Listen to plenty of performance podcasters, and you'll be easy to believe that napping is a superpower: more than a sticking plaster after a bad night’s sleep, but a route towards a better memory, improved mood and perhaps improved athletic performance. Premier League footballers swear by it – as do musicians, mixed martial artists & media moguls. However, if you don't have a special sleep space 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 get to sleep quickly enough? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling better, not worse?
Exploring Your Nap Motivation
“Experts note three main reasons for daytime sleep for many people,” notes an expert sleep and circadian science researcher. “One is known as recovery napping, which is what happens following poor sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's preparatory napping, when you are preparing for a sleep deficit ahead, for example when working on night shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which basically comes down to the wish: there is an opportunity to doze during the day, and it feels nice to do it.”
The initial step to consider, then, is to examine why you want to nap. “Napping can be truly beneficial when nighttime sleep is disturbed due to causes beyond your control – for example, for a new parent, or if you are healing after being ill or strenuous activity,” explains a sleep specialist. “Yet when you take a nap since your sleep at night is unstable or broken, that is frequently a sign your need for sleep is not as strong as it should be. Under those circumstances, napping can become part of the issue, instead of the fix. Use napping for brief periods for short-term problems – the focus must always be a strong and predictable overnight rest.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
This implies that naps shouldn’t be too extended to disrupt your overnight rest, and preferably shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (depending on what time you sleep overnight). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. From a prominent study regarding daytime sleep, researchers at Nasa found that space travelers showed up to a 54% increase in attentiveness and a 34% boost in task performance after a 26-minute nap (technically, this involved an initial six-minute falling asleep phase). “I recommend setting a timer for 20 to 30 minutes – many individuals are asleep quickly,” says a specialist. “There is plenty of recommendations regarding the optimal amount of minutes, yet that often lead individuals to become more stressed above all – and the most counterproductive thing you can do when attempting to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
If you plan to nap for a longer period, avoid the 45-60 minute window that induces sleep inertia, that foggy state when you wake. “Studies indicates it’s better to take an extended nap lasting 60-90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” says the professor. “45 minutes is enough time to put you into a deep sleep stage and it is more probable to feel sluggish when you wake up – whereas if you take it a bit longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you will probably to be on the end of a sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more alert. But if you're dozing for 90 minutes, it will affect the quality of your sleep that night.”
Creating the Right Snooze Setting
Regarding precise methods, recommendations vary. Certain specialists suggest adopting the same protocol you use to encourage a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as possible. Others suggest that one could merely snooze on the sofa with ambient lighting happens to be around – to prevent sleep inertia and to preserve your bed as the place your brain links with nighttime rest. “Falling asleep is something really tricky to command,” says a sleep coach. “If you don’t have any drowsiness, it is more challenging to lie down and practically tell yourself to go to sleep. You need some sleep pressure there to bring the sleep on to begin with. Personally, I can often nap in broad daylight and wake up naturally alarm-free, though, what aids most folks is to look for an instance where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly allow sleep to come.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and if options are scarce – such as, if attempting to grab 40 winks during a commute or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong to use sleep aids. “In my work with footballers, I advise that they avoid becoming accustomed to their own bed for naps, because they’re going to have|they will
