Hear a few self-improvement experts, making it simple to believe that a nap is a superpower: not just a quick fix after a bad night’s sleep, but a path to enhanced cognition, improved mood and possibly quicker running times. Premier League soccer players do it regularly – and so are concert pianists, fighters and business leaders. However, if you lack a special sleep space or employment that allows frequent naps, can there *honestly* worthwhile perks to a short sleep to merit the effort? Can you find a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you really guarantee you will get up feeling improved, instead of groggy?
Exploring Your Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three main reasons for daytime sleep among most adults,” says a professor of circadian rhythm professor. “One is what we call compensatory napping, that is what happens when you’ve had insufficient sleep the night before. Secondly, there's prophylactic napping, where you are preparing for a sleep deficit in the future, such as if you’re working on night shifts. The third is called “pleasure-based sleep”, which simply boils down to the wish: you have a chance to sleep during the day, and it feels nice to indulge.”
The first thing to consider, therefore, is consider why you want to nap. “Naps can be genuinely useful when overnight rest is being disrupted for reasons outside your control – such as, for caring for an infant, or recovering from sickness or strenuous activity,” states a sleep physiologist. “However, if you nap because your night sleep seems unreliable or broken, that can be a sign your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as it should be. In those cases, napping can become a contributing factor, rather than the answer. Use napping as a short-term solution for short-term problems – the priority must always be a strong and predictable sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This means that daytime sleep must not be sufficiently lengthy to interfere with your nighttime sleep, and best should not occur post-3 p.m. (based on when you retire overnight). How long is sensible? Recommendations vary. Among a prominent study regarding daytime sleep, researchers at Nasa discovered that space travelers showed improvements of over 50% in alertness plus a 34% rise in task performance post a 26-minute snooze (in detail, this included a six-minute long sleep onset time). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority are asleep quickly,” notes a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations regarding the perfect length for sleeping, yet that often cause people to feel more worried above all – and the least helpful action one can do while aiming to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
If you plan to take an extended nap, avoid the period between 45 and 60 minutes that induces that sluggish feeling, that foggy state when you awaken. “Research would say it’s better to take a longer nap of 60 to 90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” notes the expert. “45 minutes is long enough to plunge you into a deep sleep stage making it more likely to feel groggy when you get up – whereas if you extend it slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a natural sleep cycle and should get up feeling more rejuvenated. However, if you're dozing for a long period, it can influence the quality of your sleep later that night.”
Finding an Ideal Snooze Setting
Regarding specific techniques, advice differs. Certain specialists recommend adopting comparable habits you’d use to promote restful sleep: a silent space, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as possible. Some advise that one could merely snooze in a chair in the existing light is present – to avoid that groggy feeling and to maintain your bed as the environment your mind associates with nighttime rest. “Sleep is quite challenging to force,” notes a sleep coach. “Lacking any drowsiness, it is more challenging to lie down and essentially instruct yourself to nod off. There must be some drive there to initiate sleep to begin with. I can usually nap during the day and naturally wake up without a timer, but what helps many individuals is to anticipate a time where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly ease into sleep.”
It’s worth experimenting, and should options are scarce – for example, when aiming to grab 40 winks on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable to use sleep aids. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I advise that they avoid becoming accustomed to napping in bed, as they’re going to have|they will
