Hear plenty of performance podcasters, and you'll be simple to think that dozing is a superpower: more than a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut towards enhanced cognition, improved mood and possibly a faster 5k run time. Premier League soccer players swear by it – as do musicians, fighters & high-profile executives. But if you lack a room for napping or employment that permits frequent naps, is it *truly* worthwhile perks to a short sleep to justify the effort? Can you find a surefire technique to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you’ll wake up feeling better, rather than worse?
Exploring Your Nap Motivation
“We can identify three main reasons for napping for many people,” notes a leading circadian rhythm researcher. “The first is known as compensatory napping, that is the action you take after experiencing a lack of sleep the night before. The second is pre-emptive sleep, when you are preparing for insufficient sleep in the future, for example if you’re working overnight shifts. The third reason is “pleasure-based sleep”, which essentially boils down to desire: you get a moment to sleep in the daytime, and it feels nice to nap.”
The initial step to undertake, therefore, is consider your nap motivation. “Napping can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep gets interrupted for reasons outside your control – for instance, when you are a parent of a newborn, or you’re recovering after being ill or strenuous activity,” says a sleep expert. “But if you’re napping because your night sleep seems unreliable or poor, that’s often a sign your body's sleep pressure is not where it should be. In such situations, napping can become a contributing factor, rather than the answer. Employ naps for brief periods for temporary issues – the main goal must always be a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Ideal Nap Length
This means that napping ought not to be long enough to disrupt your overnight rest, and preferably should not occur post-3 p.m. (contingent on when you retire overnight). What duration is wise? Recommendations vary. In one of a prominent study on the subject, experts found that astronauts had up to a 54% increase in vigilance plus a 34% rise in task performance following a nap of 26 minutes (in detail, this involved a six-minute falling asleep phase). “I’d suggest setting a timer for half an hour or less – the majority fall asleep quickly,” says a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations concerning the optimal amount of time, however, that can cause people to feel more worried than anything – and the least helpful action you can do while aiming to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, bypass the 45 to 60 minute range that encourages sleep grogginess, that disoriented sensation upon waking. “Research suggests it’s better to take a lengthier snooze of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” notes the professor. “Forty-five minutes is long enough to send you into a deep sleep stage and it is more probable to feel sluggish when you get up – while if you take it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to be on the end of a sleep cycle and should awaken feeling more refreshed. Though if you nap for a long period, it will affect how you sleep that night.”
Creating an Ideal Sleep Space
When it comes to precise methods, suggestions are diverse. Some experts suggest using similar routines one would use to encourage restful sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as you can manage. Others suggest that you should simply nap on a couch in whatever light happens to be around – to prevent post-nap grogginess and to maintain your bedroom as the space your brain links with *real* sleep. “Falling asleep is quite challenging to will,” explains an expert. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it becomes harder to get comfortable and basically tell yourself to go to sleep. You need some sleep pressure there to bring the sleep on initially. For me, it's possible to nap during the day and awaken on my own without a timer, however, what assists a lot of people is to look for an instance when they are naturally slightly tired and calmly allow sleep to come.”
Experimentation is key, and should your choices are limited – for example, if attempting to grab a quick nap while traveling or at the office – it is perfectly fine to use a few tools. “In my work with professional sportspeople, I suggest that they avoid becoming accustomed to napping in bed, since they’re going to have|they will
