How To Have The Perfect Nap (5 Things To Keep In Mind)

in #blog6 years ago


Do you ever push through that mid-day energy suck in order to get to 7 p.m. and crash on the couch?

And then you end up in the repetitive cycle of messing up your sleep and sapping your energy day after day...

Not if I can help you.

In today's article, we are going to cover how to have the perfect nap and the 5 things that you need to keep in mind.

If you haven't read what the benefits are yet, make sure to check out this article: The Benefits of Power Naps

 

How To Have The Perfect Nap (5 Things To Keep In Mind)


In our culture, we hear people say something like this a lot "I only got 5 hours of sleep last night..."

The problem is that isn't manly, courageous or any other word that has a positive intonation.

It's pure stupidity.

In my books, the more sleep, the better.

1. Keep It Short


Now, I don't know what your day looks like, but a short nap proves to be the best.

 

In multiple studies they've shown that getting between 10-45 minutes of rest, which doesn't bleed into REM, is perfect for energy and productivity(1, 2, 3.)

We are trying just to hit stage three and four sleep, meaning NREM (non-rapid eye movement) where the brain can rehearse and the body can rest.

One study even said that the "perfect" nap is supposedly 27.5 minutes for energy and productivity, but that's a target which is hard to hit and likely unnecessary.

2. Make Your Conditions Dark and Cool


While it can be hard to do in the middle of the day, making the room dark will help you fall asleep and have the perfect nap.

Two easy things to do, in order to mimic the conditions of dark and cool, are to put a t-shirt over your eyes and take off your socks exposing your feet to the air.

The T-Shirt will help keep your perception dark, and the socks will help cool down your body.

Although, if you can just make your room dark and turn your temperature down to around 65 Fahrenheit, well then that works too (4.)

3. Stay Consistent


If you are doing this every day try to aim for around the same 2 hour time that you will be doing it.

One of my good friends, Trent McCloskey, likes to do the siesta sleep schedule and makes sure to have his nap at the same time every day.

The siesta schedule comprises of a polyphasic sleep cycle where at night you get 5-6 hours and in the middle of the day a 90-minute nap.

Regardless of if you try something like that or even the uberman (6x20 minute naps), making sure to have the nap at the same time every single day will lead to your body drifting off effortlessly.

4. Make it Quiet But Comfortable


A problem that I've noticed is that in the middle of the day there is a lot of noise. This often will cause me to wake up in fear in the middle of the nap.

While that may sound funny getting a excellent uninterrupted midday nap will give you the best benefit.

Making the nap area quiet is very important.

I like to use a white noise generator or brain.fm in order to help keep it quite.

On the other hand, if it isn't a comfortable space, you may notice the same sort of situation, so aiming for comfortability (whether that means bringing a pillow with your own scent or playing ocean sounds) helps your mind drift off a lot easier as well (5.)

5. Calm Down Before The Nap


While being a stickler for nap consistency is great, if you aren't calm you likely won't make it through an uninterrupted nap.

Similar to when we sleep, jumping into bed with adrenaline racing or some stress response leaves our mind racing and our body unable to fall into deep sleep.

There are two different ways I like to calm my body down before the nap.

Taking a cold shower or meditating/deep breathing/stretching prior to the nap calms down the mind and prepares your body for relaxation.

Bonus: Although, my favorite way to nap is to pair it with Brain.Fm


The best part is that they have three settings depending on the time you have.

  • 15 Minutes
  • 30 Minutes
  • 45 Minutes
They use something called "Dynamic Attending Theory" that helps the brain attend to different sensory processing and the A.I. paired with their music learns what helps your brain get into certain rhythms.

Feel free to use headphones or not because the sound waves are slow and thus should help even without headphones, bouncing off the wall at a slower pace.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your nap!

Austin

P.S. If you haven't already, make sure to join the weekly newsletter to get this beamed to your email weekly!


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Quiet place is more and more difficult to find but listening to brain.fm may help.

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