Hear plenty of self-improvement gurus, and you'll be tempting to think that dozing is a secret weapon: not just a sticking plaster after a bad night’s sleep, but a route towards improved recall, improved mood and perhaps improved athletic performance. Professional footballers swear by it – as do concert pianists, fighters and business leaders. But if you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or a career that permits frequent naps, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a short sleep to justify the effort? Does there exist a surefire technique to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling better, not worse?
Exploring Your Nap Motivation
“We can identify three key drivers for napping among most adults,” says a leading circadian rhythm professor. “The first is known as make-up sleep, essentially what you do following insufficient sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's preparatory napping, where you are preparing for a sleep deficit ahead, for example when working graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “hedonic napping”, which basically boils down to desire: there is a moment to nap in the afternoon, and it feels nice to nap.”
The initial step to undertake, so, is to think about your nap motivation. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is disturbed due to causes you cannot change – such as, if you’re a new parent, or recovering from sickness or strenuous activity,” says a sleep expert. “Yet when you take a nap as your sleep at night seems unreliable or poor, that can be an indicator your sleep drive is not where it needs to be. In such situations, naps can become a contributing factor, instead of the fix. Utilize daytime sleep as a temporary measure for temporary issues – the focus ought to remain a strong and predictable sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This means that naps ought not to be too extended to interfere with your sleep at night, and best should not occur in the late afternoon (based on what time you sleep in the evening). What duration is wise? Recommendations vary. In one of the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, researchers at Nasa found that space travelers showed a boost of up to 54% in vigilance plus a 34% rise in task performance following a nap of 26 minutes (in detail, this involved an initial six-minute sleep onset time). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – most people are asleep quickly,” says a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations concerning the ideal number of minutes, yet that often cause people to feel more worried than anything else – and the most counterproductive thing you can do when trying to nod off is to stress over it.”
Should you decide to sleep for longer, avoid the 45-60 minute window that promotes sleep inertia, that foggy state when you awaken. “Research would say it’s better to have a longer nap lasting 60-90 minutes than a medium-length one,” says the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to send you into a deep sleep stage making it more likely to feel groggy when you wake up – however, if you extend it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be on the end of a sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more alert. But if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it may impact your sleep later that night.”
Creating an Ideal Sleep Space
When it comes to specific techniques, suggestions are diverse. Certain specialists recommend employing comparable habits you use to promote a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and minimal light as you can manage. Some advise that it's fine to merely snooze on the sofa in the existing light is present – to prevent post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your bedroom as the space you associate with proper sleep. “Sleep is something really tricky to command,” says an expert. “Without any sleepiness, it is more challenging to get comfortable and practically command yourself to fall asleep. You need a natural inclination available to start the process to begin with. For me, it's possible to nap in broad daylight and awaken on my own without an alarm, but what helps many individuals is to wait for a moment where they feel naturally somewhat sleepy and then simply allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and should you have few options – for example, when aiming to grab a quick nap on a train or at the office – there’s nothing wrong to use some accessories. “In my work with professional sportspeople, I recommend that they avoid becoming accustomed to sleeping in their bed, since they’re going to have|they will
