Listen to enough performance gurus, and you'll be tempting to convince yourself that napping is a powerful tool: more than a sticking plaster following restless night, but a path to enhanced cognition, improved mood and perhaps improved athletic performance. Professional soccer players swear by it – as do musicians, fighters and high-profile executives. However, if you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or a career that permits regular snoozing, is it *truly* worthwhile perks to a quick nap for it to be worth the kerfuffle? Can you find a reliable way to nod off promptly? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you will arise feeling refreshed, not worse?
Understanding The Nap Motivation
“There are three primary motivations for taking a nap in the adult population,” notes an expert sleep science researcher. “One is termed make-up sleep, that is what you do when you’ve had a lack of sleep overnight. The second is prophylactic napping, which involves preparing for a sleep deficit coming up, for instance if you’re working overnight shifts. The third reason is “pleasure-based sleep”, which basically boils down to wanting: there is a moment to doze in the daytime, and it's pleasant to nap.”
The primary task to consider, then, is to think about your reason for napping. “Napping can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is being disrupted because of factors you cannot change – such as, for a new parent, or recovering from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” states a sleep physiologist. “But if you nap since your night sleep feels fragile or unreliable, that’s often a sign your sleep drive is not as strong as it should be. In such situations, daytime sleep can turn into part of the problem, not the solution. Utilize daytime sleep for brief periods for short-term problems – the focus ought to remain a solid and consistent sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
Therefore that naps shouldn’t be long enough to affect your overnight rest, and best are not recommended post-3 p.m. (contingent on when you sleep in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Advice differs. From the most-cited studies about napping, researchers at Nasa noted that space travelers had a boost of up to 54% in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in performance following a nap of 26 minutes (in detail, this included a six-minute nodding-off period). “My advice is setting an alarm for half an hour or less – many individuals doze off within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations about the ideal number of minutes, yet that often cause people to feel more worried above all – and the most counterproductive thing one can do while aiming to fall asleep is worry about it.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, avoid the 45-60 minute window that induces that sluggish feeling, that disoriented sensation upon waking. “The science indicates it’s better to have a longer nap of one to one and a half hours than a medium-length one,” says the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to plunge you into slow-wave sleep and you’re more likely to feel disoriented when you get up – while if you nap for slightly longer to a full sleep cycle, you will probably to be on the end of a sleep cycle and will probably wake up feeling more alert. However, if you nap for a long period, it will affect your sleep later that night.”
Establishing the Right Snooze Setting
As for precise methods, suggestions are diverse. Some experts suggest employing the same protocol one would use to promote restful sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and minimal light as possible. Others suggest that one could simply nap on the sofa with ambient lighting is available – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the space you associate with *real* sleep. “Napping is quite challenging to command,” explains a specialist. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it is tougher to get comfortable and practically tell yourself to nod off. You need some sleep pressure there to start the process in the first place. For me, it's possible to nap in full light and naturally wake up alarm-free, however, what assists many individuals is to anticipate a moment when they are naturally slightly tired and just gently relax into it.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and should your choices are limited – for example, if you’re trying to squeeze in some shut-eye on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it is perfectly fine to employ sleep aids. “When I’m working with professional sportspeople, I suggest that they not rely on their own bed for naps, because they’re going to have|they will