🔗 Share this article

Listen to a few performance gurus, making it easy to convince yourself that dozing is a powerful tool: rather than a sticking plaster after poor sleep, but a path to improved recall, improved mood and perhaps improved athletic performance. Elite footballers swear by it – along with professional piano players, fighters and high-profile executives. However, if you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or a job that encourages frequent naps, are there *really* sufficient advantages to a quick nap to justify the effort? Does there exist a reliable way to nod off promptly? Plus, is it possible to honestly promise you’ll wake up feeling improved, rather than worse?

Identifying Your Drive to Snooze

“Experts note three key drivers for taking a nap among most adults,” says an expert circadian rhythm researcher. “The first is known as recovery napping, which is what you do when you’ve had insufficient sleep overnight. Another is prophylactic napping, when you are preparing for insufficient sleep coming up, for instance when working graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “hedonic napping”, which essentially comes down to the wish: there is an opportunity to nap in the afternoon, and it feels nice to indulge.”

The first thing to undertake, so, is to think about your nap motivation. “Naps can be truly beneficial when nighttime sleep is disturbed for reasons you cannot change – for example, if you’re a new parent, or if you are healing after being ill or strenuous activity,” states a sleep physiologist. “But if you nap since your sleep at night is unstable or unreliable, that can be an indicator your sleep drive is not where required. Under those circumstances, naps can become a contributing factor, not the solution. Use napping as a short-term solution for temporary issues – the focus ought to remain a solid and consistent overnight rest.”

The Perfect Nap Duration

This means that daytime sleep ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to interfere with your sleep at night, and best shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (based on the time you retire at night). What duration is wise? Guidelines are mixed. From the most referenced research about napping, experts noted that crew members had a boost of up to 54% in alertness and a 34% increase in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (in detail, this counted a six-minute falling asleep phase). “My advice is setting a timer for 20-30 minutes – many individuals fall asleep within 10 minutes,” notes a sleep coach. “There’s a lot of advice around about the optimal amount of time, but that tends to lead individuals to become more anxious above all – and the least helpful action one can do while aiming to nod off is to be anxious.”

If you’re going to take an extended nap, steer clear of the 45-60 minute window that induces sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling when you wake. “Research would say it's more effective to take an extended nap of 60 to 90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the professor. “Forty-five minutes is enough time to send you into a deep sleep stage and it is more probable to feel disoriented when you wake up – while if you extend it a little longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you’re likely to finish a full cycle and will probably awaken feeling more refreshed. Though if you’re sleeping for a long period, it can influence how you sleep that night.”

Finding an Ideal Sleep Space

When it comes to exact methodologies, advice differs. Certain specialists suggest adopting similar routines one would use to foster quality nighttime sleep: a peaceful area, a cozy bed and as much darkness as you can manage. Some advise that one could merely snooze in a chair in whatever light happens to be around – to avoid that groggy feeling and to preserve your bedroom as the place your brain links with *real* sleep. “Sleep is quite challenging to force,” says an expert. “Lacking the urge to sleep, it is tougher to recline and basically tell yourself to nod off. You need some sleep pressure available to start the process to begin with. I can usually take a nap in broad daylight and wake up naturally without a timer, but what helps most folks is to look for a time where they feel naturally slightly tired and then simply allow sleep to come.”

Trying different approaches is valuable, and when you have few options – for example, when aiming to grab a quick nap on a train or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong to use some accessories. “When I’m working with footballers, I advise that they don’t get used to their own bed for naps, since they’re going to have|they will