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How to nap

boston.com

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Re: How to nap

#111

Post by skore »

jjcm wrote: post #39

Twenty minute naps leave me in a horrid state of disarray. It takes me about an hour to recover from the grogginess, so I tend to stay as far away from them as possible. I've experimented with time and location variations, but never with any success. It makes me sad, because I know tons of people who work naps into their day with fantastic results.

That's a well known rule of thumb: If you can fall asleep, but wake up groggy, decrease your total napping time by one or two minutes until you reach the spot where it works for you. 20-25 minutes is what you start off with, but the more you learn to fall asleep quickly, the further you have to chop away from that alarm clock to have it work.

Re: How to nap

#112

Post by davewingler »

huhtenberg wrote: post #24
n_coats wrote: post #21

It's interesting to note the immediate difference between a short nap (less than 45 mins) and one longer. I've never heard the pre nap coffee suggestions! I take naps frequently and hate when I over sleep or wake up from one longer than an hour and a half due to the groggy/grumpy side effects. Really interesting and insightful piece!

> hate when I over sleep Try this - immediately before closing your eyes say to yourself "I need to wake up in 15 minutes". In exactly 15 minutes you will feel a subtle mental nudge that you need to act upon and open your eyes. You can as easily ignore it, in which case you will go right back to sleep. YMMV, of course, but it works for many people and it is seriously amazing.

Yep, I noticed I had this ability when I was a kid. Of I tell myself I've got to awake at a specific time then I always wake seconds before my alarm in the morning. Mysterious intuitive knowing by the sleeping-consciousness.

Re: How to nap

#113

Post by coldarchon »

tobtoh wrote: post #69

For those wondering how to nap at the office and not get hauled into the managers office for sleeping on the job, I paraphrase a tip from Scott Adams (Dilbert): "Grab a handful of paperclips and find an office/meeting room. Shut the door and lie down on the ground with your feet against the door. Sprinkle the paperclips in front of you. Now have a nap. If someone tries to enter the room, the door will hit your feet.…

Not to forget George Costanza on Seinfeld who slept IN his desk and even asked a cabinet maker to create a hidden room in there.

Re: How to nap

#114

Post by coldarchon »

kin wrote: post #104

but surely you can still dream in non REM sleep can't you?

Hard to explain, hard to imagine, hard to understand. Your center for visual perception is not active during non Rem. But most of your thoughts are related to imagery, mostly like 90%. So most of your memories are images, but if you don't create memories, your consciousness won't have a memory. Imagine a computer with no RAM just a register working on variables. If you now think you could still imagine you probably think in non REM it's all "dark". It's not. It's nothing. Because as your center for the perception and computing of images is inactive, you don't even know sight exists. It's like a neglect, when someone loses a part of his brain and can't see people on one side although he has full sight. The question is not if you can dream, because you do that all the time and the whole time when you sleep. But does the preception in non REM exceed your expectations or even noise and therefor become a memory.

To make it short, you surely are dreaming everytime in non REM but can't remember nor understand.

You can develop an understanding but it takes years and is pretty useless if you are not a lucid dreamer who wants to improve his understanding of his own brain.

Re: How to nap

#115

Post by noveltyaccount »

How can I use this to better wake up in the morning, instead of groggy with "sleep inertia"? Set an alarm 90 minutes before I want to wake up, plus one when I want to wake up?

Re: How to nap

#117

Post by tintin »

jjcm wrote: post #39

Twenty minute naps leave me in a horrid state of disarray. It takes me about an hour to recover from the grogginess, so I tend to stay as far away from them as possible. I've experimented with time and location variations, but never with any success. It makes me sad, because I know tons of people who work naps into their day with fantastic results.

Each sleep cycle takes 90-110 minutes. Each cycle has 5 steps. So each step takes about 20 minutes. But if your cycle takes 90 minutes your first step will take about 18 minutes. So if you wake up after 20 minutes you will be in the first 2 minutes of the next step. And that's a bad moment to wake up.

As people already noticed, you have to play a little bit with the timing.

Re: How to nap

#118

Post by sodiumphosphate »

shmerl wrote: post #72
palebluedot wrote: post #63

Here is a way to generate simple, wonderful pink noise (with a slight tremolo) from the commandline, if you have sox installed. It somewhat mimics the sounds of waves on a beach - I find it very relaxing. A nice side affect (and the reason I played around with it originally) is that it helps mask tinnitus when it gets too annoying (I find that if tinnitus flares up too loud, it can make it more difficult to fall asle…

Here is one for Star Trek fans: play -c2 -n synth whitenoise band -n 100 24 band -n 300 100 gain +20

I'm just going to leave that running for the rest of my life. Thank-you.

Re: How to nap

#119

Post by josefresco »

tobtoh wrote: post #69

For those wondering how to nap at the office and not get hauled into the managers office for sleeping on the job, I paraphrase a tip from Scott Adams (Dilbert): "Grab a handful of paperclips and find an office/meeting room. Shut the door and lie down on the ground with your feet against the door. Sprinkle the paperclips in front of you. Now have a nap. If someone tries to enter the room, the door will hit your feet.…

What about sleeping under your enclosed desk? and maybe building a small shelf to hold an alarm clock...

/end lame joke

Re: How to nap

#120

Post by cpayne624 »

tobtoh wrote: post #69

For those wondering how to nap at the office and not get hauled into the managers office for sleeping on the job, I paraphrase a tip from Scott Adams (Dilbert): "Grab a handful of paperclips and find an office/meeting room. Shut the door and lie down on the ground with your feet against the door. Sprinkle the paperclips in front of you. Now have a nap. If someone tries to enter the room, the door will hit your feet.…

"What the hell are you doing in this empty office with all those damn paper clips, man?"
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