Tune into a few self-improvement gurus, making it tempting to convince yourself that napping is a secret weapon: more than a sticking plaster following a bad night’s sleep, but a route to improved recall, a brighter outlook and possibly quicker running times. Elite soccer players swear by it – along with professional piano players, UFC champions & high-profile executives. But if you don't have a room for napping or employment that allows frequent naps, is it *truly* sufficient advantages to a burst of shut-eye for it to be worth the hassle? Is there a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? Plus, is it possible to truly ensure you’ll wake up feeling improved, not worse?
Exploring The Nap Motivation
“We can identify three main reasons for napping for many people,” notes a leading sleep and circadian science researcher. “Firstly, there's what we call make-up sleep, which is the action you take after experiencing insufficient sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's prophylactic napping, which involves pre-empting a sleep deficit ahead, for instance when working graveyard shifts. The third reason is “hedonic napping”, which simply comes down to wanting: there is an opportunity to doze in the afternoon, and it's pleasant to indulge.”
The initial step to undertake, then, is to examine why you want to nap. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is disturbed because of factors outside your control – for example, when you are a parent of a newborn, or recovering from sickness or strenuous activity,” says a sleep specialist. “Yet when you’re napping since your sleep at night is unstable or unreliable, that’s often a sign your need for sleep is not as strong as it needs to be. In those cases, napping can become part of the issue, rather than the answer. Employ naps for brief periods to address immediate needs – the focus should still be a strong and predictable sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This implies that daytime sleep ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and best are not recommended in the late afternoon (depending on what time you sleep at night). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. Among the most referenced research on the subject, space agency scientists discovered that astronauts had improvements of over 50% in attentiveness and a 34% increase in performance after a 26-minute nap (in detail, this included a six-minute sleep onset time). “My advice is using an alarm for half an hour or less – many individuals fall asleep within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations concerning the optimal amount of minutes, but that tends to lead individuals to become more stressed than anything – and the most counterproductive thing you can do when attempting to fall asleep is to be anxious.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, avoid the 45 to 60 minute range that induces sleep grogginess, that foggy state when you wake. “Studies would say it’s better to opt for a lengthier snooze of one to one and a half hours than a medium-length one,” notes the professor. “45 minutes is sufficient to send you into a deep sleep stage making it more likely to feel disoriented when you wake up – whereas if you extend it a bit longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to be on the end a natural sleep cycle and will probably wake up feeling more alert. But if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it may impact how you sleep in the evening.”
Establishing the Perfect Nap Environment
As for specific techniques, advice differs. A few professionals propose adopting similar routines you use to promote a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as possible. Alternatively, experts propose that you should simply nap on the sofa with ambient lighting is present – to prevent sleep inertia and to preserve your bedroom as the space you associate with proper sleep. “Falling asleep is quite challenging to force,” notes a specialist. “Lacking any sleepiness, it is more challenging to get comfortable and basically instruct yourself to fall asleep. There must be some drive there to bring the sleep on in the first place. I can usually nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up alarm-free, though, what aids most folks is to look for a time that they’re naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply allow sleep to come.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and if you have few options – for example, when aiming to fit in 40 winks while traveling or in a work pod – it's acceptable to use a few tools. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I advise that they not rely on sleeping in their bed, as they’re going to have|they will
