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Hear a few performance podcasters, making it simple to believe that napping is a secret weapon: more than a quick fix after poor sleep, but a route to enhanced cognition, improved mood and maybe quicker running times. Premier League soccer players swear by it – as do musicians, fighters & high-profile executives. However, if you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or a career that allows daytime sleep, is it *truly* enough benefits to a quick nap to justify the hassle? Is there a dependable method to get to sleep quickly enough? Plus, is it possible to honestly promise you will get up feeling better, not worse?

Identifying The Drive to Snooze

“We can identify three key drivers for daytime sleep among most adults,” says a professor of sleep science specialist. “One is termed recovery napping, essentially the action you take following insufficient sleep overnight. Another is pre-emptive sleep, which involves anticipating sleep loss ahead, such as if you’re working graveyard shifts. The third is called “pleasure-based sleep”, which essentially is about wanting: you get an opportunity to nap in the daytime, and it feels nice to indulge.”

The initial step to undertake, then, is consider your nap motivation. “Naps can be truly beneficial when nighttime sleep gets interrupted for reasons you cannot change – for example, when you are a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from illness or intense exercise,” states a sleep physiologist. “However, if you’re napping as your sleep at night feels fragile or broken, that’s often an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not at the level it should be. In such situations, naps can become part of the problem, not the solution. Employ naps as a short-term solution for short-term problems – the main goal should still be a robust and regular sleep at night.”

The Optimal Nap Duration

This means that naps ought not to be sufficiently lengthy to affect your sleep at night, and best should not occur after about 3pm (contingent on when you retire at night). What duration is wise? Advice differs. From the most referenced research on the subject, researchers at Nasa discovered that space travelers experienced improvements of over 50% in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in cognitive performance after a 26-minute nap (in detail, this involved an initial six-minute nodding-off period). “My advice is setting a timer for 20 to 30 minutes – many individuals doze off quickly,” notes a sleep coach. “There is plenty of advice around regarding the perfect length of minutes, however, that can cause people to feel more stressed above all – and the most counterproductive thing you can possibly do when attempting to fall asleep is worry about it.”

Should you decide to sleep for longer, steer clear of the 45 to 60 minute range that induces that sluggish feeling, that foggy state when you awaken. “Research would say it's more effective to opt for an extended nap lasting 60-90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” says the professor. “45 minutes is sufficient to put you into deep sleep making it more likely to feel sluggish upon awakening – while if you extend it slightly longer to 60 or 90 minutes, it's likely you'll to be completing of a sleep cycle and should awaken feeling more rejuvenated. But if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it will affect the quality of your sleep in the evening.”

Creating the Right Snooze Setting

As for exact methodologies, suggestions are diverse. Some experts suggest employing similar routines you’d use to foster quality nighttime sleep: a peaceful area, a comfortable bed and maximum darkness as you can manage. Others suggest that it's fine to simply nap in a chair in whatever light happens to be around – to avoid sleep inertia and to preserve your bed as the environment your mind associates with *real* sleep. “Falling asleep is quite challenging to command,” says an expert. “If you don’t have the urge to sleep, it is tougher to recline and basically instruct yourself to nod off. There must be some drive there to start the process in the first place. I can usually nap during the day and awaken on my own without a timer, but what helps a lot of people is to wait for a moment that they’re naturally somewhat sleepy and just gently allow sleep to come.”

Trying different approaches is valuable, and should your choices are limited – for instance, when aiming to fit in some shut-eye on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable with bringing sleep aids. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I suggest that they not rely on napping in bed, since they’re going to have|they will