Why Naps are not a Waste of Time

It’s basic instinct that tells us that naps waste our time and that we can do some things that are much more productive than take a snooze. And for that we almost all the time, avoid taking them. Recent studies however have proven that naps are far more productive that we thought them to be. Test subjects have shown an increase in finger dexterity of up to 16% after taking  15-minute nap. Also cognitive levels and heightened senses are among the observed benefits of well-timed naps.

The Reason Behind the Productivity of Napping

Napping may be attributed to REM sleep, short for rapid-eye-movement sleep. During this type of sleep structural changes are made into the brain. This involves consolidating all the things that you have tried taking in during the waking time prior to the nap. The more information you take in, the more your brain needs a nap to get the information down to your long-term memory via integrating your new information with past information. During the time of your nap you usually have dreams, while in REM sleep.

Well-Timed Naps

Well timed naps can shorten your sleeping time for more waking hours. More information can be found in this site I’ve recently discovered called Easy Snooze under poly-phase sleep. Naps are hard if not impossible to schedule unless you really devote time to it and program your body to taking naps. But most of the time, you will fill this very strong urge to fall asleep. During this time, it’s most perfect to take a nap because it is not forced upon you, and the more naturally you feel sleepy and then fall asleep, the greater the effects of the naps despite its duration. But as I said, it’s not convenient to nap anytime you want to, so you might want to try some methods to induce naps.

My Experience with Naps

During my days in college, we had to work on group projects involving microprocessor design. This was a very strict project wherein we had to work night and day just to complete a design for a microprocessor. The project took us roughly more than a week’s time to complete and we had to work straight because it was crunch time and we had other things in our list of things to do. That’s one of the times I experienced the power of napping. In the span of 72 hours, roughly 3 days, I had only slept a total of 6 hours worth of short naps and still retained focus and concentration. Of course that took the toll on my body. I’m not saying all of us should do that often. I was very groggy and sleepy the following days right after the ordeal was over, but during the times that I needed to work, my mind was fully functional despite the lack of sleep, all thanks to the power of naps. Again, I’d like to emphasize that the naps I took were completely natural and the only thing that induced them were my natural sleepiness. And to add to the details, I also did not sleep on a bed, but on my classmate’s living room floor only armed with an array of side sleeper pillows. This made it all the more effective.