Listen to plenty of self-improvement experts, and you'll be tempting to convince yourself that dozing is a secret weapon: more than a sticking plaster after restless night, but a route to a better memory, a brighter outlook and perhaps quicker running times. Elite footballers swear by it – as do professional piano players, UFC champions and high-profile executives. But if you lack a special sleep space or a career that permits regular snoozing, is it *truly* enough benefits to a quick nap to merit the effort? Can you find a reliable way to fall asleep fast? Plus, is it possible to truly ensure you will arise feeling better, instead of groggy?
Identifying The Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three main reasons for daytime sleep among most adults,” explains a leading sleep science researcher. “The first is known as make-up sleep, that is what happens when you’ve had insufficient sleep overnight. Another is pre-emptive sleep, which involves pre-empting sleep loss coming up, such as if you’re working on night shifts. The third reason is “appetitive drive”, which essentially boils down to the wish: you have a moment to sleep in the daytime, and it feels nice to nap.”
The initial step to do, so, is consider why you want to nap. “Naps can be genuinely useful when overnight rest is disturbed because of factors outside your control – for instance, for a parent of a newborn, or you’re recovering from sickness or strenuous activity,” says a sleep expert. “However, if you take a nap because your night sleep is unstable or broken, that is frequently a signal your body's sleep pressure is not at the level it should be. In such situations, naps can become part of the issue, not the solution. Use napping as a temporary measure to address immediate needs – the priority ought to remain a robust and regular sleep at night.”
The Perfect Snooze Time
This means that naps ought not to be long enough to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and preferably should not occur after about 3pm (contingent on when you go to bed in the evening). How long is sensible? Recommendations vary. Among a prominent study on the subject, researchers at Nasa noted that astronauts showed improvements of over 50% in attentiveness and a 34% increase in performance after a 26-minute nap (technically, this included a six-minute falling asleep phase). “I recommend setting a timer for 20-30 minutes – most people doze off quickly,” explains a specialist. “There’s a lot of recommendations about the perfect length for sleeping, but that tends to make people feel more stressed than anything else – and the most counterproductive thing you can do when attempting to get to sleep is to stress over it.”
If you plan to nap for a longer period, bypass the 45-60 minute window that promotes sleep grogginess, that foggy state when you wake. “Studies indicates it’s better to opt for a lengthier snooze of 60 to 90 minutes than a medium-length one,” says the sleep scientist. “Forty-five minutes is sufficient to send you into slow-wave sleep making it more likely to feel groggy upon awakening – however, if you take it slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to be completing of a sleep cycle and will probably wake up feeling more alert. Though if you’re sleeping for an hour and a half, it can influence the quality of your sleep in the evening.”
Finding an Ideal Sleep Space
As for precise methods, advice differs. Certain specialists recommend employing similar routines you’d use to foster restful sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and minimal light as you can manage. Some advise that you should simply nap in a chair with ambient lighting is present – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to maintain your bed as the place your mind associates with *real* sleep. “Sleep is notoriously difficult to command,” notes a specialist. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it is more challenging to get comfortable and essentially instruct yourself to go to sleep. You need some sleep pressure there to initiate sleep in the first place. I can usually snooze in full light and awaken on my own alarm-free, however, what assists a lot of people is to anticipate a moment where they feel naturally slightly tired and calmly ease into sleep.”
It’s worth experimenting, and when options are scarce – such as, if attempting to fit in a quick nap on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it is perfectly fine to use a few tools. “In my work with footballers, I suggest that they don’t get used to sleeping in their bed, since they’re going to have|they will
