Listen to enough performance gurus, and you'll be tempting to believe that a nap is a secret weapon: more than a quick fix following restless night, but a shortcut to a better memory, a brighter outlook and maybe a faster 5k run time. Professional athletes are all at it – and so are professional piano players, mixed martial artists and high-profile executives. Yet, when you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or employment that encourages frequent naps, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye to merit the effort? Does there exist a dependable method to nod off promptly? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you will get up feeling refreshed, not worse?
Exploring Your Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three main reasons for taking a nap for many people,” notes an expert sleep science researcher. “The first is termed compensatory napping, essentially what happens when you’ve had a lack of sleep the previous night. Another is prophylactic napping, when you are pre-empting insufficient sleep coming up, for instance when working graveyard shifts. The third is called “pleasure-based sleep”, which simply is about wanting: you get an opportunity to nap in the afternoon, and it's pleasant to indulge.”
The initial step to undertake, therefore, is to think about why you want to nap. “Napping can be genuinely useful when overnight rest gets interrupted for reasons outside your control – for instance, for caring for an infant, or if you are healing from sickness or strenuous activity,” explains a sleep physiologist. “But if you’re napping as your sleep at night is unstable or broken, that’s often an indicator your sleep drive is not as strong as it should be. Under those circumstances, daytime sleep can turn into a contributing factor, instead of the fix. Utilize daytime sleep as a temporary measure for temporary issues – the focus ought to remain a robust and regular overnight rest.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
Therefore that napping ought not to be long enough to disrupt your overnight rest, and ideally should not occur in the late afternoon (based on what time you retire at night). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. In one of a prominent study on the subject, researchers at Nasa discovered that astronauts showed improvements of over 50% in alertness and a 34% boost in cognitive performance after a 26-minute nap (technically, this included a six-minute long sleep onset time). “I recommend setting a timer for 20-30 minutes – the majority are asleep quickly,” says a sleep expert. “There is plenty of guidance out there concerning the ideal number for sleeping, but that tends to cause people to feel more worried than anything else – and the most counterproductive thing you can do while aiming to nod off is worry about it.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that induces sleep grogginess, that spaced-out feeling when you wake. “Research indicates it's more effective to opt for an extended nap lasting 60-90 minutes than a medium-length one,” explains the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is sufficient to plunge you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel disoriented when you wake up – however, if you extend it a little longer to a full sleep cycle, 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 sleeping for an hour and a half, it will affect how you sleep later that night.”
Establishing the Perfect Nap Environment
When it comes to specific techniques, recommendations vary. A few professionals propose using similar routines you use to foster a good night’s sleep: a silent space, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as you can manage. Some advise that one could simply nap on a couch with ambient lighting is present – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to preserve your bed as the environment your brain links with *real* sleep. “Falling asleep is notoriously difficult to command,” explains a sleep coach. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to lie down and practically instruct yourself to nod off. There must be some sleep pressure present to start the process in the first place. Personally, I can often take a nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up alarm-free, though, what aids most folks is to anticipate a moment when they are naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly relax into it.”
It’s worth experimenting, and when options are scarce – for example, when aiming to grab a quick nap on a train or in a work pod – it is perfectly fine to employ sleep aids. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I recommend that they not rely on their own bed for naps, as they’re going to have|they will
