Western culture has a very unhealthy attitude towards sleep in general. There is only one socially accepted sleep pattern: Eight hours a night, in one block, starting at between 10pm and 11pm and ending between 6am and 7am. This "early-bird" rhythm is celebrated in to the point of fetishisation and held up as the goal to which all productive adults must aspire. To behave otherwise is to be lazy, slothful, and not putting forward your all.
That cycle works for many people of course, and for them life is easy. The world is modelled after them. But for everyone else it sucks. This covers both napping as this article discusses, but also other "chronotypes" both earlier and later (i.e., "night owls"). For these people they have to either force themselves into the "early bird" cycle (often by strict working hours or social pressure) and suffer for it, or go against it and find either flexible employment or even move to night-shift work if their chronotype is sufficiently late.
I've been remote for 12 years, and with the exception of the last year, I was in the habit of napping for an hour a day in the middle of the day, every day. Kids has thrown a wrench into the works on the weekends, but I've just started to get back to that and feel at my best once again. YMMV
Yea... so I used to do the whole nap thing too. I still always felt groggy and had a head fog. For the last 2 years I decided to discipline myself to get roughly 8 hours of sleep every night (a sleep mask to block out excess light has been a God send). Also no caffeine after 5pm and only 2 cups of coffee max per day. Oh and less carb, more protein diet with daily exercise. In essence, I quit giving myself excuses for being a lazy whinner. Other than the Thanksgiving food coma, I dont take naps because, and sit down for this revelation, I dont need to since I get a proper amount of rest nearly every single night. Look, sometimes life throws shit in your face and a nap is a great stop gap remedy to pull you through. Nothing wrong with getting stitches when you get a cut. Theres a problem when you keep cutting yourself because you jump into a pool of knives everyday. It's just weird that we are fetishizing piss poor health habits and then glorifying the bandaid fixes instead of simply addressing the main problem. But hey, that's the great evil self-responsibility everyone wants to avoid.
Little tip, stop drinking coffee after 3pm. Try to drink at least 2-3L of water until 5pm, not later or your sleep will be disturbed by..well pissing, at 8-9 do a little (easy) jogging but not more then 10 minutes, drink a little bit of water after jogging and go to bed 1-2 hours later, you will sleep like a princess.
Agreed that the sooner your caffeine cutoff is, the better. I used to do 7pm with poor results. I find 5pm and going to bed at around 11pm to be fine. I normally finish drinking caffeine at around noon. Just 5 is my hard cutoff no matter what.
I dont know about the jogging prior to bed. Jogging amps me up and gets my mind fired up. But it may help some folks, so it's worth a try for others.
Really easy jogging, it saturates your blood with oxygen, and because your body just burns the carbohydrates you can sleep much better afterwards....but really just 10 minutes easy jogging.
> must be one of those US problems no one else has.
More like "must be one of those made-up problems which we'll try to launch into actionability", I don't think the USA has a different attitude towards siesta than e.g. north-western Europe.
Unrelated to napping <xyz>-shaming is a tired US culture issue. Someone will always have an issue with something you do or have, the sooner you find strength and shrug it off the better off you will be.
The reason why some of the largest ever companies in the world have sleep pods at work is because there's a direct relationship between sleep and performance.
20 minutes is plenty to perk you up in the afternoon (different parts of the brain rest in different ways), and it's not a sign of an unhealthy sleep schedule. This stigma has got to stop.
This is very true. For me I have found staying away from HFCS after 6:30, and eating very light. Staying away from anything with caffeine in it for the same time too. Getting to sleep at the same time every night. My diet played a large part of my sleeping well. I have asked others in my family to try the same thing and they have seen similar results. The caffeine bit was a big one. Its effects linger for a long time even though you get little to no benefit from it.
That cycle works for many people of course, and for them life is easy. The world is modelled after them. But for everyone else it sucks. This covers both napping as this article discusses, but also other "chronotypes" both earlier and later (i.e., "night owls"). For these people they have to either force themselves into the "early bird" cycle (often by strict working hours or social pressure) and suffer for it, or go against it and find either flexible employment or even move to night-shift work if their chronotype is sufficiently late.