The Secret for an Ideal Snooze: Timing, Location & for How Long?
Hear a few productivity podcasters, making it easy to believe that a nap is a powerful tool: not just a sticking plaster following a bad night’s sleep, but a route to improved recall, improved mood and maybe a faster 5k run time. Premier League footballers do it regularly – along with professional piano players, mixed martial artists & high-profile executives. Yet, when you haven’t got a room for napping or employment that encourages daytime sleep, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a quick nap to merit the hassle? Can you find a surefire technique to nod off promptly? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you will get up feeling better, rather than worse?
Exploring The Reasons for Napping
“Experts note three key drivers for taking a nap in the adult population,” notes a leading sleep science professor. “Firstly, there's what we call recovery napping, that is the action you take when you’ve had insufficient sleep overnight. The second is pre-emptive sleep, which involves anticipating sleep loss ahead, for instance if you’re working overnight shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which simply is about wanting: there is an opportunity to sleep in the afternoon, and it feels nice to nap.”
The first thing to consider, then, is to think about your reason for napping. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when night sleeping gets interrupted due to causes outside your control – for example, if you’re caring for an infant, or recovering from sickness or intense exercise,” explains a sleep specialist. “Yet when you take a nap as your nighttime sleep is unstable or unreliable, that is frequently a signal your body's sleep pressure is not where it should be. In those cases, napping can become part of the issue, not the solution. Use napping as a short-term solution for temporary issues – the focus should still be a strong and predictable sleep at night.”
The Perfect Snooze Time
Therefore that napping shouldn’t be long enough to interfere with your sleep at night, and ideally are not recommended post-3 p.m. (contingent on the time you go to bed overnight). What duration is wise? Recommendations vary. Among a prominent study on the subject, researchers at Nasa found that space travelers had a boost of up to 54% in alertness and a 34% increase in task performance after a 26-minute nap (to be precise, this involved a six-minute sleep onset time). “I recommend setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – most people fall asleep within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep expert. “There is plenty of recommendations regarding the ideal number of minutes, yet that often cause people to feel more stressed than anything else – and the most counterproductive thing one can do when attempting to nod off is to be anxious.”
Should you decide to take an extended nap, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that induces sleep grogginess, that foggy state when you wake. “Studies would say it's more effective to opt for a longer nap lasting 60-90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” explains the sleep scientist. “45 minutes is long enough to plunge you into deep sleep making it more likely to feel sluggish upon awakening – however, if you take it a bit longer to a full sleep cycle, you will probably to be on the end a full cycle and should wake up feeling more rejuvenated. However, if you’re sleeping for an hour and a half, it can influence the quality of your sleep in the evening.”
Establishing the Right Nap Environment
Regarding specific techniques, advice differs. Certain specialists recommend adopting comparable habits you’d use to promote a good night’s sleep: a peaceful area, a supportive surface and as much darkness as you can manage. Some advise that you should merely snooze on a couch with ambient lighting happens to be around – to avoid sleep inertia and to preserve your bed as the environment you associate with *real* sleep. “Sleep is something really tricky to will,” says a specialist. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it is tougher to recline and practically tell yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be some sleep pressure present to initiate sleep in the first place. I can usually nap during the day and wake up naturally without a timer, however, what assists many individuals is to anticipate a moment where they feel naturally slightly tired and calmly allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and if you have few options – such as, if you’re trying to fit in a quick nap during a commute or at the office – there’s nothing wrong to use sleep aids. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I recommend that they not rely on napping in bed, as they’re going to have|they will
