Tune into plenty of self-improvement experts, and you'll be easy to think that a nap is a superpower: not just a sticking plaster following poor sleep, but a path towards enhanced cognition, improved mood and perhaps a faster 5k run time. Professional soccer players swear by it – along with concert pianists, mixed martial artists & business leaders. However, if you haven’t got a room for napping or a career that permits regular snoozing, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye for it to be worth the effort? Does there exist a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you truly ensure you will get up feeling refreshed, rather than worse?
Understanding The Drive to Snooze
“There are three primary motivations for daytime sleep for many people,” notes an expert sleep science professor. “One is termed recovery napping, which is the action you take when you’ve had poor sleep the night before. Another is prophylactic napping, when you are anticipating sleep loss ahead, for example if you’re working overnight shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which essentially comes down to the wish: you get a chance to nap in the afternoon, and it feels nice to indulge.”
The initial step to consider, so, is consider your reason for napping. “Daytime sleep can be really helpful when overnight rest gets interrupted due to causes beyond your control – for instance, when you are a new parent, or you’re recovering from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” states a sleep expert. “Yet when you’re napping as your nighttime sleep seems unreliable or broken, that’s often a signal your sleep drive is not where it should be. Under those circumstances, napping can become a contributing factor, instead of the fix. Employ naps for brief periods to address immediate needs – the main goal should still be a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This means that naps ought not to be too extended to affect your nighttime sleep, and preferably should not occur after about 3pm (depending on what time you go to bed at night). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. Among the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, researchers at Nasa noted that astronauts had a boost of up to 54% in vigilance and a 34% increase in task performance post a 26-minute snooze (technically, this involved an initial six-minute falling asleep phase). “I recommend setting an alarm for 20-30 minutes – many individuals fall asleep in under ten minutes,” explains a specialist. “There’s a lot of guidance out there concerning the optimal amount of time, however, that can make people feel more stressed than anything else – and the worst thing one can do while aiming to nod off is worry about it.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, avoid the 45 to 60 minute range that induces sleep grogginess, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “Studies suggests it's more effective to opt for a longer nap of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” notes the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to plunge you into slow-wave sleep and it is more probable to feel groggy when you wake up – while if you take it a little longer to a full sleep cycle, you’re likely to finish of a sleep cycle and should get up feeling more alert. Though if you nap for 90 minutes, it will affect how you sleep in the evening.”
Establishing an Ideal Nap Environment
As for specific techniques, advice differs. Some experts suggest employing similar routines you use to foster a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a cozy bed and minimal light as possible. Others suggest that it's fine to merely snooze on the sofa with ambient lighting is available – to avoid that groggy feeling and to preserve your bed as the place your mind associates with nighttime rest. “Falling asleep is notoriously difficult to command,” says a specialist. “Lacking any drowsiness, it is tougher to get comfortable and basically tell yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be some drive there to start the process in the first place. For me, it's possible to nap in full light and awaken on my own without an alarm, though, what aids many individuals is to look for a time when they are naturally slightly tired and calmly allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and if you have few options – for instance, if attempting to grab 40 winks during a commute or in a work pod – it is perfectly fine with bringing a few tools. “In my work with footballers, I advise that they don’t get used to napping in bed, because they’re going to have|they will
