Hear a few performance podcasters, and you'll be easy to believe that a nap is a secret weapon: not just a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut towards a better memory, better spirits and possibly improved athletic performance. Professional athletes do it regularly – along with professional piano players, fighters & media moguls. Yet, when you haven’t got a special sleep space or a career that encourages regular snoozing, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a quick nap to justify the hassle? Does there exist a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you truly ensure you will get up feeling better, not worse?
Understanding The Drive to Snooze
“There are three primary motivations for napping among most adults,” explains an expert sleep and circadian science professor. “One is what we call compensatory napping, essentially the action you take when you’ve had a lack of sleep overnight. The second is preparatory napping, where you are pre-empting insufficient sleep ahead, for example if you’re working overnight shifts. The third reason is “pleasure-based sleep”, which simply comes down to desire: you get an opportunity to sleep in the afternoon, and it feels nice to nap.”
The initial step to do, so, is to examine your nap motivation. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep is being disrupted due to causes outside your control – for example, when you are a new parent, or if you are healing from sickness or intense exercise,” explains a sleep physiologist. “But if you nap as your night sleep seems unreliable or unreliable, that is frequently a sign your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as it needs to be. Under those circumstances, napping can become a contributing factor, rather than the answer. Utilize daytime sleep as a short-term solution for short-term problems – the main goal ought to remain a solid and consistent overnight rest.”
The Ideal Snooze Time
This means that napping must not be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your overnight rest, and ideally are not recommended in the late afternoon (depending on what time you go to bed in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Recommendations vary. In one of the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, space agency scientists found that crew members had up to a 54% increase in vigilance and a 34% boost in task performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this involved a six-minute long falling asleep phase). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority doze off within 10 minutes,” notes a sleep expert. “You'll find much advice around regarding the optimal amount of time, but that tends to make people feel more stressed than anything else – and the least helpful action you can do when attempting to fall asleep is worry about it.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, avoid the 45-60 minute window that encourages that sluggish feeling, that spaced-out feeling when you wake. “Studies suggests it's more effective to have a lengthier snooze lasting 60-90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” notes the expert. “45 minutes is enough time to put you into a deep sleep stage making it more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – whereas if you take it a bit longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a full cycle and should awaken feeling more alert. Though if you're dozing for 90 minutes, it may impact your sleep that night.”
Establishing the Perfect Nap Environment
Regarding specific techniques, suggestions are diverse. A few professionals propose employing comparable habits one would use to foster quality nighttime sleep: a peaceful area, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as possible. Alternatively, experts propose that you should simply nap in a chair in whatever light is present – to avoid that groggy feeling and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the space your mind associates with *real* sleep. “Napping is quite challenging to force,” says a sleep coach. “Lacking the urge to sleep, it is tougher to lie down and basically instruct yourself to nod off. You need some sleep pressure available to initiate sleep in the first place. For me, it's possible to nap during the day and wake up naturally without an alarm, however, what assists a lot of people is to look for an instance that they’re naturally slightly tired and just gently allow sleep to come.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and should you have few options – such as, if you’re trying to fit in a quick nap during a commute or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong to use a few tools. “Coaching elite athletes, I advise that they don’t get used to sleeping in their bed, since they’re going to have|they will
