Listen to a few performance gurus, making it simple to believe that napping is a powerful tool: rather than a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a route towards enhanced cognition, better spirits and perhaps a faster 5k run time. Premier League athletes are all at it – and so are concert pianists, mixed martial artists and high-profile executives. Yet, when you haven’t got a special sleep space or a career that encourages daytime sleep, are there *really* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye to merit the kerfuffle? Can you find a dependable method to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you will get up feeling refreshed, not worse?
Identifying Your Reasons for Napping
“There are three main reasons for taking a nap for many people,” explains a professor of sleep and circadian science professor. “One is termed compensatory napping, that is what you do after experiencing a lack of sleep the night before. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, which involves anticipating sleep loss coming up, such as when working overnight shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which essentially is about desire: you have a chance to doze in the afternoon, and it's pleasant to indulge.”
The first thing to do, then, is to examine why you want to nap. “Napping can be truly beneficial when overnight rest is disturbed due to causes outside your control – for example, when you are caring for an infant, or you’re recovering from illness or intense exercise,” says a sleep physiologist. “But if you nap because your nighttime sleep feels fragile or broken, that is frequently an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not where it needs to be. In such situations, naps can become a contributing factor, not the solution. Employ naps as a temporary measure for short-term problems – the priority ought to remain a solid and consistent overnight rest.”
The Ideal Nap Duration
This implies that napping ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your sleep at night, and ideally shouldn’t take place in the late afternoon (contingent on when you retire overnight). What duration is wise? Guidelines are mixed. From a prominent study regarding daytime sleep, experts found that space travelers experienced a boost of up to 54% in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in cognitive performance post a 26-minute snooze (technically, this counted a six-minute long nodding-off period). “My advice is using an alarm for half an hour or less – most people doze off within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep expert. “You'll find much guidance out there concerning the ideal number for sleeping, but that tends to lead individuals to become more stressed than anything else – and the worst thing you can do while aiming to fall asleep is to be anxious.”
If you’re going to sleep for longer, bypass the 45-60 minute window that induces that sluggish feeling, that disoriented sensation upon waking. “Studies would say it's more effective to have a lengthier snooze of 60 to 90 minutes than a medium-length one,” notes the professor. “Forty-five minutes is sufficient to put you into deep sleep making it more likely to feel groggy upon awakening – while if you nap for a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to finish a natural sleep cycle and should wake up feeling more refreshed. Though if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it may impact your sleep later that night.”
Finding the Perfect Sleep Space
As for precise methods, recommendations vary. Certain specialists recommend using similar routines you’d use to promote quality nighttime sleep: a silent space, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as is feasible. Others suggest that it's fine to just doze in a chair with ambient lighting is available – to avoid post-nap grogginess and to maintain your bed as the place your brain links with nighttime rest. “Sleep is notoriously difficult to force,” explains a sleep coach. “Lacking any drowsiness, it is tougher to get comfortable and essentially command yourself to go to sleep. You need some drive available to bring the sleep on initially. Personally, I can often snooze in broad daylight and awaken on my own without a timer, though, what aids many individuals is to look for an instance that they’re naturally slightly tired and calmly relax into it.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and when your choices are limited – for example, if you’re trying to fit in 40 winks on a train or in a work pod – it's acceptable to use sleep aids. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I recommend that they don’t get used to napping in bed, because they’re going to have|they will