Hear plenty of performance gurus, and you'll be easy to convince yourself that a nap is a secret weapon: more than a sticking plaster following restless night, but a route to improved recall, improved mood and perhaps a faster 5k run time. Professional soccer players swear by it – as do professional piano players, mixed martial artists & high-profile executives. But if you haven’t got a special sleep space or a job that allows daytime sleep, are there *really* sufficient advantages to a quick nap for it to be worth the hassle? Is there a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you will get up feeling better, instead of groggy?
Exploring Your Drive to Snooze
“There are three main reasons for taking a nap in the adult population,” notes a professor of sleep and circadian science researcher. “One is known as compensatory napping, which is what happens when you’ve had poor sleep the night before. Secondly, there's preparatory napping, which involves pre-empting sleep loss in the future, such as when working graveyard shifts. The third reason is “appetitive drive”, which essentially is about the wish: you have a chance to sleep in the afternoon, and it's enjoyable to nap.”
The initial step to do, so, is consider your reason for napping. “Daytime sleep can be truly beneficial when nighttime sleep gets interrupted because of factors beyond your control – for instance, if you’re caring for an infant, or you’re recovering from sickness or strenuous activity,” states a sleep specialist. “But if you’re napping because your sleep at night feels fragile or poor, that can be a sign your need for sleep is not at the level required. Under those circumstances, napping can become part of the issue, rather than the answer. Use napping as a temporary measure for temporary issues – the focus must always be a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This means that daytime sleep shouldn’t be sufficiently lengthy to interfere with your nighttime sleep, and ideally shouldn’t take place after about 3pm (based on the time you go to bed at night). What duration is wise? Guidelines are mixed. Among a prominent study about napping, researchers at Nasa discovered that crew members showed improvements of over 50% in attentiveness and a 34% increase in task performance after a 26-minute nap (technically, this included a six-minute nodding-off period). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – many individuals doze off in under ten minutes,” explains a sleep coach. “There is plenty of guidance out there regarding the optimal amount for sleeping, however, that can make people feel more stressed than anything – and the least helpful action one can do while aiming to nod off is worry about it.”
If you’re going to nap for a longer period, bypass the period between 45 and 60 minutes that promotes sleep grogginess, that foggy state when you awaken. “Studies would say it is preferable to opt for a lengthier snooze of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the sleep scientist. “45 minutes is long enough to send you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel disoriented when you get up – however, if you extend it a little longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you’re likely to finish a full cycle and will probably wake up feeling more refreshed. But if you're dozing for 90 minutes, it may impact your sleep that night.”
Establishing the Perfect Nap Environment
As for precise methods, suggestions are diverse. Certain specialists recommend using similar routines one would use to promote a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and minimal light as you can manage. Alternatively, experts propose that one could just doze on a couch in the existing light happens to be around – to prevent that groggy feeling and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the space your brain links with proper sleep. “Falling asleep is something really tricky to command,” says a sleep coach. “Lacking the urge to sleep, it is tougher to recline and basically tell yourself to nod off. You need some sleep pressure available to bring the sleep on to begin with. I can usually snooze during the day and awaken on my own without an alarm, but what helps most folks is to look for a time where they feel naturally somewhat sleepy and calmly allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and when options are scarce – for instance, when aiming to fit in a quick nap on a train or at the office – it is perfectly fine to employ sleep aids. “In my work with elite athletes, I suggest that they avoid becoming accustomed to sleeping in their bed, as they’re going to have|they will
