Listen to plenty of productivity experts, and you'll be easy to convince yourself that dozing is a powerful tool: more than a band-aid following restless night, but a route to enhanced cognition, better spirits and maybe improved athletic performance. Professional soccer players do it regularly – and so are professional piano players, UFC champions & media moguls. However, if you haven’t got a room for napping or a career that permits daytime sleep, can there *honestly* worthwhile perks to a burst of shut-eye to justify the kerfuffle? Can you find a surefire technique to get to sleep quickly enough? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you will get up feeling better, rather than worse?
Exploring Your Nap Motivation
“We can identify three main reasons for daytime sleep in the adult population,” explains a leading sleep science professor. “Firstly, there's termed compensatory napping, essentially what you do when you’ve had insufficient sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's prophylactic napping, when you are anticipating insufficient sleep coming up, for example when working on night shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which essentially boils down to the wish: there is an opportunity to doze in the afternoon, and it's pleasant to do it.”
The primary task to do, therefore, is to examine your nap motivation. “Naps can be really helpful when nighttime sleep is disturbed for reasons you cannot change – for instance, for a parent of a newborn, or you’re recovering after being ill or heavy physical exertion,” says a sleep physiologist. “Yet when you nap because your nighttime sleep seems unreliable or unreliable, that’s often a signal your sleep drive is not as strong as it should be. In such situations, napping can become part of the problem, rather than the answer. Utilize daytime sleep as a temporary measure for short-term problems – the priority ought to remain a robust and regular overnight rest.”
The Optimal Snooze Time
Therefore that napping shouldn’t be sufficiently lengthy to affect your nighttime sleep, and best are not recommended after about 3pm (depending on when you retire in the evening). What duration is wise? Recommendations vary. From the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, space agency scientists discovered that crew members had improvements of over 50% in alertness and a 34% increase in task performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this involved a six-minute sleep onset time). “My advice is setting a timer for 20-30 minutes – many individuals doze off within 10 minutes,” notes a sleep coach. “There is plenty of advice around about the optimal amount for sleeping, however, that can make people feel more anxious above all – and the least helpful action you can possibly do when trying to get to sleep is to stress over it.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that encourages sleep inertia, that disoriented sensation upon waking. “The science suggests it is preferable to opt for a lengthier snooze of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” says the sleep scientist. “45 minutes is enough time to plunge you into deep sleep and you’re more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – while if you nap for a bit longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be on the end a natural sleep cycle and will probably wake up feeling more rejuvenated. But if you’re sleeping for a long period, it may impact the quality of your sleep that night.”
Creating an Ideal Nap Environment
As for specific techniques, advice differs. Some experts recommend adopting similar routines you’d use to promote quality nighttime sleep: a peaceful area, a supportive surface and minimal light as is feasible. Some advise that it's fine to simply nap in a chair with ambient lighting is available – both to discourage that groggy feeling and to “protect” your bedroom as the environment your brain links with proper sleep. “Napping is quite challenging to command,” notes a specialist. “Without any drowsiness, it becomes harder to recline and essentially command yourself to nod off. There must be some sleep pressure available to initiate sleep to begin with. Personally, I can often nap in broad daylight and awaken on my own without a timer, though, what aids many individuals is to anticipate a moment that they’re naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply allow sleep to come.”
Experimentation is key, and if options are scarce – for example, when aiming to squeeze in 40 winks while traveling or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong to use a few tools. “When I’m working with professional sportspeople, I advise that they not rely on sleeping in their bed, since they’re going to have|they will
