Tune into a few performance gurus, making it simple to convince yourself that napping is a superpower: more than a quick fix following a bad night’s sleep, but a path towards enhanced cognition, improved mood and maybe quicker running times. Professional soccer players do it regularly – along with musicians, mixed martial artists & high-profile executives. Yet, when you don't have a dedicated nap-room or a career that encourages frequent naps, can there *honestly* worthwhile perks to a quick nap to justify the hassle? Does there exist a surefire technique to fall asleep fast? And can you honestly promise you’ll wake up feeling improved, rather than worse?
Identifying The Nap Motivation
“There are three key drivers for daytime sleep for many people,” says a professor of sleep and circadian science researcher. “Firstly, there's what we call recovery napping, essentially what you do when you’ve had a lack of sleep overnight. Another is pre-emptive sleep, when you are anticipating a sleep deficit in the future, such as during overnight shifts. Finally, there's “hedonic napping”, which simply is about the wish: you get a moment to sleep in the daytime, and it feels nice to indulge.”
The first thing to undertake, therefore, is to think about your reason for napping. “Napping can be genuinely useful when overnight rest is being disrupted for reasons you cannot change – for example, for a parent of a newborn, or you’re recovering from illness or heavy physical exertion,” says a sleep expert. “But if you’re napping as your night sleep is unstable or broken, that’s often a signal your sleep drive is not where it should be. In such situations, daytime sleep can turn into part of the issue, not the solution. Utilize daytime sleep for brief periods for short-term problems – the focus must always be a strong and predictable overnight rest.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This means that daytime sleep must not be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your sleep at night, and best are not recommended in the late afternoon (depending on what time you go to bed in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. From a prominent study about napping, researchers at Nasa found that astronauts showed up to a 54% increase in alertness plus a 34% rise in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (in detail, this involved an initial six-minute nodding-off period). “I’d suggest setting a timer for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority doze off within 10 minutes,” notes a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of advice around regarding the ideal number of time, but that tends to cause people to feel more stressed than anything – and the worst thing one can do while aiming to nod off is worry about it.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, avoid the 45-60 minute window that induces that sluggish feeling, that foggy state when you awaken. “Research would say it’s better to opt for a lengthier snooze of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” explains the expert. “45 minutes is long enough to put you into slow-wave sleep and it is more probable to feel disoriented when you wake up – whereas if you nap for a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you’re likely to finish of a sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more alert. Though if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it may impact the quality of your sleep in the evening.”
Finding an Ideal Snooze Setting
Regarding precise methods, advice differs. A few professionals propose employing similar routines you’d use to promote restful sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and as much darkness as possible. Alternatively, experts propose that you should simply nap on a couch in whatever light happens to be around – to avoid sleep inertia and to preserve your bedroom as the place you associate with *real* sleep. “Napping is something really tricky to force,” says a sleep coach. “If you don’t have any drowsiness, it is more challenging to get comfortable and practically command yourself to nod off. There’s got to be some drive available to initiate sleep to begin with. Personally, I can often nap in broad daylight and awaken on my own alarm-free, but what helps many individuals is to anticipate a time that they’re naturally slightly tired and then simply relax into it.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and if you have few options – for example, when aiming to grab 40 winks while traveling or at the office – there’s nothing wrong to use some accessories. “In my work with elite athletes, I advise that they not rely on their own bed for naps, because they’re going to have|they will
