Hear enough performance experts, and you'll be easy to convince yourself that napping is a secret weapon: not just a band-aid after a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut towards improved recall, improved mood and maybe a faster 5k run time. Premier League soccer players swear by it – along with professional piano players, mixed martial artists & high-profile executives. However, if you don't have a dedicated nap-room or a career that encourages regular snoozing, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a short sleep for it to be worth the hassle? Can you find a surefire technique to nod off promptly? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you will get up feeling improved, not worse?
Exploring The Drive to Snooze
“There are three main reasons for daytime sleep among most adults,” notes a leading sleep science researcher. “The first is termed make-up sleep, essentially what happens after experiencing a lack of sleep overnight. Another is pre-emptive sleep, where you are anticipating insufficient sleep coming up, such as when working overnight shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which simply is about the wish: you have a moment to doze in the afternoon, and it's enjoyable to indulge.”
The primary task to consider, then, is consider your reason for napping. “Daytime sleep can be truly beneficial when night sleeping is disturbed due to causes outside your control – for instance, when you are caring for an infant, or recovering from illness or intense exercise,” states a sleep specialist. “However, if you’re napping because your sleep at night feels fragile or unreliable, that is frequently a sign your need for sleep is not where it should be. In those cases, napping can become part of the problem, not the solution. Employ naps for brief periods to address immediate needs – the focus should still be a robust and regular night’s sleep.”
The Optimal Nap Length
This means that naps ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and preferably should not occur after about 3pm (depending on what time you retire in the evening). What duration is wise? Advice differs. In one of the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, experts discovered that crew members showed up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% increase in performance after a 26-minute nap (to be precise, this counted a six-minute long falling asleep phase). “My advice is using an alarm for 20-30 minutes – many individuals fall asleep within 10 minutes,” notes a specialist. “There is plenty of recommendations regarding the optimal amount of time, however, that can cause people to feel more worried than anything else – and the worst thing you can do when trying to nod off is to stress over it.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, bypass the 45-60 minute window that encourages that sluggish feeling, that spaced-out feeling when you awaken. “Research indicates it’s better to have an extended nap of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” says the sleep scientist. “Three-quarters of an hour is sufficient to put you into deep sleep making it more likely to feel sluggish when you get up – whereas if you extend it slightly longer to 60 or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to be on the end a full cycle and should wake up feeling more refreshed. But if you’re sleeping for an hour and a half, it may impact how you sleep in the evening.”
Creating an Ideal Nap Environment
As for precise methods, advice differs. A few professionals recommend employing similar routines one would use to promote restful sleep: a silent space, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as possible. Some advise that one could merely snooze on a couch with ambient lighting is present – to avoid post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your bed as the environment your mind associates with nighttime rest. “Sleep is notoriously difficult to force,” notes an expert. “Lacking any sleepiness, it is tougher to recline and practically tell yourself to nod off. There must be some sleep pressure present to bring the sleep on in the first place. I can usually take a nap during the day and awaken on my own without an alarm, but what helps a lot of people is to wait for a time when they are naturally somewhat sleepy and calmly relax into it.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and when you have few options – for example, if attempting to grab some shut-eye while traveling or at the office – it is perfectly fine with bringing sleep aids. “Coaching footballers, I recommend that they not rely on sleeping in their bed, since they’re going to have|they will
