Not getting enough sleep is a characteristic of our college experience: in the quest to do it all, we often aren’t able to get eight hours in every single night. If you find yourself deprived of sleep, your ability to think clearly and work efficiently is seriously impaired, and even if you’re drinking as much caffeine as you can.
To combat this lack of sleep, naps come in handy, and very well may be the secret to success in college. Like almost anything, though, there’s a right and a wrong way to do it. To make the most of your naptime, here’s how to know the best way to do it:
First, think about the time of day when you choose when to take your nap. The best time of the day to nap is dependent on your sleep habits and what time you woke up that day. While the mid-afternoon slump is usually the most common and useful naptime, keep in mind the time you woke up that day and plan your nap accordingly. If you were up at 7am, a 1 pm nap might be ideal, but if you woke up at 10, napping closer to 3pm might be a better option.
Next, consider how much time you have to nap and what you want out of your nap before you sleep. It’s better to have a set time you’re going to let yourself nap before to avoid sleeping for too long or waking up feeling super groggy. It can also be hard to fall asleep if you haven’t set an alarm for a wakeup time, so do that first.
Depending on the time you have and what you need to get out of your nap, there are different recommended times that have different benefits.
If you’re looking for the most out of your nap and don’t have much time, experts recommend a 20-minute power nap. This is just enough to restore your energy more effectively than caffeine would, but doesn’t allow you to enter into a deeper sleep and therefore eliminates grogginess when you wake up.
If you have a little extra time, try sleeping for around 50 minutes. This amount of time allows you to enter into a deeper sleep and is helpful in restoring your ability to memorize facts and remember faces. If you’re having a late night studying, it could be super helpful to try and nap for about this long to improve your ability to learn better. If you’re studying for an exam and need a break, allowing yourself to sleep for 50 minutes might cut into study time more than you would like, but it would drastically improve your memory. The only downside is that you might wake up feeling a little groggy before you can reap the benefits of your nap.
To get the most out of your nap, sleeping for about 90 minutes is the best choice if you have the time. This nap allows you to complete one full sleep cycle and is the most restorative kind of nap. It restores emotional and procedural memory as well as creativity, making it an ideal nap if you’re up late working on a project or paper. Take the time out of your day and allow yourself to take a longer nap if you want to be most creatively productive later in the day.
Finally, while it might be tempting to sleep for the entire afternoon, extending your nap too long could backfire and have adverse effects on your ability to sleep well at night. It’s also most important to remember that naps are not a sign of laziness – caffeine might help, but the restorative power of catching some sleep could be more useful than another cup of coffee or trying to pull an actual all-nighter.