Listen to enough performance experts, and it’s tempting to convince yourself that napping is a powerful tool: rather than a sticking plaster after restless night, but a shortcut to improved recall, improved mood and maybe quicker running times. Elite footballers are all at it – as do musicians, fighters and media moguls. Yet, when you don't have a room for napping or a job that permits regular snoozing, are there *really* sufficient advantages to a burst of shut-eye to justify the kerfuffle? Can you find a dependable method to nod off promptly? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you’ll wake up feeling better, not worse?
Identifying Your Nap Motivation
“Experts note three primary motivations for taking a nap among most adults,” explains a leading circadian rhythm professor. “Firstly, there's what we call compensatory napping, that is what happens when you’ve had poor sleep the night before. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, which involves preparing for insufficient sleep ahead, such as during on night shifts. The third reason is “hedonic napping”, which basically boils down to wanting: you have an opportunity to doze during the day, and it's pleasant to indulge.”
The first thing to undertake, then, is to examine your nap motivation. “Naps can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is disturbed because of factors you cannot change – for example, if you’re a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” explains a sleep specialist. “But if you nap as your night sleep feels fragile or broken, that is frequently a signal your sleep drive is not at the level it needs to be. In such situations, napping can become part of the issue, rather than the answer. Employ naps as a short-term solution to address immediate needs – the main goal must always be a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Ideal Nap Length
This means that daytime sleep must not be long enough to interfere with your sleep at night, and best are not recommended in the late afternoon (based on the time you sleep overnight). What duration is wise? Guidelines are mixed. In one of the most-cited studies about napping, researchers at Nasa noted that space travelers experienced up to a 54% increase in vigilance and a 34% boost in task performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this involved a six-minute long nodding-off period). “I’d suggest setting a timer for 20-30 minutes – most people fall asleep within 10 minutes,” notes a sleep coach. “There’s a lot of recommendations regarding the ideal number of minutes, yet that often make people feel more anxious than anything else – and the most counterproductive thing you can possibly do while aiming to fall asleep is to be anxious.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, avoid the 45-60 minute window that promotes sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling when you awaken. “Studies indicates it's more effective to take a lengthier snooze of 60 to 90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” says the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is sufficient to plunge you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel disoriented upon awakening – while if you take it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a natural sleep cycle and should get up feeling more refreshed. But if you're dozing for an hour and a half, it can influence how you sleep later that night.”
Creating the Right Sleep Space
As for specific techniques, suggestions are diverse. Certain specialists suggest adopting comparable habits one would use to foster quality nighttime sleep: a silent space, a supportive surface and minimal light as you can manage. Some advise that it's fine to merely snooze on the sofa in the existing light is present – to prevent sleep inertia and to preserve your bed as the space you associate with *real* sleep. “Napping is something really tricky to command,” notes a specialist. “Lacking any drowsiness, it is tougher to lie down and essentially command yourself to fall asleep. There must be some sleep pressure present to initiate sleep initially. For me, it's possible to nap in broad daylight and awaken on my own alarm-free, though, what aids a lot of people is to look for a time where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply ease into sleep.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and when you have few options – for instance, if attempting to fit in 40 winks on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable with bringing some accessories. “Coaching elite athletes, I advise that they not rely on their own bed for naps, since they’re going to have|they will
