Tune into a few performance experts, and it’s easy to think that a nap is a superpower: not just a band-aid following restless night, but a path to improved recall, a brighter outlook and possibly a faster 5k run time. Elite soccer players do it regularly – along with professional piano players, mixed martial artists and business leaders. Yet, when you don't have a special sleep space or employment that allows daytime sleep, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a short sleep to merit the kerfuffle? Does there exist a reliable way to fall asleep fast? Plus, is it possible to honestly promise you’ll wake up feeling refreshed, rather than worse?
Exploring Your Nap Motivation
“There are three primary motivations for daytime sleep among most adults,” notes a leading sleep science researcher. “Firstly, there's termed compensatory napping, essentially what you do following a lack of sleep the previous night. Another is pre-emptive sleep, when you are anticipating sleep loss ahead, for instance when working overnight shifts. Finally, there's “appetitive drive”, which essentially boils down to desire: there is a chance to doze in the daytime, and it feels nice to nap.”
The primary task to do, then, is to examine your nap motivation. “Naps can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep is disturbed for reasons beyond your control – such as, if you’re caring for an infant, or if you are healing from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” says a sleep expert. “But if you take a nap as your nighttime sleep is unstable or unreliable, that is frequently a sign your sleep drive is not at the level required. In such situations, daytime sleep can turn into part of the problem, not the solution. Use napping for brief periods to address immediate needs – the focus must always be a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Ideal Nap Length
This means that daytime sleep must not be sufficiently lengthy to affect your overnight rest, and ideally are not recommended after about 3pm (depending on what time you go to bed at night). What's a reasonable length? Advice differs. Among a prominent study about napping, researchers at Nasa discovered that crew members experienced improvements of over 50% in attentiveness and a 34% boost in performance post a 26-minute snooze (in detail, this involved a six-minute nodding-off period). “My advice is using an alarm for 20-30 minutes – the majority fall asleep within 10 minutes,” explains a specialist. “There is plenty of guidance out there concerning the ideal number of time, but that tends to cause people to feel more stressed than anything else – and the worst thing one can do when attempting to nod off is to be anxious.”
If you plan to nap for a longer period, steer clear of the 45 to 60 minute range that encourages that sluggish feeling, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “Research indicates it’s better to have a lengthier snooze lasting 60-90 minutes than a medium-length one,” says the professor. “45 minutes is enough time to send you into a deep sleep stage and you’re more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – while if you nap for a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to be on the end of a sleep cycle and are likely to wake up feeling more refreshed. But if you nap for a long period, it may impact how you sleep that night.”
Establishing the Right Sleep Space
As for precise methods, advice differs. A few professionals propose adopting the same protocol one would use to promote quality nighttime sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and as much darkness as you can manage. Some advise that it's fine to just doze in a chair in the existing light is present – to prevent sleep inertia and to preserve your sleeping quarters as the space your mind associates with proper sleep. “Napping is notoriously difficult to command,” notes an expert. “Without the urge to sleep, it is more challenging to lie down and basically tell yourself to nod off. There’s got to be some sleep pressure available to bring the sleep on to begin with. Personally, I can often take a nap during the day and naturally wake up without a timer, but what helps a lot of people is to look for a moment where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply allow sleep to come.”
Experimentation is key, and should options are scarce – for example, when aiming to fit in 40 winks on a train or in a work pod – it's acceptable to employ sleep aids. “Coaching footballers, I recommend that they don’t get used to napping in bed, as they’re going to have|they will
