “Sleep is something really tricky to force,” explains a specialist. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it is more challenging to get comfortable and practically instruct yourself to fall asleep. You need a natural inclination there to start the process initially. I can usually take a nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up without an alarm, however, what assists many individuals is to anticipate a moment where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply allow sleep to come.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and when options are scarce – for instance, if you’re trying to fit in a quick nap on a train or in a work pod – there’s nothing wrong with bringing sleep aids. “Coaching elite athletes, I advise that they don’t get used to napping in bed, because they’re going to have|they will
