Hear plenty of performance experts, making it easy to believe that napping is a superpower: more than a quick fix following restless night, but a shortcut to a better memory, a brighter outlook and maybe quicker running times. Professional athletes are all at it – along with professional piano players, UFC champions and high-profile executives. Yet, when you don't have a dedicated nap-room or employment that encourages daytime sleep, is it *truly* enough benefits to a short sleep to merit the hassle? Is there a surefire technique to fall asleep fast? Plus, is it possible to honestly promise you will arise feeling improved, instead of groggy?
Exploring Your Nap Motivation
“There are three main reasons for daytime sleep in the adult population,” explains a professor of sleep science professor. “One is known as compensatory napping, essentially what you do after experiencing poor sleep overnight. The second is prophylactic napping, which involves anticipating sleep loss coming up, for instance when working on night shifts. Finally, there's “appetitive drive”, which basically comes down to the wish: there is an opportunity to nap in the daytime, and it's enjoyable to nap.”
The first thing to do, so, is to think about your reason for napping. “Naps can be truly beneficial when nighttime sleep is being disrupted because of factors you cannot change – for example, for a new parent, or if you are healing from sickness or intense exercise,” explains a sleep physiologist. “Yet when you take a nap because your nighttime sleep feels fragile or broken, that is frequently an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not where it needs to be. Under those circumstances, napping can become part of the issue, not the solution. Employ naps as a short-term solution for temporary issues – the priority should still be a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Length
Therefore that naps ought not to be too extended to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and ideally should not occur post-3 p.m. (based on when you sleep in the evening). What duration is wise? Guidelines are mixed. In one of the most-cited studies about napping, researchers at Nasa discovered that astronauts showed up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% boost in cognitive performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this involved a six-minute long falling asleep phase). “My advice is using an alarm for half an hour or less – the majority fall asleep quickly,” says a specialist. “There is plenty of guidance out there about the perfect length of minutes, but that tends to cause people to feel more worried than anything – and the worst thing you can do when attempting to fall asleep is worry about it.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, avoid the 45 to 60 minute range that induces sleep grogginess, that disoriented sensation upon waking. “Studies indicates it's more effective to have an extended nap of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to put you into slow-wave sleep and it is more probable to feel disoriented upon awakening – whereas if you nap for a little longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you will probably to be completing a natural sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more refreshed. But if you're dozing for a long period, it can influence your sleep later that night.”
Creating the Right Snooze Setting
When it comes to precise methods, advice differs. Some experts propose using similar routines one would use to foster quality nighttime sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and minimal light as is feasible. Some advise that one could simply nap on the sofa in whatever light is available – to avoid post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your bedroom as the place your brain links with proper sleep. “Sleep is notoriously difficult to will,” notes a sleep coach. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it is more challenging to lie down and essentially instruct yourself to go to sleep. There’s got to be a natural inclination available to bring the sleep on initially. I can usually snooze in broad daylight and naturally wake up alarm-free, but what helps a lot of people is to wait for an instance when they are naturally slightly tired and calmly ease into sleep.”
Experimentation is key, and if you have few options – such as, when aiming to squeeze in 40 winks during a commute or in a work pod – it's acceptable with bringing a few tools. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I advise that they not rely on their own bed for naps, since they’re going to have|they will
