Hear plenty of productivity gurus, making it simple to convince yourself that dozing is a secret weapon: rather than a band-aid after a bad night’s sleep, but a route towards improved recall, improved mood and maybe a faster 5k run time. Professional footballers do it regularly – along with professional piano players, UFC champions & high-profile executives. Yet, when you haven’t got a room for napping or a career that permits frequent naps, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye to justify the effort? Is there a surefire technique to nod off promptly? And can you honestly promise you’ll wake up feeling refreshed, rather than worse?
Understanding The Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three primary motivations for daytime sleep in the adult population,” says an expert sleep and circadian science specialist. “Firstly, there's what we call make-up sleep, essentially what you do after experiencing a lack of sleep the previous night. The second is preparatory napping, when you are pre-empting a sleep deficit coming up, for example if you’re working graveyard shifts. The third reason is “pleasure-based sleep”, which basically comes down to wanting: you have a moment to doze in the afternoon, and it feels nice to do it.”
The first thing to consider, then, is to think about your nap motivation. “Daytime sleep can be truly beneficial when nighttime sleep is disturbed for reasons beyond your control – for instance, if you’re a parent of a newborn, or recovering from illness or intense exercise,” says a sleep expert. “But if you’re napping as your sleep at night feels fragile or broken, that’s often a sign your body's sleep pressure is not where it needs to be. Under those circumstances, napping can become part of the issue, instead of the fix. Use napping as a short-term solution for short-term problems – the focus should still be a strong and predictable overnight rest.”
The Ideal Nap Duration
This implies that naps shouldn’t be sufficiently lengthy to affect your nighttime sleep, and preferably shouldn’t take place after about 3pm (contingent on what time you sleep overnight). What duration is wise? Guidelines are mixed. In one of the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, experts noted that crew members experienced a boost of up to 54% in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this involved a six-minute long sleep onset time). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20-30 minutes – most people doze off quickly,” explains a sleep coach. “There’s a lot of advice around regarding the perfect length for sleeping, however, that can make people feel more worried than anything – and the most counterproductive thing one can do while aiming to nod off is worry about it.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, bypass the 45 to 60 minute range that induces that sluggish feeling, that disoriented sensation when you awaken. “The science suggests it is preferable to have a longer nap of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” says the professor. “45 minutes is sufficient to plunge you into deep sleep making it more likely to feel disoriented when you wake up – while if you nap for a little longer to 60 or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to be completing of a sleep cycle and should get up feeling more rejuvenated. However, if you nap for a long period, it may impact how you sleep that night.”
Creating the Right Sleep Space
As for specific techniques, recommendations vary. A few professionals propose using comparable habits you’d use to foster restful sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and minimal light as possible. Alternatively, experts propose that one could simply nap on a couch in whatever light happens to be around – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to maintain your bedroom as the place your brain links with *real* sleep. “Sleep is notoriously difficult to will,” explains an expert. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it is tougher to lie down and essentially command yourself to nod off. There must be some sleep pressure available to bring the sleep on in the first place. I can usually take a nap in full light and awaken on my own alarm-free, though, what aids a lot of people is to look for an instance when they are 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 some shut-eye while traveling or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable to use a few tools. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I recommend that they avoid becoming accustomed to sleeping in their bed, since they’re going to have|they will
