Listen to a few productivity gurus, and you'll be tempting to think that napping is a superpower: rather than a sticking plaster following restless night, but a route to a better memory, a brighter outlook and maybe a faster 5k run time. Elite footballers do it regularly – along with musicians, fighters & high-profile executives. But if you don't have a dedicated nap-room or a career that permits daytime sleep, are there *really* sufficient advantages to a short sleep to merit the kerfuffle? Can you find a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? Plus, is it possible to really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling better, rather than worse?
Understanding The Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three main reasons for napping for many people,” explains a leading sleep science specialist. “The first is what we call recovery napping, that is what you do following a lack of sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, when you are pre-empting insufficient sleep ahead, for instance during overnight shifts. The third reason is “appetitive drive”, which simply boils down to the wish: there is an opportunity to sleep during the day, and it feels nice to nap.”
The primary task to consider, therefore, is to think about why you want to nap. “Napping can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep is disturbed for reasons you cannot change – such as, when you are a parent of a newborn, or you’re recovering from sickness or intense exercise,” explains a sleep specialist. “However, if you take a nap because your nighttime sleep is unstable or broken, that’s often an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as it needs to be. Under those circumstances, naps can become part of the issue, instead of the fix. Use napping as a short-term solution to address immediate needs – the focus ought to remain a robust and regular overnight rest.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
Therefore that napping must not be long enough to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and preferably are not recommended post-3 p.m. (depending on when you sleep in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Recommendations vary. From a prominent study on the subject, researchers at Nasa discovered that space travelers had a boost of up to 54% in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in task performance after a 26-minute nap (to be precise, this involved a six-minute falling asleep phase). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20-30 minutes – the majority doze off in under ten minutes,” says a sleep expert. “There is plenty of advice around concerning the perfect length of minutes, yet that often lead individuals to become more stressed than anything else – and the least helpful action one can do when attempting to get to sleep is to stress over it.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, avoid the 45 to 60 minute range that induces that sluggish feeling, that foggy state when you wake. “The science suggests it’s better to have an extended nap of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” notes the professor. “45 minutes is long enough to send you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel disoriented when you wake up – however, if you take it slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to be completing of a sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more refreshed. But if you're dozing for an hour and a half, it can influence your sleep that night.”
Finding the Right Nap Environment
Regarding specific techniques, recommendations vary. Some experts recommend adopting comparable habits you use to encourage quality nighttime sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as you can manage. Some advise that you should just doze on a couch in whatever light happens to be around – both to discourage sleep inertia and to “protect” your bed as the space your brain links with *real* sleep. “Falling asleep is notoriously difficult to command,” notes an expert. “Without the urge to sleep, it is more challenging to lie down and essentially command yourself to go to sleep. There must be some drive there to bring the sleep on to begin with. Personally, I can often snooze in full light and wake up naturally without a timer, but what helps most folks is to look for an instance that they’re naturally somewhat sleepy and then simply allow sleep to come.”
Experimentation is key, and if options are scarce – for example, if you’re trying to fit in a quick nap while traveling or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong to employ sleep aids. “In my work with elite athletes, I suggest that they not rely on napping in bed, because they’re going to have|they will
