Tune into enough self-improvement experts, and you'll be tempting to think that napping is a powerful tool: more than a sticking plaster after a bad night’s sleep, but a path towards improved recall, improved mood and possibly a faster 5k run time. Premier League footballers do it regularly – as do professional piano players, fighters and high-profile executives. However, if you lack a room for napping or a job that allows frequent naps, can there *honestly* enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye for it to be worth the kerfuffle? Does there exist a surefire technique to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you will arise feeling improved, not worse?
Identifying Your Nap Motivation
“Experts note three main reasons for taking a nap among most adults,” says a leading sleep science specialist. “Firstly, there's known as compensatory napping, that is the action you take after experiencing poor sleep the previous night. The second is pre-emptive sleep, when you are anticipating insufficient sleep in the future, such as when working graveyard shifts. The third reason is “hedonic napping”, which simply comes down to the wish: you get a chance 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. “Napping can be really helpful when overnight rest is disturbed due to causes outside your control – such as, for caring for an infant, or if you are healing after being ill or intense exercise,” says a sleep physiologist. “But if you take a nap since your sleep at night feels fragile or unreliable, that is frequently a sign your need for sleep is not where it needs to be. In such situations, napping can become part of the issue, instead of the fix. Utilize daytime sleep as a temporary measure to address immediate needs – the main goal ought to remain a robust and regular night’s sleep.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
This means that naps must not be sufficiently lengthy to affect your nighttime sleep, and ideally should not occur after about 3pm (contingent on what time you sleep in the evening). How long is sensible? Guidelines are mixed. From the most referenced research about napping, experts found that crew members showed a boost of up to 54% in attentiveness and a 34% boost in performance post a 26-minute snooze (technically, this included an initial six-minute nodding-off period). “I’d suggest setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority doze off within 10 minutes,” explains a specialist. “There’s a lot of advice around about the optimal amount for sleeping, yet that often make people feel more worried than anything – and the least helpful action you can possibly do when attempting to nod off is to stress over it.”
If you plan to take an extended nap, avoid the period between 45 and 60 minutes that encourages that sluggish feeling, that spaced-out feeling when you wake. “Studies would say it is preferable to opt for a longer nap of 60 to 90 minutes compared to a medium-length nap,” explains the expert. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to send you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel sluggish when you get up – however, if you take it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a full cycle and should get up feeling more rejuvenated. However, if you're dozing for a long period, it will affect your sleep later that night.”
Finding the Right Snooze Setting
As for specific techniques, advice differs. A few professionals recommend using the same protocol you’d use to encourage restful sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and minimal light as possible. Alternatively, experts propose that it's fine to simply nap on the sofa in the existing light is present – to avoid that groggy feeling and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the place you associate with *real* sleep. “Falling asleep is notoriously difficult to will,” says an expert. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it is more challenging to get comfortable and essentially command yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be some drive there to initiate sleep to begin with. For me, it's possible to nap in full light and awaken on my own without an alarm, though, what aids a lot of people is to wait for an instance when they are naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and if options are scarce – such as, if you’re trying to grab 40 winks on a train or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong to use sleep aids. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I recommend that they not rely on their own bed for naps, since they’re going to have|they will
