Hear enough self-improvement gurus, making it easy to believe that dozing is a secret weapon: rather than a band-aid following a bad night’s sleep, but a path to a better memory, improved mood and perhaps improved athletic performance. Elite footballers are all at it – along with concert pianists, fighters & high-profile executives. However, if you haven’t got a special sleep space or employment that encourages frequent naps, can there *honestly* worthwhile perks to a short sleep to justify the effort? Can you find a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you will get up feeling refreshed, not worse?
Exploring Your Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three key drivers for daytime sleep for many people,” notes a professor of sleep science specialist. “Firstly, there's termed compensatory napping, which is what happens after experiencing poor sleep the previous night. Secondly, there's prophylactic napping, when you are preparing for sleep loss coming up, such as if you’re working graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “appetitive drive”, which essentially boils down to desire: you have a moment to doze in the daytime, and it's pleasant to do it.”
The primary task to consider, so, is to examine your reason for napping. “Napping can be really helpful when overnight rest is being disrupted due to causes you cannot change – such as, when you are a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from illness or strenuous activity,” explains a sleep expert. “However, if you nap as your nighttime sleep is unstable or poor, that’s often an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as it should be. Under those circumstances, naps can become a contributing factor, rather than the answer. Employ naps for brief periods for short-term problems – the main goal should still be a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
Therefore that naps must not be too extended to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and ideally shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (based on what time you go to bed overnight). What's a reasonable length? Recommendations vary. From a prominent study about napping, space agency scientists found that crew members experienced improvements of over 50% in attentiveness and a 34% increase in task performance post a 26-minute snooze (technically, this involved an initial six-minute sleep onset time). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20-30 minutes – many individuals are asleep within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep coach. “There is plenty of advice around about the perfect length of time, yet that often lead individuals to become more worried than anything – and the most counterproductive thing one can do when attempting to get to sleep is worry about it.”
If you’re going to sleep for longer, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that encourages sleep grogginess, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “The science suggests it's more effective to opt for an extended nap of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the sleep scientist. “45 minutes is long enough to send you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel sluggish when you get up – whereas if you extend it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a full cycle and should get up feeling more alert. Though if you’re sleeping for a long period, it can influence how you sleep later that night.”
Creating the Right Sleep Space
As for precise methods, advice differs. Some experts propose using comparable habits you use to encourage restful sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and minimal light as possible. Others suggest that it's fine to merely snooze on the sofa in the existing light is available – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to preserve your sleeping quarters as the space your mind associates with proper sleep. “Falling asleep is quite challenging to force,” says a specialist. “Without any sleepiness, it is tougher to lie down and essentially tell yourself to fall asleep. You need some sleep pressure there to initiate sleep to begin with. For me, it's possible to nap in full light and naturally wake up alarm-free, but what helps most folks is to anticipate a moment when they are naturally somewhat sleepy and just gently ease into sleep.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and when your choices are limited – for example, if you’re trying to grab some shut-eye on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it is perfectly fine to use sleep aids. “When I’m working with footballers, I advise that they avoid becoming accustomed to their own bed for naps, because they’re going to have|they will
