The Secret to a Flawless Nap: Timing, Location and Duration?
Hear plenty of performance gurus, and you'll be tempting to convince yourself that dozing is a powerful tool: more than a sticking plaster after restless night, but a route towards enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and perhaps improved athletic performance. Premier League footballers swear by it – and so are musicians, UFC champions & media moguls. But if you lack a dedicated nap-room or a career that permits regular snoozing, can there *honestly* worthwhile perks to a short sleep to merit the effort? Does there exist a dependable method to nod off promptly? And can you really guarantee you will get up feeling refreshed, rather than worse?
Identifying The Nap Motivation
“We can identify three primary motivations for napping in the adult population,” says an expert circadian rhythm specialist. “The first is known as make-up sleep, essentially the action you take when you’ve had a lack of sleep overnight. The second is preparatory napping, where you are pre-empting a sleep deficit ahead, for example during on night shifts. The third reason is “pleasure-based sleep”, which essentially comes down to the wish: you get a moment to nap in the daytime, and it feels nice to do it.”
The primary task to consider, so, is consider your nap motivation. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep is disturbed because of factors outside your control – for instance, for a new parent, or you’re recovering after being ill or heavy physical exertion,” says a sleep physiologist. “But if you nap as your night sleep feels fragile or broken, that’s often a signal your need for sleep is not at the level it should be. Under those circumstances, naps can become part of the problem, instead of the fix. Employ naps as a short-term solution to address immediate needs – the focus ought to remain a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”
The Optimal Nap Duration
This means that daytime sleep shouldn’t be long enough to affect your nighttime sleep, and best are not recommended after about 3pm (depending on when you sleep in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. From a prominent study regarding daytime sleep, experts discovered that crew members showed improvements of over 50% in attentiveness and a 34% increase in performance after a 26-minute nap (to be precise, this counted a six-minute sleep onset time). “My advice is setting a timer for 20-30 minutes – many individuals fall asleep quickly,” says a sleep coach. “You'll find much advice around about the optimal amount for sleeping, however, that can lead individuals to become more worried than anything else – and the worst thing you can do when trying to fall asleep is worry about it.”
If you plan to sleep for longer, avoid the 45 to 60 minute range that encourages that sluggish feeling, that disoriented sensation when you awaken. “The science would say it is preferable to opt for an extended nap lasting 60-90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” says the professor. “Forty-five minutes is sufficient to put you into deep sleep making it more likely to feel disoriented when you get up – whereas if you take it slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be completing a natural sleep cycle and are likely to awaken feeling more rejuvenated. But if you nap for an hour and a half, it may impact your sleep later that night.”
Creating an Ideal Snooze Setting
When it comes to specific techniques, suggestions are diverse. Certain specialists recommend employing similar routines one would use to encourage restful sleep: a silent space, a supportive surface and maximum darkness as is feasible. Alternatively, experts propose that you should just doze on the sofa with ambient lighting is present – both to discourage sleep inertia and to “protect” your bed as the space you associate with nighttime rest. “Napping is quite challenging to force,” notes a specialist. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to get comfortable and essentially command yourself to nod off. There must be some sleep pressure available to initiate sleep initially. For me, it's possible to take a nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up without a timer, though, what aids a lot of people is to anticipate a time when they are naturally slightly tired and just gently allow sleep to come.”
It’s worth experimenting, and should options are scarce – such as, if you’re trying to grab some shut-eye during a commute or at the office – there’s nothing wrong to employ some accessories. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I recommend that they don’t get used to sleeping in their bed, because they’re going to have|they will
