I love naps so much. I would take maybe 2 naps a day at home during quarantine, and 1 a day pre-COVID. Naps have been a pretty regular part of my routine since high school, but they definitely messed with my sleep schedule.
I started out with a pretty normal schedule of sleeping at 10 or 11pm, and waking up at 7am in my freshman year of high school and that slowly deteriorated into my horrific quarantine sleep schedule: sleep at 6am, wake up at 4pm. It was really bad. I am pretty sure this all started from a nap that snowballed into my nocturnal lifestyle.
Short naps have never done anything for me, so I’ve always taken hour long naps, which was my biggest mistake. I started sleeping so much during my naps that I couldn’t fall asleep at night. My second biggest mistake is napping in the late afternoon/early evening. I would take naps so close to my usual bedtime that again, I couldn’t fall asleep at night.
When I came back to campus this spring, the mini jetlag I got from the 6 hour flight helped me sleep before midnight for the first time in months, and things slowly got better from there. I packed my schedule to keep me busy; I work 2 jobs, take 15 credit hours of classes, and fill my free time up with fun organizations and volunteer work. I didn’t really intend for this to help my sleep schedule, but it’s the only reason I sleep at normal times now.
I have no time to take naps during the day now, which I’ve been hating…but with my napping habits, it’s for the best. Keeping busy throughout the whole day from 9am all the way until 9-10pm absolutely drains me of all the energy I have, so I’ll watch a few episodes on Netflix at most before passing out.
I didn’t think it was possible to fix a sleep schedule within a week, but I did it somehow with the help of my busy work and school schedules. It took me 5 years, but I finally learned how bad my napping habits are and I found out the hard way that it’s best if I don’t indulge in sleeping during the day. But, at the end of the day, that’s just me and my bad habits. To each their own, if you can nap healthily and maintain a good sleep schedule, keep doing what you do (but I am very jealous of you)!