Listen to plenty of performance podcasters, and you'll be easy to think that napping is a powerful tool: rather than a quick fix following restless night, but a route towards a better memory, improved mood and possibly improved athletic performance. Premier League footballers do it regularly – along with musicians, UFC champions and high-profile executives. However, if you lack a room for napping or employment that encourages regular snoozing, are there *really* worthwhile perks to a quick nap to justify the kerfuffle? Can you find a reliable way to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling improved, instead of groggy?
Exploring Your Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three primary motivations for taking a nap among most adults,” notes a leading sleep and circadian science researcher. “The first is what we call compensatory napping, which is the action you take following insufficient sleep overnight. The second is prophylactic napping, which involves pre-empting sleep loss coming up, for instance when working graveyard shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which essentially comes down to the wish: you get an opportunity to nap during the day, and it's pleasant to do it.”
The initial step to consider, therefore, is to examine your nap motivation. “Napping can be genuinely useful when night sleeping gets interrupted for reasons you cannot change – such as, when you are a new parent, or if you are healing from sickness or intense exercise,” explains a sleep specialist. “But if you’re napping because your night sleep seems unreliable or broken, that is frequently a signal your need for sleep is not as strong as it should be. In such situations, naps can become part of the issue, not the solution. Employ naps for brief periods to address immediate needs – the priority must always be a robust and regular night’s sleep.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
This implies that napping shouldn’t be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your overnight rest, and preferably shouldn’t take place after about 3pm (contingent on when you retire in the evening). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. From the most referenced research about napping, researchers at Nasa discovered that crew members had up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% increase in cognitive performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this included a six-minute long falling asleep phase). “I’d suggest using an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – most people doze off quickly,” says a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations concerning the optimal amount for sleeping, yet that often make people feel more anxious than anything else – and the most counterproductive thing one can do when trying to fall asleep is to stress over it.”
Should you decide to sleep for longer, steer clear of the 45 to 60 minute range that induces that sluggish feeling, that foggy state upon waking. “Studies indicates it’s better to take a lengthier snooze of 60 to 90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” says the expert. “45 minutes is enough time to put you into slow-wave sleep and it is more probable to feel sluggish upon awakening – while if you extend it a little longer to 60 or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to finish of a sleep cycle and are likely to get up feeling more rejuvenated. Though if you’re sleeping for a long period, it may impact your sleep that night.”
Finding an Ideal Snooze Setting
As for precise methods, suggestions are diverse. Certain specialists recommend employing similar routines you use to promote quality nighttime sleep: a quiet room, a cozy bed and as much darkness as possible. Others suggest that one could simply nap on the sofa in whatever light happens to be around – to prevent sleep inertia and to maintain your bedroom as the place you associate with nighttime rest. “Napping is notoriously difficult to force,” says a sleep coach. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it becomes harder to get comfortable and essentially instruct yourself to nod off. There’s got to be some drive present to bring the sleep on initially. I can usually take a nap during the day and wake up naturally without an alarm, though, what aids most folks is to anticipate a moment where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly relax into it.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and should your choices are limited – for example, if you’re trying to squeeze in 40 winks during a commute or at the office – it's acceptable with bringing some accessories. “In my work with professional sportspeople, I advise that they don’t get used to sleeping in their bed, as they’re going to have|they will
