The Formula for a Perfect Kip: When, Where and for How Long?
Listen to a few productivity experts, and you'll be simple to convince yourself that a nap is a powerful tool: not just a band-aid following restless night, but a path towards enhanced cognition, better spirits and maybe a faster 5k run time. Professional soccer players do it regularly – along with professional piano players, UFC champions and high-profile executives. However, if you don't have a dedicated nap-room or employment that allows daytime sleep, is it *truly* worthwhile perks to a short sleep to merit the effort? Does there exist a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? Plus, is it possible to really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling better, not worse?
Understanding Your Drive to Snooze
“We can identify three main reasons for taking a nap in the adult population,” notes an expert sleep and circadian science researcher. “The first is termed recovery napping, that is what happens after experiencing insufficient sleep the previous night. The second is prophylactic napping, which involves preparing for a sleep deficit coming up, such as during graveyard shifts. The third reason is “hedonic napping”, which essentially boils down to the wish: there is a chance to nap in the daytime, and it's pleasant to indulge.”
The first thing to do, so, is consider your reason for napping. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep is disturbed because of factors you cannot change – for instance, if you’re a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing after being ill or intense exercise,” explains a sleep specialist. “Yet when you nap because your night sleep is unstable or broken, that’s often a sign your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as it should be. In those cases, naps can become a contributing factor, rather than the answer. Use napping as a temporary measure to address immediate needs – the main goal ought to remain a robust and regular overnight rest.”
The Ideal Nap Duration
This means that naps must not be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your overnight rest, and preferably shouldn’t take place after about 3pm (contingent on what time you retire at night). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. From the most referenced research on the subject, space agency scientists found that crew members had improvements of over 50% in alertness plus a 34% rise in task performance post a 26-minute snooze (technically, this counted an initial six-minute nodding-off period). “My advice is setting an alarm for 20-30 minutes – many individuals fall asleep quickly,” notes a sleep expert. “There is plenty of advice around regarding the perfect length of time, however, that can make people feel more worried than anything else – and the worst thing you can do when attempting to fall asleep is to be anxious.”
Should you decide to sleep for longer, steer clear of the 45 to 60 minute range that induces sleep grogginess, that foggy state upon waking. “Research would say it's more effective to opt for an extended nap of one to one and a half hours compared to a medium-length nap,” says the sleep scientist. “Three-quarters of an hour is long enough to plunge you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel groggy upon awakening – while if you take it a bit longer to 60 or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to be completing a natural sleep cycle and are likely to wake up feeling more rejuvenated. However, if you're dozing for an hour and a half, it will affect the quality of your sleep that night.”
Establishing an Ideal Snooze Setting
When it comes to exact methodologies, advice differs. A few professionals recommend adopting the same protocol you use to encourage a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a supportive surface and as much darkness as possible. Others suggest that you should merely snooze on the sofa with ambient lighting is available – to avoid that groggy feeling and to preserve your sleeping quarters as the environment you associate with nighttime rest. “Napping is quite challenging to will,” says a sleep coach. “Without the urge to sleep, it is more challenging to lie down and practically tell yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be a natural inclination present to bring the sleep on initially. I can usually snooze in full light and naturally wake up alarm-free, though, what aids a lot of people is to wait for an instance where they feel naturally slightly tired and just gently relax into it.”
Experimentation is key, and if your choices are limited – for example, when aiming to grab some shut-eye during a commute or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable to use sleep aids. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I advise that they don’t get used to their own bed for naps, since they’re going to have|they will
