Listen to plenty of productivity experts, and you'll be simple to believe that napping is a powerful tool: more than a band-aid following poor sleep, but a route towards enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and maybe improved athletic performance. Elite footballers are all at it – and so are concert pianists, fighters & high-profile executives. However, if you lack a room for napping or a career that allows frequent naps, are there *really* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye to merit the effort? Does there exist a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling refreshed, not worse?
Exploring Your Nap Motivation
“Experts note three primary motivations for taking a nap for many people,” notes a leading sleep science professor. “Firstly, there's termed compensatory napping, that is the action you take after experiencing poor sleep the previous night. Another is preparatory napping, when you are pre-empting sleep loss coming up, for example during on night shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which essentially is about desire: you get an opportunity to nap in the daytime, and it feels nice to nap.”
The initial step to do, so, is to examine your nap motivation. “Daytime sleep can be truly beneficial when overnight rest is disturbed because of factors outside your control – such as, when you are caring for an infant, or if you are healing from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” says a sleep physiologist. “But if you take a nap because your sleep at night feels fragile or unreliable, that’s often a signal your body's sleep pressure is not where it should be. In those cases, napping can become part of the issue, rather than the answer. Utilize daytime sleep as a temporary measure for short-term problems – the focus ought to remain a robust and regular sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Length
This implies that napping shouldn’t be long enough to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and preferably shouldn’t take place in the late afternoon (depending on what time you go to bed in the evening). What duration is wise? Recommendations vary. From the most-cited studies on the subject, researchers at Nasa discovered that astronauts showed up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% boost in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (in detail, this counted an initial six-minute falling asleep phase). “I’d suggest setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – many individuals fall asleep in under ten minutes,” explains a specialist. “There’s a lot of advice around regarding the ideal number for sleeping, however, that can cause people to feel more worried above all – and the most counterproductive thing one can do when attempting to fall asleep is worry about it.”
If you plan to nap for a longer period, bypass the period between 45 and 60 minutes that promotes that sluggish feeling, that foggy state upon waking. “Studies indicates it is preferable to have an extended nap of one to one and a half hours than a medium-length one,” says the expert. “Forty-five minutes is long enough to send you into deep sleep and you’re more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – whereas if you nap for slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a natural sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more refreshed. However, if you're dozing for 90 minutes, it can influence how you sleep later that night.”
Finding the Right Sleep Space
Regarding specific techniques, recommendations vary. Some experts suggest adopting comparable habits one would use to foster a good night’s sleep: a silent space, a comfortable bed and minimal light as you can manage. Alternatively, experts propose that it's fine to merely snooze in a chair with ambient lighting happens to be around – to prevent post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your bed as the environment your mind associates with nighttime rest. “Sleep is something really tricky to force,” notes an expert. “If you don’t have any drowsiness, it is more challenging to recline and practically command yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be some sleep pressure present to initiate sleep in the first place. Personally, I can often snooze in full light and awaken on my own alarm-free, however, what assists most folks is to wait for a moment that they’re naturally somewhat sleepy and then simply ease into sleep.”
It’s worth experimenting, and when your choices are limited – for instance, if attempting to fit in some shut-eye while traveling or at the office – it is perfectly fine to use sleep aids. “In my work with elite athletes, I advise that they avoid becoming accustomed to napping in bed, as they’re going to have|they will
