Hear a few performance gurus, making it easy to believe that napping is a superpower: more than a band-aid after poor sleep, but a shortcut to a better memory, a brighter outlook and maybe a faster 5k run time. Professional athletes swear by it – as do musicians, UFC champions & high-profile executives. Yet, when you lack a room for napping or a career that allows daytime sleep, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a short sleep for it to be worth the effort? Is there a reliable way to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you honestly promise you will arise feeling refreshed, not worse?
Understanding The Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three primary motivations for napping in the adult population,” notes a professor of sleep science professor. “The first is known as compensatory napping, essentially what you do following a lack of sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, which involves pre-empting insufficient sleep coming up, such as during graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “hedonic napping”, which simply is about the wish: you have a moment to sleep in the afternoon, and it's enjoyable to do it.”
The first thing to do, so, is consider why you want to nap. “Naps can be really helpful when overnight rest is being disrupted due to causes you cannot change – such as, for caring for an infant, or you’re recovering from illness or strenuous activity,” explains a sleep expert. “However, if you take a nap because your night sleep is unstable or poor, that is frequently a sign your body's sleep pressure is not at the level it needs to be. In those cases, napping can become part of the problem, not the solution. Use napping as a short-term solution for temporary issues – the main goal should still be a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This implies that naps ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to affect your overnight rest, and best should not occur post-3 p.m. (depending on the time you sleep at night). What duration is wise? Recommendations vary. From a prominent study on the subject, space agency scientists found that crew members showed a boost of up to 54% in alertness plus a 34% rise in cognitive performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this included a six-minute long falling asleep phase). “I’d suggest setting a timer for half an hour or less – the majority fall asleep within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of advice around concerning the perfect length of minutes, but that tends to make people feel more worried than anything – and the most counterproductive thing you can do when attempting to get to sleep is worry about it.”
If you’re going to sleep for longer, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that induces sleep grogginess, that spaced-out feeling when you awaken. “Research suggests it's more effective to have an extended nap of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” explains the expert. “45 minutes is enough time to send you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel sluggish upon awakening – while if you nap for a bit longer to a full sleep cycle, it's likely you'll to be on the end a full cycle and should awaken feeling more refreshed. But if you nap for a long period, it will affect the quality of your sleep later that night.”
Establishing an Ideal Snooze Setting
Regarding exact methodologies, recommendations vary. Certain specialists propose using the same protocol one would use to encourage a good night’s sleep: a silent space, a cozy bed and minimal light as you can manage. Some advise that you should just doze in a chair in whatever light is available – to avoid that groggy feeling and to preserve your bed as the environment you associate with nighttime rest. “Falling asleep is something really tricky to command,” notes an expert. “Lacking the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to lie down and practically instruct yourself to fall asleep. There must be some drive available to initiate sleep initially. I can usually take a nap during the day and naturally wake up alarm-free, though, what aids most folks is to look for a time when they are naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and should options are scarce – for example, if attempting to grab 40 winks while traveling or in a work pod – it's acceptable with bringing a few tools. “When I’m working with professional sportspeople, I suggest that they avoid becoming accustomed to sleeping in their bed, because they’re going to have|they will
