Hear a few self-improvement gurus, making it tempting to convince yourself that dozing is a powerful tool: more than a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut towards a better memory, a brighter outlook and maybe quicker running times. Professional footballers do it regularly – and so are professional piano players, mixed martial artists and business leaders. However, if you lack a dedicated nap-room or a career that permits daytime sleep, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye to justify the hassle? Does there exist a surefire technique to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you honestly promise you will arise feeling better, instead of groggy?
Identifying Your Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three primary motivations for taking a nap among most adults,” explains an expert sleep and circadian science professor. “The first is what we call compensatory napping, essentially what happens after experiencing insufficient sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's preparatory napping, where you are pre-empting sleep loss coming up, for instance during on night shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which essentially boils down to desire: you have a chance to nap during the day, and it feels nice to do it.”
The first thing to do, therefore, is to think about your reason for napping. “Napping can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep gets interrupted due to causes beyond your control – such as, for caring for an infant, or you’re recovering after being ill or heavy physical exertion,” says a sleep physiologist. “Yet when you nap as your night sleep is unstable or unreliable, that is frequently a sign your sleep drive is not where required. In those cases, naps can become part of the problem, rather than the answer. Utilize daytime sleep for brief periods for short-term problems – the focus must always be a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
This implies that napping shouldn’t be long enough to interfere with your sleep at night, and ideally shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (contingent on what time you sleep at night). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. Among the most referenced research on the subject, researchers at Nasa noted that space travelers experienced up to a 54% increase in alertness plus a 34% rise in performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this involved a six-minute long sleep onset time). “I’d suggest using an alarm for half an hour or less – many individuals are asleep within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep coach. “You'll find much advice around concerning the optimal amount of time, yet that often make people feel more anxious than anything else – and the least helpful action one can do while aiming to nod off is to be anxious.”
If you plan to take an extended nap, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that promotes sleep inertia, that disoriented sensation when you awaken. “Studies suggests it’s better to take an extended nap lasting 60-90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” notes the sleep scientist. “Three-quarters of an hour is enough time to send you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – however, if you extend it a bit longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you’re likely to finish a natural sleep cycle and should awaken feeling more refreshed. But if you're dozing for a long period, it can influence your sleep later that night.”
Establishing an Ideal Snooze Setting
As for precise methods, suggestions are diverse. A few professionals propose employing comparable habits you use to encourage restful sleep: a silent space, a cozy bed and as much darkness as possible. Some advise that you should simply nap on the sofa in whatever light is present – to prevent that groggy feeling and to maintain your bedroom as the environment you associate with *real* sleep. “Falling asleep is quite challenging to command,” says a specialist. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it is more challenging to recline and basically instruct yourself to fall asleep. You need some sleep pressure there to initiate sleep in the first place. For me, it's possible to take a nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up without an alarm, however, what assists many individuals is to anticipate an instance where they feel naturally slightly tired and calmly relax into it.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and when your choices are limited – such as, if attempting to grab 40 winks during a commute or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong to employ sleep aids. “Coaching footballers, I advise that they not rely on sleeping in their bed, because they’re going to have|they will
