In this issue, we are going to take a look at the art of the nap. We call napping an “art” because it takes a bit of creative planning to pull this off without feeling overly groggy afterward or disrupting your sleep that night. We’ll discuss our best Power Nap “hacks” as well as point out some of the benefits of napping. Some of these may surprise you!
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The Art Of The Nap - Power Nap Secrets
A nap is a brief interval of sleep, usually indulged in during the day. We say “indulged” because many people look at napping as a luxury, something to do as a reward, or because they are just so sleepy they can’t function.
While both of these are perfectly good reasons to nap, learning to use napping strategically can have many benefits, including helping you to keep your level of alertness and focus up during the day, augmenting learning, boosting your mood, and more.
The National Sleep Foundation points out there are many different types of naps, depending on the purpose of the nap. These include the:
Essential Nap - taken while you are ill or trying to recover from an illness. When your body is fighting an infection, it needs extra energy and napping can help to fulfill this essential need.
Recovery Nap - These naps are taken the day after you have had a terrible night’s sleep the night before or you have had to stay up very late. Taking a nap the next day can help you to recover and help offset some of the effects of sleep loss.
Preparation Nap - Also known as the prophylactic nap, this type of nap is taken in advance of sleep loss. If you know you are going to have a late night or there is some reason that will likely prevent you from sleeping soundly that night, taking a nap during the day can help.
Appetitive Nap - We love this one! This is a nap taken for the sheer enjoyment of napping, as done correctly, can lead to relaxation and improved mood and energy when you wake up.
Power Nap - The National Sleep Foundation doesn’t mention this one, but this type of nap is very popular in entrepreneurial circles as a way to increase focus and alertness, reduce fatigue, improve mood, reduce stress, and improve the immune system. Research suggests that napping one to two times a week can also reduce your chances of cardiovascular disease.
Some people can’t stand napping and may even look with disdain at people who nap regularly. But many times, that is because the people who hate napping have had a bad experience with feeling groggy afterward or had their sleep disrupted that night. We’ll address how you can Power Nap so this never happens.
We can’t cover all the different types of naps in-depth here, but let’s get a closer look at the Power Nap, how long it should be, how to time it, and how to optimize the nap to get the greatest benefit.
Power Napping Secrets
So first of all, just what is a “power” nap and how does it differ from regular napping? A power nap is a period of sleep that is 20 to 40 minutes in length and no longer, depending on how much time it takes you to get relaxed enough to fall asleep. 30 minutes is the ideal.
Why only 20 to 40 minutes? Here’s where a little review of sleep stages can help. Your sleep is divided into five stages, and you cycle through these during a normal night’s sleep.
Stage One is that sort of strange state between sleeping and waking. In Stage Two you are actually lightly asleep and your heart rate, as well as your breathing, slows down and your muscles relax. Stage three is deep sleep and your heart rate and breathing slow even further. At this stage, it’s very difficult to awaken someone.
Stage five is an extension of the deep sleep of Stage Three and hormones are released which are critical to your tissue repair and health. Stage Five is REM (rapid eye movement) sleep in which dreaming occurs. This stage begins some 90 minutes into the sleep cycle.
With the Power Nap, the trick is to remain in Stages One and Two. If you sleep long enough to get into Stages Three or Four, this not only disrupts your circadian rhythm (internal body clock) but will leave you feeling simply awful when you awaken, groggy and irritable.
So the rule of thumb for any type of napping is to do either 30 minutes or 90 minutes. If you do 90 minutes (not a Power Nap) this will get you through a full sleep cycle and you will be less likely to be groggy when you wake up. But for a classic Power Nap, aim for 30 minutes.
Time of day is also important. Try to avoid napping after 3 PM as napping later in the day can disrupt your sleep that night.
And for an even more powerful Power Nap, combine it with coffee. At first, this sounds counterintuitive as caffeine works to keep you awake. But hear us out on this!
One of the reasons you get sleepy during the day is due to a build-up of a chemical called adenosine in your brain. When you take a nap, this helps to sweep the adenosine out of your system and makes you feel more alert. Caffeine happens to look chemically very much like adenosine, so much so that it actually plugs into the adenosine receptor and blocks its action.
Together, provided you time them correctly, caffeine plus a power nap can attack your fatigue with a one-two punch. Here’s how to do it:
From the time you take that first sip of coffee, it takes around 20 minutes for the caffeine in the drink to go from your stomach to the small intestine, into the bloodstream, and into your brain. So the trick is to quickly drink your coffee, using an espresso shot or iced coffee so you can get it down quickly, then immediately relax into a quick nap.
You can nap while the caffeine is making its journey and when you wake up, the caffeine will just be kicking in, giving you several hours of extra focus, energy, and improved concentration. If you are not a coffee drinker, you can use caffeinated tea or even dark chocolate in its place.
Happy napping!!
References -
Häusler N, Haba-Rubio J, Heinzer R, Marques-Vidal P. Association of napping with incident cardiovascular events in a prospective cohort study. Heart. 2019 Dec;105(23):1793-1798. doi: 10.1136/heartjnl-2019-314999. Epub 2019 Sep 9. PMID: 31501230. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31501230/
Why It Matters
All of us likely expect too much of ourselves and will work till we feel like dropping. A nap can fix that!
“Work less than you think you should. It took me a while to realise there was a point each day when my creativity ran out and I was just producing words - usually lousy ones - for their own sake. And nap: it helps to refresh the brain, at least mine.”
~ Amy Waldman (born 1969) - American author and journalist and a former reporter for the New York Times where she also served as co-chief of the South Asia bureau. Submission, her first novel, was published in 2011.
What We Are Reading 📚
With each issue, we bring you a short blurb on what we are currently reading or watching, including books, articles, podcasts, videos, movies, and research papers of value.
Denise - Last month I drove from L.A. to Northern California to spend 10 days dog sitting, house sitting, and spending time with my mom. On the 5 1/2 hour drive back to L.A. I listened to an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show: The Random Show — Life-Extension Misadventures, Blockchain/Crypto Investing, NFT Experiments, Dogecoin, Zen Buddhism, and Weathering Sharp Elbows (#527).
It was a 2 1/2 hour conversation between Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose who Tim describes as “Technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy.”
You can probably tell by the title of the show that the topics they discussed were wide-ranging. From their “life extension misadventures” to their discussion of crypto investing and NFTs, I found myself learning about subjects I knew nothing about. And that excites me. Give it a listen and let me know what you think in the comments!
Ellen - I am going back to a book I read a long time ago and re-reading it, Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Given the surrealness of our present time, returning to Hesse’s novel which is set in a distant post-apocalyptic future, seems like the timely thing to do.
Structural biologist and a machine learning researcher, Mohammed AlQuraishi, writes eloquently on his blog, Some Thoughts About A Mysterious Universe, about the lessons that are to be found in The Glass Bead Game…
“It is through The Glass Bead Game that the players find purpose, be mentees and become mentors, meditate and acquire spiritual insights, and ultimately, in particular for the Magister Ludi, sacrifice their lives for the greater good. The Glass Bead Game is the modern and futuristic incarnation of all those ideas.”
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Thank you - I never realized the power of the nap to reduce cardiovascular disease!