Hear enough productivity experts, and it’s tempting to think that dozing is a powerful tool: not just a quick fix following restless night, but a route to improved recall, a brighter outlook and possibly improved athletic performance. Professional athletes swear by it – along with concert pianists, UFC champions & high-profile executives. Yet, when you lack a special sleep space or a job that encourages daytime sleep, can there *honestly* worthwhile perks to a short sleep to merit the effort? Does there exist a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? Plus, is it possible to really guarantee you will get up feeling refreshed, rather than worse?
Identifying The Nap Motivation
“Experts note three key drivers for taking a nap for many people,” notes a professor of sleep science researcher. “Firstly, there's termed recovery napping, which is the action you take when you’ve had a lack of sleep overnight. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, where you are anticipating insufficient sleep in the future, such as when working graveyard shifts. The third is called “hedonic napping”, which simply is about desire: you get a moment to nap in the daytime, and it's enjoyable to do it.”
The initial step to undertake, therefore, is to examine why you want to nap. “Daytime sleep can be really helpful when nighttime sleep is disturbed due to causes you cannot change – such as, for caring for an infant, or if you are healing from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” states a sleep expert. “But if you’re napping because your night sleep seems unreliable or unreliable, that is frequently a signal your body's sleep pressure is not where required. In those cases, daytime sleep can turn into part of the issue, instead of the fix. Employ naps for brief periods for short-term problems – the main goal should still be a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
Therefore that naps ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to affect your sleep at night, and best should not occur in the late afternoon (depending on what time you go to bed at night). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. From the most referenced research on the subject, researchers at Nasa found that astronauts showed a boost of up to 54% in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in performance after a 26-minute nap (to be precise, this involved an initial six-minute falling asleep phase). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20-30 minutes – most people are asleep in under ten minutes,” notes a sleep coach. “There is plenty of recommendations regarding the optimal amount for sleeping, but that tends to cause people to feel more worried above all – and the worst thing one can do when attempting to get to sleep is to stress over it.”
If you’re going to nap for a longer period, bypass the 45 to 60 minute range that induces that sluggish feeling, that foggy state upon waking. “The science would say it is preferable to opt for an extended nap of 60 to 90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” notes the sleep scientist. “Three-quarters of an hour is sufficient to send you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel disoriented when you wake up – while if you nap for a little longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you will probably to be on the end a full cycle and are likely to awaken feeling more refreshed. Though if you’re sleeping for an hour and a half, it can influence your sleep later that night.”
Finding an Ideal Snooze Setting
As for exact methodologies, recommendations vary. Certain specialists recommend using comparable habits you’d use to encourage quality nighttime sleep: a peaceful area, a supportive surface and as much darkness as you can manage. Alternatively, experts propose that it's fine to merely snooze on the sofa in whatever light happens to be around – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the environment your brain links with nighttime rest. “Falling asleep is notoriously difficult to will,” explains a sleep coach. “If you don’t have any drowsiness, it becomes harder to lie down and essentially command yourself to go to sleep. There must be a natural inclination available to initiate sleep initially. For me, it's possible to take a nap in broad daylight and wake up naturally without a timer, but what helps a lot of people is to anticipate a time where they feel naturally slightly tired and then simply relax into it.”
Experimentation is key, and if options are scarce – such as, if you’re trying to squeeze in 40 winks on a train or in a work pod – it's acceptable to employ sleep aids. “Coaching elite athletes, I suggest that they don’t get used to napping in bed, since they’re going to have|they will
