The Formula for an Ideal Nap: When, Location and Duration?
Tune into plenty of performance experts, and you'll be easy to think that a nap is a powerful tool: more than a sticking plaster following poor sleep, but a route towards a better memory, better spirits and possibly a faster 5k run time. Premier League soccer players are all at it – along with musicians, mixed martial artists & business leaders. However, if you don't have a room for napping or employment that allows daytime sleep, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a quick nap to merit the kerfuffle? Is there a surefire technique to fall asleep fast? Plus, is it possible to honestly promise you’ll wake up feeling improved, instead of groggy?
Identifying Your Drive to Snooze
“Experts note three primary motivations for taking a nap for many people,” explains an expert sleep and circadian science professor. “One is termed compensatory napping, essentially what happens when you’ve had poor sleep overnight. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, when you are preparing for sleep loss coming up, such as if you’re working on night shifts. The third reason is “appetitive drive”, which simply boils down to desire: you have a moment to nap in the afternoon, and it feels nice to indulge.”
The first thing to do, then, is to examine why you want to nap. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when overnight rest is disturbed due to causes you cannot change – for example, for a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from illness or strenuous activity,” explains a sleep physiologist. “But if you’re napping as your nighttime sleep seems unreliable or poor, that’s often a signal your need for sleep is not as strong as required. In those cases, daytime sleep can turn into part of the issue, rather than the answer. Utilize daytime sleep as a short-term solution to address immediate needs – the main goal should still be a robust and regular night’s sleep.”
The Ideal Nap Length
This implies that daytime sleep ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your sleep at night, and ideally are not recommended in the late afternoon (contingent on the time you go to bed at night). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. Among a prominent study about napping, space agency scientists noted that crew members showed a boost of up to 54% in vigilance and a 34% boost in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this counted a six-minute long nodding-off period). “My advice is setting a timer for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority are asleep in under ten minutes,” notes a sleep coach. “There’s a lot of recommendations regarding the optimal amount for sleeping, but that tends to make people feel more stressed above all – and the least helpful action one can do when attempting to get to sleep is to stress over it.”
If you’re going to take an extended nap, steer clear of the 45 to 60 minute range that promotes sleep inertia, that disoriented sensation upon waking. “The science would say it's more effective to take a longer nap of one to one and a half hours than a medium-length one,” explains the professor. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to plunge you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel disoriented upon awakening – while if you extend it a little longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be on the end a full cycle and should wake up feeling more rejuvenated. However, if you're dozing for an hour and a half, it will affect your sleep in the evening.”
Establishing the Right Sleep Space
Regarding specific techniques, suggestions are diverse. Certain specialists propose adopting the same protocol you’d use to foster a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and maximum darkness as possible. Some advise that it's fine to simply nap on a couch in the existing light happens to be around – both to discourage that groggy feeling and to preserve your bedroom as the environment your mind associates with *real* sleep. “Napping is notoriously difficult to force,” explains a sleep coach. “If you don’t have any drowsiness, it becomes harder to get comfortable and basically tell yourself to nod off. There’s got to be some drive available to initiate sleep to begin with. Personally, I can often take a nap in broad daylight and awaken on my own alarm-free, but what helps most folks is to anticipate a moment that they’re naturally slightly tired and calmly allow sleep to come.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and when your choices are limited – for instance, if you’re trying to fit in 40 winks on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable to employ a few tools. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I suggest that they avoid becoming accustomed to napping in bed, since they’re going to have|they will
