Hear plenty of productivity gurus, and you'll be easy to convince yourself that dozing is a superpower: not just a quick fix after restless night, but a route to a better memory, improved mood and perhaps a faster 5k run time. Elite soccer players do it regularly – as do musicians, UFC champions and media moguls. However, if you lack a special sleep space or employment that allows daytime sleep, is it *truly* sufficient advantages to a quick nap to merit the kerfuffle? Is there a reliable way to nod off promptly? Plus, is it possible to really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling refreshed, rather than worse?
Understanding Your Reasons for Napping
“Experts note three main reasons for taking a nap in the adult population,” explains an expert circadian rhythm specialist. “One is known as make-up sleep, that is what happens when you’ve had poor sleep the night before. The second is pre-emptive sleep, where you are preparing for insufficient sleep in the future, such as if you’re working overnight shifts. The third reason is “hedonic napping”, which simply boils down to wanting: there is a moment to nap in the afternoon, and it's pleasant to indulge.”
The first thing to undertake, then, is to think about your reason for napping. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is being disrupted because of factors you cannot change – such as, for a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from illness or heavy physical exertion,” says a sleep physiologist. “Yet when you’re napping since your nighttime sleep is unstable or broken, that can be a sign your sleep drive is not at the level it should be. In those cases, daytime sleep can turn into part of the problem, not the solution. Use napping for brief periods to address immediate needs – the priority should still be a robust and regular sleep at night.”
The Ideal Nap Length
This implies that daytime sleep ought not to be long enough to affect your sleep at night, and ideally are not recommended post-3 p.m. (contingent on what time you retire overnight). What duration is wise? Advice differs. Among the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, researchers at Nasa discovered that crew members showed up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% increase in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this counted a six-minute falling asleep phase). “I’d suggest setting an alarm for half an hour or less – many individuals are asleep within 10 minutes,” says a sleep coach. “There’s a lot of recommendations about the perfect length of minutes, but that tends to cause people to feel more stressed above all – and the most counterproductive thing you can do when trying to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
Should you decide to sleep for longer, bypass the 45 to 60 minute range that promotes sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “The science suggests it is preferable to take a lengthier snooze lasting 60-90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” notes the professor. “Forty-five minutes is enough time to put you into slow-wave sleep and you’re more likely to feel groggy when you wake up – whereas if you nap for slightly longer to 60 or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to be completing a full cycle and are likely to get up feeling more rejuvenated. But if you nap for an hour and a half, it may impact the quality of your sleep that night.”
Finding the Perfect Nap Environment
Regarding specific techniques, suggestions are diverse. Some experts suggest adopting comparable habits you use to foster a good night’s sleep: a silent space, a cozy bed and maximum darkness as is feasible. Some advise that you should just doze in a chair in whatever light happens to be around – both to discourage that groggy feeling and to maintain your bed as the space your brain links with *real* sleep. “Napping is quite challenging to force,” says a specialist. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to get comfortable and practically tell yourself to fall asleep. There must be a natural inclination available to bring the sleep on in the first place. Personally, I can often take a nap in full light and wake up naturally without a timer, though, what aids a lot of people is to wait for a time when they are naturally slightly tired and then simply ease into sleep.”
It’s worth experimenting, and if your choices are limited – for example, when aiming to fit in some shut-eye during a commute or at the office – it's acceptable to employ a few tools. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I advise that they not rely on their own bed for naps, because they’re going to have|they will
