Hear a few productivity gurus, and you'll be simple to think that dozing is a superpower: more than a band-aid following restless night, but a route to enhanced cognition, improved mood and possibly improved athletic performance. Professional soccer players do it regularly – along with concert pianists, UFC champions and high-profile executives. Yet, when you don't have a room for napping or a career that encourages frequent naps, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a quick nap for it to be worth the effort? Can you find a dependable method to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling refreshed, not worse?
Identifying Your Reasons for Napping
“There are three primary motivations for daytime sleep in the adult population,” explains an expert sleep and circadian science researcher. “One is known as compensatory napping, that is what you do when you’ve had a lack of sleep the previous night. Another is pre-emptive sleep, which involves preparing for a sleep deficit ahead, for example when working on night shifts. The third is called “hedonic napping”, which basically boils down to wanting: you get a moment to nap during the day, and it feels nice to nap.”
The primary task to undertake, then, is consider your nap motivation. “Daytime sleep can be really helpful when overnight rest is disturbed because of factors you cannot change – for instance, for caring for an infant, or you’re recovering from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” states a sleep physiologist. “But if you’re napping as your sleep at night feels fragile or poor, that is frequently a sign your body's sleep pressure is not at the level it should be. In such situations, napping can become part of the issue, not the solution. Employ naps for brief periods for temporary issues – the priority ought to remain a strong and predictable overnight rest.”
The Perfect Nap Length
This means that naps must not be long enough to disrupt your sleep at night, and ideally should not occur post-3 p.m. (contingent on the time you sleep in the evening). How long is sensible? Recommendations vary. Among a prominent study about napping, researchers at Nasa noted that space travelers had improvements of over 50% in attentiveness and a 34% boost in performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this included a six-minute nodding-off period). “My advice is setting a timer for 20-30 minutes – many individuals are asleep in under ten minutes,” explains a specialist. “There is plenty of advice around concerning the ideal number for sleeping, however, that can cause people to feel more anxious above all – and the most counterproductive thing you can possibly do while aiming to fall asleep is to stress over it.”
Should you decide to take an extended nap, avoid the 45 to 60 minute range that promotes sleep inertia, that foggy state when you awaken. “The science indicates it is preferable to have an extended nap of 60 to 90 minutes than a medium-length one,” says the expert. “Forty-five minutes is long enough to put you into slow-wave sleep and it is more probable to feel sluggish when you wake up – whereas if you extend it slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you’re likely to finish of a sleep cycle and should awaken feeling more rejuvenated. However, if you nap for 90 minutes, it may impact the quality of your sleep in the evening.”
Finding an Ideal Snooze Setting
As for precise methods, recommendations vary. A few professionals suggest using comparable habits one would use to foster a good night’s sleep: a peaceful area, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as you can manage. Some advise that one could just doze on a couch with ambient lighting is present – to prevent post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the environment you associate with nighttime rest. “Napping is something really tricky to force,” says a specialist. “Without any sleepiness, it is more challenging to lie down and practically tell yourself to go to sleep. You need some sleep pressure available to start the process to begin with. I can usually nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up without an alarm, though, what aids a lot of people is to anticipate an instance when they are naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and when options are scarce – for example, when aiming to squeeze in some shut-eye on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable with bringing some accessories. “Coaching footballers, I advise that they not rely on their own bed for naps, as they’re going to have|they will
