Here's how to take the perfect nap

Originally published at: Here's how to take the perfect nap | Boing Boing

“if there is a nap missing, we’ll know who took it”
~ my dad

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Very well made piece, even if it’s bordering on TMI.

When I get sleepy and it bothers me enough to consider a nap, it’s during a time when my focus is being robbed by that feeling of hitting the wall. Therefor my goal is typically to feel rejuvenated right after a nap. I’ve had the most success with this using 20min naps, and not longer.

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Before I retired, I sometimes took a “power nap” during the early afternoon: A cup of coffee, followed by a 20-30 minute nap. The caffeine would kick in as I was coming out of the nap.

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Get reincarnated as a cat.

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That’s the only technique that works for me. Otherwise, I’ll sleep through the alarm and awaken extremely pissed off. :pouting_woman:t4: I haven’t napped well since childhood, and wasn’t really a fan then!

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I’m almost afraid to hear about the latest research on people who, even though they would like to nap for 60-90 minutes, find they cannot nap if their life depended on it.

I can’t nap. And the gall of this dulcet-toned explainer, who wants me to be “perfect” at something I can’t even do in the first place! The pressure! I can’t handle it! Leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m tired and anxious?

The non-napper c’est moi!

The only time I can nap is when I have the flu, and then it’s psychedelic fever-dream stuff. I suspect it doesn’t count, and is not “perfect.”

I strike out every time I attempt to nap, so I’ve given up trying. I just power through until my energy/wake cycle kicks back in. I had a brother who could nap any time, any place. During a raging party? Naps. I can have the perfect environment: quiet, cool, private, tired: all I do is THINK, including, “Gee, I’m so effing tired…why can’t I fall asleep here?” And then varieties of worry, like what if I do nap for 90 minutes - SUCCESS! - then I probably won’t be able to get to sleep tonight until 5AM, and then I will lose my job, be homeless, end up in a van down by the river, etc.

Anyone else like this?

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I’m napping, Right Now!

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Apparently I’m a “non-napper” as I can’t nap without ending up groggy for the rest of the day (and often unable to sleep at night), and I usually oversleep. I’ve tried setting an alarm, but perhaps I get the timing wrong and interrupt my sleep at the worst time, as it still leaves me groggy. It’s terribly annoying because I frequently spend a few hours tired enough to nod off at the computer after lunch, but any micro-naps I manage to achieve don’t do much (or they do, but only after a couple hours of non-productive discomfort). I don’t even bother to try to nap unless I’m being made so miserable by how tired I am that I don’t care, or I’m sick and have accepted I’m going to feel tired and have disrupted sleep either way.

Although yesterday I ironically had one of the best, most refreshing naps in memory. Ironic because it was a day I had set aside to recover from my covid vaccine, so I was more or less planning to spend the day in bed sleeping out the aftereffects if necessary, and the short nap left me refreshed to… do nothing. Apparently the only time I can have a productive nap is when I’m actually trying to knock myself out for the day. Perhaps that’s the secret - I can only nap when I absolutely don’t need to.

I’ve tried this and it didn’t work, which baffles me. Normally, I get totally wired when I drink caffeine, something I don’t do very often - a cup of strong tea is enough to do it. So I thought it would be the perfect technique for napping, since I oversleep. But somehow taking a nap nullifies the caffeine for me, or something. I sleep through when it should be hitting me, and eventually wake up just as groggy as if I’d not imbibed caffeine at all.

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Would you please stop stealing the duvet?! :angry: :tired_face:

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There’s a nap for that!
(Am I dating myself by referencing this particular ad?)

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Looks like we picked the wrong week to quit blow and/or 7 hour workouts! We’ll suddenly nap so much there’ll be notices and therapy brochures in the mailbox concerning taking multiples of 90 minutes in cryogenic rapid recovery booths, organizing in homeless camps (with psyonic resonance!) deeply temporary rings around our eyes from binoculars, reading the South China Morning Post poolside at 6-7 AM…being consistently late a mere half-hour for cosmically different Seder. Maybe we’ll blame the 3D VR smell inducing thing and ultralavender.

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Way ahead of ya on all that. Flossaluzaritin…but only because chums in Tokyo forward their news to me ASAP, so I’m all caught up on the day’s events before they happen in the US.

Did you see that study where volunteers spent 3 months in a deep cave, with no sunlight, and one guy napped for 90 minutes every 2 hours and emerged, swearing he was now 20 months younger? They had to get a straightjacket for both him and his younger self. Weird!
#VariationsOnTimeMachines

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The medical breakdown of the sleep cycles is nice, but it really doesn’t do me a lot of solid good. Now, if we had cheap neural transmitters that I could stick on my temple (or somewhere) and pop open an app on my phone to track what exact sleep cycle I was in we’d be getting somewhere with this “perfect” nap.

I really don’t get enough sleep overall…kids, life, the general bullshit of being an adult. But I’ve found that as a general rule of thumb for me a full sleep cycle is about 90 mins. That means if I’m able to get 6 hours sleep I wake up feeling pretty decent. But if it’s 5.25 hours I wake up groggy. A 90 min nap is nice. If I had a neural connected alarm clock I think it’d nice to give yourself a wake up window that would be the most optimal for your overall sleep cycle.

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Came here to say exactly this. I love naps of any length, but my body refuses them. If I could nap I could rule the world.

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I could fall asleep on a plane engine. Naps are awesome.

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Nap nap, Neo.

20 months younger in only 3 months (give or take 90 minute naps) is a long negative time!

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