Did you know that feeling sleepy in the afternoon is part of the normal human circadian rhythm? Humans typically have two periods in which they feel intensely sleepy. One is usually in the very early hours (around 3 in the morning), and the other is in the early afternoon, about ten hours after the first. You know that taking a nap can help increase your productivity and your mood, but do you know that there is a proper way to take a nap?
If you want to increase your concentration, take a short nap of about twenty minutes. If you want to boost your creativity, take a nap that is about 90 minutes long—or long enough to give you a good dose of REM sleep.
You want to sleep either less than forty-five minutes or more than ninety. If you wake up in between the two, you’ll feel groggy and out of sorts because you are interrupting a deep sleep cycle.
Go ahead and lie down. It takes as much as fifty percent longer to fall asleep when you are sitting up (as with airplane flights).
Try to regulate your temperature, the warmer you are, the more you’ll sleep, but the cooler you are, the harder time you will have falling asleep in the first place.
Use white noise to drown out the background noise that accompanies sleeping during the day (kids playing, dogs barking, etc)
Try not to take a nap too close to the time you want to go to bed for the night because you might have a hard time falling asleep. Pay attention to your natural circadian rhythms, and take a nap when you feel sleepy during the afternoon.
You know that naps can be beneficial and now, thanks to these helpful hints, you’ll know how to make the most of your naptime!
Tweet This Post