The Formula to a Flawless Nap: When, Where and for How Long?

Hear plenty of self-improvement experts, and it’s simple to believe that napping is a superpower: rather than a sticking plaster after poor sleep, but a route towards enhanced cognition, a brighter outlook and maybe improved athletic performance. Elite athletes swear by it – along with concert pianists, fighters & business leaders. But if you lack a room for napping or a career that allows regular snoozing, are there *really* sufficient advantages to a short sleep for it to be worth the kerfuffle? Is there a surefire technique to fall asleep fast? Furthermore, can you really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling refreshed, not worse?

Understanding Your Drive to Snooze

“Experts note three main reasons for napping for many people,” explains an expert circadian rhythm researcher. “One is termed recovery napping, essentially what you do when you’ve had insufficient sleep the night before. Secondly, there's prophylactic napping, when you are anticipating insufficient sleep coming up, such as when working on night shifts. The third reason is “pleasure-based sleep”, which simply is about the wish: you get an opportunity to nap in the daytime, and it's pleasant to nap.”

The first thing to consider, then, is to think about why you want to nap. “Naps can be genuinely useful when overnight rest gets interrupted for reasons outside your control – for example, for caring for an infant, or if you are healing after being ill or heavy physical exertion,” explains a sleep physiologist. “Yet when you’re napping as your sleep at night seems unreliable or poor, that can be an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as required. In those cases, napping can become part of the issue, rather than the answer. Use napping as a temporary measure for short-term problems – the focus must always be a solid and consistent overnight rest.”

The Optimal Nap Duration

Therefore that naps ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to affect your nighttime sleep, and preferably are not recommended in the late afternoon (based on what time you sleep in the evening). How long is sensible? Advice differs. Among the most referenced research on the subject, researchers at Nasa found that space travelers showed up to a 54% increase in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in cognitive performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this counted a six-minute sleep onset time). “My advice is setting an alarm for half an hour or less – the majority doze off in under ten minutes,” notes a sleep coach. “There’s a lot of recommendations regarding the perfect length of time, yet that often cause people to feel more stressed than anything else – and the most counterproductive thing you can possibly do while aiming to get to sleep is worry about it.”

If you plan to nap for a longer period, avoid the period between 45 and 60 minutes that encourages sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “The science suggests it is preferable to have a longer nap of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” notes the expert. “Forty-five minutes is sufficient to put you into slow-wave sleep and it is more probable to feel sluggish when you wake up – while if you extend it slightly longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a full cycle and will probably awaken feeling more rejuvenated. Though if you're dozing for 90 minutes, it will affect how you sleep later that night.”

Establishing an Ideal Snooze Setting

Regarding specific techniques, recommendations vary. A few professionals suggest using similar routines one would use to promote quality nighttime sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as you can manage. Others suggest that it's fine to merely snooze on a couch in whatever light is present – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your bedroom as the place you associate with proper sleep. “Sleep is something really tricky to will,” says a specialist. “Lacking the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to recline and essentially command yourself to go to sleep. There’s got to be a natural inclination present to bring the sleep on initially. For me, it's possible to snooze during the day and awaken on my own without a timer, but what helps many individuals is to look for a moment when they are naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly allow sleep to come.”

Experimentation is key, and if you have few options – for instance, if attempting to fit in a quick nap while traveling or in a soundproof office pod – it is perfectly fine to employ sleep aids. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I suggest that they don’t get used to napping in bed, as they’re going to have|they will