Listen to a few self-improvement podcasters, and you'll be tempting to believe that napping is a superpower: rather than a quick fix following restless night, but a path to enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and possibly a faster 5k run time. Professional soccer players swear by it – and so are concert pianists, UFC champions and business leaders. However, if you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or a job that allows daytime sleep, are there *really* enough benefits to a quick nap for it to be worth the kerfuffle? Does there exist a dependable method to nod off promptly? Furthermore, can you honestly promise you will get up feeling better, not worse?
Identifying The Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three key drivers for napping for many people,” says an expert circadian rhythm professor. “The first is termed recovery napping, essentially the action you take when you’ve had insufficient sleep overnight. Another is preparatory napping, where you are pre-empting insufficient sleep in the future, for instance when working graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “hedonic napping”, which essentially is about desire: you get a chance to nap in the daytime, and it's pleasant to nap.”
The primary task to do, so, is to examine why you want to nap. “Naps can be really helpful when night sleeping is disturbed for reasons beyond your control – for example, if you’re caring for an infant, or recovering from illness or intense exercise,” explains a sleep specialist. “Yet when you’re napping since your sleep at night feels fragile or poor, that’s often a sign your sleep drive is not where required. In such situations, napping can become a contributing factor, not the solution. Utilize daytime sleep as a short-term solution to address immediate needs – the focus ought to remain a solid and consistent overnight rest.”
The Perfect Nap Length
This means that naps ought not to be too extended to affect your overnight rest, and ideally shouldn’t take place after about 3pm (contingent on the time you go to bed in the evening). How long is sensible? Advice differs. In one of the most-cited studies on the subject, researchers at Nasa discovered that astronauts experienced up to a 54% increase in attentiveness and a 34% boost in performance post a 26-minute snooze (technically, this involved a six-minute long falling asleep phase). “My advice is using an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – most people doze off in under ten minutes,” says a sleep expert. “There is plenty of advice around regarding the perfect length of time, however, that can cause people to feel more worried than anything else – and the worst thing you can do when trying to get to sleep is to stress over it.”
Should you decide to sleep for longer, avoid the 45-60 minute window that promotes sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “Studies suggests it's more effective to have an extended nap lasting 60-90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” says the professor. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to put you into a deep sleep stage and you’re more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – while if you extend it a bit longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be on the end a full cycle and should awaken feeling more alert. But if you nap for an hour and a half, it will affect your sleep in the evening.”
Creating the Perfect Snooze Setting
Regarding precise methods, suggestions are diverse. A few professionals suggest employing the same protocol one would use to foster a good night’s sleep: a silent space, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as you can manage. Others suggest that it's fine to merely snooze in a chair in the existing light is available – to prevent that groggy feeling and to maintain your bed as the place you associate with *real* sleep. “Sleep is something really tricky to force,” says a sleep coach. “Lacking the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to recline and practically command yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be some drive there to start the process initially. I can usually take a nap in broad daylight and awaken on my own without a timer, however, what assists most folks is to look for a time that they’re naturally slightly tired and just gently ease into sleep.”
Experimentation is key, and when options are scarce – for instance, if you’re trying to grab a quick nap during a commute or in a work pod – it's acceptable to employ sleep aids. “Coaching footballers, I advise that they avoid becoming accustomed to their own bed for naps, because they’re going to have|they will
