Hear enough self-improvement experts, and it’s tempting to believe that napping is a powerful tool: more than a quick fix following restless night, but a path to enhanced cognition, better spirits and perhaps improved athletic performance. Elite soccer players do it regularly – along with professional piano players, mixed martial artists and high-profile executives. But if you haven’t got a special sleep space or employment that encourages regular snoozing, is it *truly* enough benefits to a short sleep to merit the effort? Does there exist a surefire technique to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you will arise feeling refreshed, not worse?
Exploring Your Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three main reasons for daytime sleep in the adult population,” explains a leading sleep and circadian science professor. “Firstly, there's what we call recovery napping, which is what happens following insufficient sleep overnight. Secondly, there's prophylactic napping, when you are preparing for a sleep deficit coming up, for example during overnight shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which simply comes down to desire: there is a chance to sleep in the afternoon, and it's enjoyable to nap.”
The primary task to undertake, therefore, is to examine why you want to nap. “Naps can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep is disturbed due to causes beyond your control – such as, for a parent of a newborn, or recovering from illness or intense exercise,” states a sleep physiologist. “Yet when you nap as your sleep at night seems unreliable or broken, that can be an indicator your need for sleep is not as strong as it should be. In those cases, daytime sleep can turn into part of the issue, instead of the fix. Utilize daytime sleep for brief periods for temporary issues – the main goal must always be a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Ideal Nap Duration
This implies that daytime sleep shouldn’t be sufficiently lengthy to affect your overnight rest, and ideally shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (depending on the time you go to bed at night). What's a reasonable length? Advice differs. In one of the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, researchers at Nasa found that astronauts experienced up to a 54% increase in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this counted an initial six-minute nodding-off period). “I recommend using an alarm for 20-30 minutes – the majority are asleep within 10 minutes,” notes a sleep expert. “There is plenty of guidance out there regarding the optimal amount of time, however, that can cause people to feel more stressed than anything – and the worst thing you can do while aiming to get to sleep is worry about it.”
If you’re going to nap for a longer period, steer clear of the 45 to 60 minute range that induces sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling when you awaken. “Studies would say it's more effective to opt for an extended nap of 60 to 90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” explains the sleep scientist. “Forty-five minutes is long enough to put you into deep sleep and you’re more likely to feel groggy when you get up – while if you extend it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be completing of a sleep cycle and will probably get up feeling more refreshed. However, if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it may impact how you sleep that night.”
Establishing the Perfect Sleep Space
When it comes to specific techniques, advice differs. A few professionals propose adopting similar routines you’d use to encourage restful sleep: a peaceful area, a supportive surface and as much darkness as possible. Some advise that one could merely snooze on the sofa in whatever light is available – both to discourage that groggy feeling and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the space you associate with proper sleep. “Napping is notoriously difficult to force,” says a specialist. “Without the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to get comfortable and practically tell yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be some drive there to initiate sleep in the first place. For me, it's possible to take a nap in full light and awaken on my own without a timer, but what helps many individuals is to anticipate an instance where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply relax into it.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and should options are scarce – such as, if you’re trying to squeeze in some shut-eye during a commute or at the office – there’s nothing wrong to employ some accessories. “Coaching elite athletes, I suggest that they don’t get used to their own bed for naps, since they’re going to have|they will
