Listen to plenty of performance experts, and you'll be tempting to believe that napping is a powerful tool: not just a quick fix after a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut to enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and possibly a faster 5k run time. Professional soccer players do it regularly – as do musicians, mixed martial artists and business leaders. However, if you lack a dedicated nap-room or a job that allows frequent naps, are there *really* sufficient advantages to a burst of shut-eye for it to be worth the effort? Does there exist a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? Plus, is it possible to really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling better, rather than worse?
Exploring Your Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three primary motivations for daytime sleep in the adult population,” explains a leading circadian rhythm specialist. “Firstly, there's what we call compensatory napping, that is what happens following a lack of sleep overnight. Secondly, there's preparatory napping, which involves pre-empting insufficient sleep ahead, for instance if you’re working on night shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which basically comes down to wanting: you get an opportunity to doze in the daytime, and it's enjoyable to nap.”
The initial step to do, so, is to think about your reason for napping. “Napping can be genuinely useful when overnight rest is disturbed because of factors outside your control – for instance, if you’re caring for an infant, or you’re recovering after being ill or strenuous activity,” says a sleep expert. “Yet when you take a nap as your nighttime sleep seems unreliable or poor, that is frequently a signal your sleep drive is not at the level it needs to be. Under those circumstances, napping can become part of the problem, 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 Perfect Nap Duration
Therefore that napping ought not to be long enough to disrupt your sleep at night, and best are not recommended in the late afternoon (depending on when you retire in the evening). What duration is wise? Advice differs. From the most referenced research about napping, researchers at Nasa found that astronauts had up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% boost in performance post a 26-minute snooze (in detail, this included a six-minute long sleep onset time). “My advice is setting a timer for 20 to 30 minutes – many individuals fall asleep quickly,” explains a sleep expert. “You'll find much guidance out there regarding the perfect length of time, but that tends to cause people to feel more anxious than anything – and the least helpful action you can do when attempting to nod off is worry about it.”
Should you decide to sleep for longer, steer clear of the 45 to 60 minute range that promotes sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling when you awaken. “The science suggests it’s better to have a longer nap lasting 60-90 minutes than a medium-length one,” says the professor. “Three-quarters of an hour is enough time to plunge you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel sluggish when you get up – whereas if you extend it a bit longer to a full sleep cycle, you will probably to finish of a sleep cycle and should wake up feeling more refreshed. Though if you nap for a long period, it will affect how you sleep later that night.”
Establishing an Ideal Nap Environment
As for exact methodologies, recommendations vary. A few professionals propose employing similar routines you use to foster a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a cozy bed and as much darkness as is feasible. Others suggest that one could just doze on the sofa with ambient lighting happens to be around – to avoid post-nap grogginess and to maintain your sleeping quarters as the environment your brain links with *real* sleep. “Sleep is quite challenging to force,” explains an expert. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it is tougher to lie down and basically tell yourself to nod off. You need some sleep pressure available to start the process to begin with. For me, it's possible to snooze during the day and wake up naturally without a timer, though, what aids most folks is to wait for a time where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and just gently ease into sleep.”
Experimentation is key, and if you have few options – for example, if attempting to fit in a quick nap during a commute or in a work pod – there’s nothing wrong to use some accessories. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I suggest that they avoid becoming accustomed to napping in bed, since they’re going to have|they will
