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Tune into enough performance experts, and you'll be easy to think that dozing is a secret weapon: more than a quick fix following a bad night’s sleep, but a route to enhanced cognition, better spirits and maybe quicker running times. Premier League athletes swear by it – as do professional piano players, mixed martial artists and media moguls. But if you lack a special sleep space or employment that allows frequent naps, can there *honestly* sufficient advantages to a quick nap for it to be worth the effort? Is there a reliable way to nod off promptly? And can you honestly promise you will get up feeling better, instead of groggy?

Understanding Your Reasons for Napping

“There are three key drivers for napping for many people,” says an expert circadian rhythm specialist. “Firstly, there's termed compensatory napping, that is what happens when you’ve had insufficient sleep the previous night. The second is preparatory napping, where you are anticipating insufficient sleep in the future, such as during graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “pleasure-based sleep”, which essentially comes down to desire: you have an opportunity to sleep in the daytime, and it feels nice to nap.”

The initial step to do, then, is to examine your nap motivation. “Napping can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is disturbed for reasons beyond your control – for instance, for a parent of a newborn, or if you are healing from illness or strenuous activity,” says a sleep specialist. “Yet when you nap as your sleep at night is unstable or broken, that is frequently a sign your sleep drive is not where it should be. Under those circumstances, naps can become part of the problem, not the solution. Employ naps as a short-term solution for short-term problems – the main goal must always be a robust and regular night’s sleep.”

The Ideal Nap Length

This implies that daytime sleep must not be sufficiently lengthy to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and preferably are not recommended post-3 p.m. (based on when you sleep in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. In one of a prominent study about napping, space agency scientists discovered that astronauts showed improvements of over 50% in vigilance and a 34% boost in cognitive performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this included an initial six-minute sleep onset time). “My advice is using an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – many individuals are asleep within 10 minutes,” explains a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of recommendations about the perfect length of minutes, yet that often lead individuals to become more worried above all – and the worst thing you can possibly do when attempting to get to sleep is to be anxious.”

Should you decide to nap for a longer period, avoid the 45 to 60 minute range that encourages that sluggish feeling, that disoriented sensation when you awaken. “The science would say it's more effective to have a longer nap lasting 60-90 minutes than a medium-length one,” notes the professor. “Forty-five minutes is enough time to send you into a deep sleep stage and it is more probable to feel groggy when you get up – whereas if you extend it a bit longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to finish a full cycle and will probably awaken feeling more alert. But if you’re sleeping for an hour and a half, it can influence how you sleep that night.”

Establishing the Perfect Snooze Setting

Regarding exact methodologies, advice differs. Some experts recommend using similar routines you’d use to promote restful sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as you can manage. Some advise that one could just doze on a couch in whatever light happens to be around – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to maintain your bedroom as the space your brain links with *real* sleep. “Napping is notoriously difficult to force,” says a specialist. “Without the urge to sleep, it becomes harder to get comfortable and practically command yourself to fall asleep. You need some drive available to bring the sleep on to begin with. For me, it's possible to nap in full light and naturally wake up without an alarm, but what helps many individuals is to look for an instance where they feel naturally slightly tired and calmly ease into sleep.”

Experimentation is key, and if options are scarce – for instance, when aiming to grab 40 winks while traveling or in a work pod – it is perfectly fine with bringing sleep aids. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I suggest that they not rely on their own bed for naps, as they’re going to have|they will