Hear plenty of productivity gurus, and you'll be tempting to convince yourself that napping is a secret weapon: more than a sticking plaster after a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut to enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and perhaps a faster 5k run time. Elite athletes do it regularly – and so are concert pianists, fighters and business leaders. Yet, when you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or a career that encourages regular snoozing, is it *truly* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye for it to be worth the effort? Does there exist a reliable way to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you will get up feeling refreshed, not worse?
Understanding The Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three primary motivations for taking a nap for many people,” says a professor of circadian rhythm researcher. “One is known as compensatory napping, that is the action you take after experiencing insufficient sleep the previous night. The second is pre-emptive sleep, where you are preparing for sleep loss ahead, for instance during graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which basically boils down to the wish: you have a chance to doze in the daytime, and it's pleasant to nap.”
The first thing to do, so, is to examine your reason for napping. “Naps can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep gets interrupted because of factors beyond your control – for example, when you are caring for an infant, or recovering from illness or intense exercise,” states a sleep expert. “However, if you’re napping as your sleep at night is unstable or poor, that can be an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not where it needs to be. Under those circumstances, daytime sleep can turn into part of the problem, not the solution. Use napping as a temporary measure to address immediate needs – the focus must always be a robust and regular night’s sleep.”
The Perfect Snooze Time
This means that daytime sleep must not be long enough to affect your sleep at night, and ideally shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (depending on what time you retire overnight). What duration is wise? Recommendations vary. Among the most referenced research on the subject, experts found that space travelers showed up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% boost in task performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this counted a six-minute nodding-off period). “I recommend using an alarm for 20-30 minutes – many individuals are asleep quickly,” explains a specialist. “There’s a lot of recommendations regarding the perfect length of minutes, but that tends to make people feel more worried than anything else – and the worst thing you can possibly do while aiming to get to sleep is worry about it.”
If you’re going to take an extended nap, bypass the 45-60 minute window that promotes sleep inertia, that foggy state when you wake. “The science would say it's more effective to take an extended nap lasting 60-90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” says the expert. “Forty-five minutes is enough time to put you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel disoriented when you get up – however, if you extend it a bit longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be on the end a natural sleep cycle and will probably wake up feeling more refreshed. But if you're dozing for an hour and a half, it may impact your sleep that night.”
Creating the Perfect Snooze Setting
Regarding precise methods, suggestions are diverse. Some experts suggest adopting similar routines you’d use to promote a good night’s sleep: a silent space, a supportive surface and as much darkness as possible. Others suggest that you should just doze on the sofa in whatever light is available – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to maintain your sleeping quarters as the place your brain links with *real* sleep. “Sleep is quite challenging to command,” notes an expert. “Lacking any sleepiness, it is more challenging to get comfortable and essentially command yourself to fall asleep. There must be some drive there to bring the sleep on initially. For me, it's possible to take a nap in full light and wake up naturally alarm-free, though, what aids most folks is to wait for a time that they’re naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly relax into it.”
It’s worth experimenting, and if options are scarce – for example, if you’re trying to squeeze in a quick nap on a train or at the office – it is perfectly fine with bringing sleep aids. “In my work with elite athletes, I recommend that they not rely on napping in bed, because they’re going to have|they will
