Listen to plenty of performance gurus, and you'll be easy to believe that dozing is a powerful tool: not just a band-aid after a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut towards a better memory, improved mood and maybe a faster 5k run time. Professional footballers swear by it – and so are professional piano players, fighters & high-profile executives. But if you don't have a dedicated nap-room or a career that allows daytime sleep, can there *honestly* worthwhile perks to a burst of shut-eye to justify the kerfuffle? Is there a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? Furthermore, can you honestly promise you will arise feeling improved, not worse?
Identifying The Nap Motivation
“We can identify three main reasons for daytime sleep among most adults,” says an expert sleep and circadian science specialist. “Firstly, there's known as compensatory napping, that is what you do following poor sleep the night before. Another is prophylactic napping, which involves pre-empting sleep loss coming up, for example if you’re working graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which essentially is about wanting: there is a moment to doze in the daytime, and it's pleasant to do it.”
The primary task to do, therefore, is to examine why you want to nap. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is disturbed because of factors beyond your control – for instance, when you are a new parent, or you’re recovering from sickness or intense exercise,” states a sleep physiologist. “But if you’re napping because your sleep at night seems unreliable or broken, that is frequently a sign your sleep drive is not where it needs to be. Under those circumstances, napping can become a contributing factor, instead of the fix. Employ naps as a temporary measure for short-term problems – the main goal must always be a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Ideal Nap Length
This means that napping must not be long enough to affect your nighttime sleep, and best shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (depending on what time you sleep at night). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. In one of the most-cited studies on the subject, space agency scientists found that space travelers had up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% increase in performance after a 26-minute nap (to be precise, this involved a six-minute sleep onset time). “I’d suggest setting a timer for half an hour or less – many individuals fall asleep within 10 minutes,” says a sleep coach. “There’s a lot of advice around regarding the perfect length for sleeping, but that tends to lead individuals to become more anxious than anything – and the worst thing one can do when attempting to get to sleep is to stress over it.”
Should you decide to take an extended nap, steer clear of the 45-60 minute window that induces sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling when you awaken. “Research indicates it is preferable to have a lengthier snooze of one to one and a half hours than a medium-length one,” notes the professor. “Three-quarters of an hour is sufficient to put you into a deep sleep stage making it more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – however, if you nap for slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you’re likely to finish a full cycle and are likely to get up feeling more rejuvenated. But if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it may impact how you sleep later that night.”
Finding the Right Sleep Space
As for precise methods, recommendations vary. Some experts recommend adopting comparable habits one would use to encourage a good night’s sleep: a peaceful area, a supportive surface and maximum darkness as possible. Others suggest that one could simply nap on a couch in the existing light is available – to avoid that groggy feeling and to maintain your bedroom as the environment you associate with nighttime rest. “Napping is something really tricky to command,” notes an expert. “If you don’t have any drowsiness, it is tougher to get comfortable and practically command yourself to nod off. There must be some sleep pressure present to initiate sleep to begin with. For me, it's possible to snooze during the day and naturally wake up without a timer, but what helps many individuals is to anticipate an instance when they are naturally somewhat sleepy and calmly ease into sleep.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and should options are scarce – such as, if you’re trying to grab some shut-eye during a commute or at the office – it's acceptable with bringing sleep aids. “Coaching elite athletes, I advise that they not rely on sleeping in their bed, because they’re going to have|they will
