NASA Reveals the Perfect Nap Length (and It's Shorter Than You Think)
It’s an hour or two after lunch, and you’re fading fast. You’d love nothing more than to snuggle under the covers and take a long, deep sleep, but you’ve got to be awake, alert and on fire for a 4 p.m. Zoom with an important client. Knowing that a long nap will throw you off (and honestly, who has the time?), you just chug down a triple latte and hope for the best.
Instead, do what astronauts and pilots do, and take a NASA nap.
What is a NASA nap?
This short, refreshing catnap doesn’t require drinking Tang or wearing a spacesuit. It simply means taking a nap that’s long enough to boost your performance and alertness, but short enough not to make you groggy and disoriented after you wake. Based on research with long-haul cockpit crews, NASA determined that crew members who took a midday nap of roughly 26 minutes had improved physiological alertness and performance compared with those who didn’t take a nap.
“Most people are carrying some sort of sleep debt — an afternoon nap helps replace some of the sleep that you’re not getting at night,” says Cassie J. Hilditch, Ph.D., senior research associate at the Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory at San Jose State University. She explains that by keeping your nap to around 20 minutes, “you are less likely to go into the deeper stages of sleep, what we call slow-wave sleep, and you are more likely to stay in the lighter stages.” Hilditch points out that newer research indicates that even 10 minutes of snooze time can make a difference. (One caveat is that if you are truly sleep-deprived, say, after an all-nighter, you may drop into those deep-sleep phases much faster.)
But the key to a successful NASA nap is to wake yourself up before you fall into a deep slumber, including stage 3 and REM sleep, says Terry Cralle, RD, a certified clinical sleep educator and spokesperson for the Better Sleep Council. “If you get into the deeper stages of sleep, you will get sleep inertia, which is that grogginess you feel when you wake up,” she explains. “The research is very robust on the benefits of short naps,” Cralle adds. “But I think in our culture, which has long looked at needing sleep as a weakness or lack of ambition, we've substituted our intake of excessive caffeine for naps.”
Benefits of a NASA Nap
“We’ve tested different tasks that tap into different cognitive functions, and sleep seems to improve pretty much all of them,” says Hilditch. “If you're getting 10 to 20 minutes of sleep, it can boost your feelings of alertness, but also your objective performance,” she says. Some specific ways a nap helps:
Improves performance.
A 2021 review found that a short daytime map improved cognitive performance, with the benefit lasting around two hours after waking. Physical performance improves, too: In studies with athletes, researchers have found that an afternoon nap leads to faster sprint times, better grip strength, and quicker reaction times, as well as better mood.
Increases alertness.
A nap is so helpful for staying awake and alert that the National Transportation Safety Board recommends pulling over and taking a 20-minute nap if you feel drowsy while driving. In fact, one recent study showed that people who habitually take an afternoon nap are consistently more alert in the afternoon than those who don’t usually nap, even on days they skip the nap, suggesting that napping has a cumulative effect.
Boosts memory.
Whether you’re cramming for a test or trying to memorize some Spanish vocab for your upcoming trip to San Juan, taking a nap can help the new info sink in. “Sleep helps consolidate what you’ve just learned,” says Hilditch.
Increases creative thinking.
You know how your mind wanders in the moments before you fall asleep? That nodding-off-into-nap time can spark some creative ideas: Researchers at Harvard and MIT found that subjects who napped for 45 minutes scored higher in creative tasks such as story-telling after their nap than those who were kept awake during the same period.
How does a short nap do all this? In addition to restoring energy reserves, there are complex activities going on in your brain while you snooze. “There’s emerging evidence that while you sleep, the byproducts of being awake are flushed from the brain,” says Hilditch. She adds that the critical process of synaptic pruning occurs during sleep. “You’re not actually building new connections among the synapses,” she explains. “It’s more of a reorganization: Sleep reinforces important connections by downplaying the ones that are less important.”
How to take a NASA nap
Obviously, you’ll find it easier to take a quick, refreshing midday nap if you work from home (or perhaps in a mattress store?). But even if you work in an office or other place that generally frowns on anyone curling up in a corner, there are ways to achieve this, says Cralle. “Talk to your supervisor about the all-round benefits of naps, and ask if it’s possible to carve out space in an empty office or break room, where people can take turns going in for 30-minute naps,” she suggests. (Consider sharing this article so they can see how allowing short naps will actually boost work efficiency.) Then, whether you are at a workspace, in your car or at home in the living room, follow these nap hygiene tips:
If you can’t actually lie down, sit back comfortably
Use an eye mask to block out light
Set your watch or phone to wake you after 20 minutes (or 26, if you want to do the full NASA time)
Use earphones or buds to play calming music or white noise
Make sure you’re not overheated—it’s easier to sleep in a cooler space
Hilditch adds that it’s important to time your nap so you have at least 20 minutes to recover post-snooze before doing anything important (or dangerous, like driving or operating machinery). “Anytime you're waking up, you could feel like you have some sleep inertia symptoms, so it's always best to leave a buffer period,” she says.
Finally, remember that as helpful as these naps are, they are mainly used to make up for sleep you’re not getting at night. “If you're really tired during the day and need a nap, take a moment to think about how you can improve your nighttime sleep,” Hilditch says. “But if you do need that nap, then you know, this is the way to make the most efficient use of your time.”
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