Listen to a few performance gurus, making it easy to think that napping is a secret weapon: not just a quick fix following restless night, but a path towards a better memory, better spirits and possibly a faster 5k run time. Professional footballers are all at it – and so are musicians, UFC champions & business leaders. But if you lack a special sleep space or a career that allows frequent naps, is it *truly* enough benefits to a short sleep for it to be worth the hassle? Does there exist a dependable method to nod off promptly? And can you truly ensure you will arise feeling better, rather than worse?
Understanding Your Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three primary motivations for taking a nap for many people,” explains a leading sleep science professor. “The first is what we call compensatory napping, essentially the action you take after experiencing a lack of sleep the night before. Secondly, there's preparatory napping, which involves pre-empting insufficient sleep in the future, for instance when working on night shifts. Finally, there's “appetitive drive”, which essentially is about wanting: there is an opportunity to sleep during the day, and it's pleasant to indulge.”
The first thing to do, therefore, is to examine why you want to nap. “Naps can be truly beneficial when overnight rest gets interrupted due to causes beyond your control – for instance, if you’re a parent of a newborn, or recovering from sickness or strenuous activity,” explains a sleep specialist. “But if you nap since your sleep at night feels fragile or poor, that is frequently a sign your body's sleep pressure is not where it should be. Under those circumstances, napping can become part of the problem, rather than the answer. Employ naps as a temporary measure for temporary issues – the priority ought to remain a robust and regular sleep at night.”
The Ideal Snooze Time
This means that naps must not be too extended to affect your nighttime sleep, and best are not recommended post-3 p.m. (contingent on when you retire at night). What's a reasonable length? Advice differs. Among the most referenced research on the subject, experts found that astronauts experienced improvements of over 50% in vigilance and a 34% boost in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (technically, this counted an initial six-minute falling asleep phase). “My advice is using an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority fall asleep in under ten minutes,” notes a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of advice around about the perfect length of minutes, but that tends to make people feel more worried than anything else – and the worst thing one can do when trying to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, bypass the 45 to 60 minute range that promotes sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling when you awaken. “The science would say it’s better to take a longer nap of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to plunge you into slow-wave sleep and you’re more likely to feel groggy when you get up – whereas if you nap for slightly longer to a full sleep cycle, you will probably to be completing a natural sleep cycle and are likely to wake up feeling more alert. But if you nap for 90 minutes, it may impact your sleep later that night.”
Finding the Right Sleep Space
As for exact methodologies, suggestions are diverse. A few professionals recommend employing similar routines you use to foster a good night’s sleep: a peaceful area, a supportive surface and maximum darkness as is feasible. Some advise that one could simply nap on the sofa in whatever light is present – to prevent that groggy feeling and to “protect” your bedroom as the environment your mind associates with proper sleep. “Napping is something really tricky to will,” says a specialist. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to recline and essentially command yourself to nod off. There must be a natural inclination there to start the process in the first place. For me, it's possible to snooze in broad daylight and awaken on my own without a timer, but what helps a lot of people is to anticipate a time that they’re naturally somewhat sleepy and just gently ease into sleep.”
Experimentation is key, and if you have few options – for example, if you’re trying to fit in some shut-eye on a train or in a work pod – it's acceptable to use some accessories. “When I’m working with footballers, I recommend that they don’t get used to napping in bed, since they’re going to have|they will
