Micro naps. Disco naps. Cat naps. Power naps. Qailulah. Siestas.

Maybe you’re a t-shirt wearing member of the I-can’t-and-or-don’t-nap-club. Sad.

And false. It’s not that you can’t or don’t nap (everybody naps). You probably just forgot, or haven’t created a nap friendly environment for yourself.

This article will help you overcome the two main objections to napping:

“They” won’t let me (external)
I can’t (internal)

so that you can figure out how to nap without f*cking up your whole day and/or life, and in 20 minutes or less a day, be a happier, healthier, smarter and more productive you.

a brief history of napping (featuring you)

When you were a toddler, you napped at daycare on hard floors with 15-30 other tiny humans mouth breathing around you. Sick you probably naps. Hungover you probably naps. Maybe home for the holidays you naps, too.

Napping isn’t a practice that should be confined to your youth and/or laziest moments.

In Darwin was a slacker, and you should be too, author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang details the midday nap patterns of notable minds of the 19th and 20th century:

Darwin took an hour long nap everyday at 3P
German writer and Nobel laureate Thomas Mann started his day with 3-4 hours of writing then retired for an hour long nap
In a study of students at violin students at a conservatory in Berlin in the 1980s, Karl Anders Ericsson Ralf Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer found that the best performers got an hour more sleep than average performers, typically by napping midday

Some googling uncovered that many of the luminaries we learned about in history books, on museum visits and from Netflix specials loved to nap, including:

Winston Churchill
Salvador Dali
Margaret Thatcher
Eleanor Roosevelt
Thomas Edison
85% of mammals
my mom, probably yours too (moms are generally very good at being right, just saying)

The siestas that are widely adopted across Europe and Spanish speaking countries originated with the ancient Romans. They paused work mid-day to give people a break from peak heat and re-energize.

Napping is also mentioned in the Quran and the Hadith by Muhammed, 609-632 CE, encourages mid-day naps to support Islamic prayer rituals:

“Sleeping early in the day betrays ignorance, in the middle of the day is right, and at the end of the day is stupid.” - Sleep from an Islamic Perspective

For a long time, humans were biphasic sleepers, sleeping twice a day. Standard sleep schedules facilitated a long stint at night and some shuteye midday too. Napping was the norm.

Then, industrialization changed the structure of our waking hours with new schedules powered by artificial light, and humans shifted to monophasic sleep.

they (the world, my boss, my kids, space invaders) won’t let me nap

Chances are that you aren’t skipping the midday nap because you’re never tired at 2PM. A more likely reason you don’t nap is that your schedule conforms to the standard flow of society.

At 2PM, you have meetings on your calendar, or have to get ready to go pickup the kids from school, or are busy pretending to be uber focused in your open office desk while secretly dying of the post lunch onset of itis like 50-75% of the people around you. External forces be damned.

If you want to nap but feel like the powers that be won’t like it, you have options:

If you’re close enough to home, eat lunch at your desk, and drive home to nap during your lunch break. If you aren’t, try to start and end your day earlier (eg work 7-2) or ask if you can telecommute in the afternoon.
Find an empty room for a nap or be fearless and sleep at your desk (Inemuri, or sleeping in public, is a 1000 year old practice widely adopted and encouraged in Japan). I’d encourage a quick conversation with HR before taking this path, for your own protection.
Find a remote job that gives you more control over your schedule and the ability to nap out of the limelight.
If you’re a stay at home parent and your kids both require and prevent nap taking, find a 20 minute long independent activity (napping, drawing, iPadding) that they can do in a sharp object and fire free room, then barricade yourself in your own room. This is obvious advice but you’d be surprised at how many people aren’t sure if this is ok; I make it ok every Saturday from 2-2:20pm EST.

i (conquerer of the world, my work, tiny humans and space invaders) can’t nap

As a remote worker, I nap 3-5x/week. At my last IRL job, I napped in my car or occasionally an empty office after finding it impossible to concentrate with my head leaned up against the wall of a toilet stall.

I’ll just leave that there.

In college, I was a prolific napper, but the soul crushing anxiety of real life suppressed my super power for the better part of a decade. There were so many other things to do, and so many places to purchase I’ll sleep when I’m dead novelty items.

Becoming a great - efficient, relaxed, disciplined - napper takes practice. It’s not an Olympic worthy sport. Yet. Give it a few years.

Nap practice and ritual helps you get your mind and body to a place where you can both fall asleep and emerge from slumber quickly.

If you’re in the “I can’t/won’t nap” club, you probably just need a little more practice. Here are 5 ways to ascend to semi-pro napper status:

tire yourself out

Many of the famous people on the lists above did their most mentally challenging deep work in the morning. When their intensity, alertness and mental capacity began to taper off, they hit the reset button with a nap. Typically after ~ 3-6 hours.

Sleep research conducted by Cheri Mah at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Facility found that elite athletes who get up early to practice then take a short midday nap also experience the benefits of cognitive performance, alterness and mood.

Hard work - mental, physical, emotional - increases your sleep drive. Has reading a textbook ever put you to sleep? The mental load created by analyzing something dry and trying to make it interesting is exhausting…or if you’re lazy, boring. Either way, it will help you ease into a sleepier state.

make time to nap

Set aside time, ideally the same time each day, to nap, and then show up for it. It’s like going to the gym even when you don’t want to work out; just show up. The good stuff follows.

It doesn’t have to be a ton of time, you just have to consistently make and take the time that you can. I’ve found that as little as 7 minutes is long enough to help me reset.

Your chances of napping successfully without killing your nighttime sleep drive are highest post lunch, probably in the neighborhood of 1-3pm.

get in the nap zone

Napping requires foreplay. The lead up can be a boring/challenging book or a minute to focus on stilling your mind and relaxing your body. If you show up for nap time impatient, expecting to immediately fall asleep, you will be disappointed, dejected and possibly abandon the practice altogether.

Block 30m knowing it will take you 5-10m on each side of the nap to wind down and ramp back up.

find the Pavlovian instrumental transfer for your nap

In 2016, a friend shared Marconi Union’s Weightless with me, a progression of songs clinically proven to help you reduce anxiety and stress and in turn, put you to sleep. It could just be the placebo effect at play but at this point, I’ve listened to Weightless before so many naps that as soon as I heart the first few notes of the song, I’m immediately more relaxed.

Listen to the song on Spotify or Youtube, or read about it here.

drink coffee before you nap

Drinking coffee has less to do with your nap game and more to do with your post nap experience.

Coffee has a half life of 5 to 6 hours, so your 7am cup has worn off by 12P or 1P. Cup 2 will start to kick in after 10 minutes and reaches its peak 45 minutes in, giving you a 10 minute window for a nap with a buzz worthy ending. On my longest days, I chug a cup of coffee, lie down, pass out, and naturally wake myself up after 7-10 minutes ready to fly around to save the world etc.

believe in the power of naps

I am, clearly, a big proponent of naps. You may still not be convinced.

Making naps routine part of your life and pursuit of happiness requires you to buyin to naps and more broadly, the value that rest adds to your life. Paradoxically, you can only get the value from naps when you invest the time and energy to figure out how to consistently nap.

Napping isn’t a love at first sleep sport. You know this: you’ve probably been deterred by a nap run awry, or previous failed attempts at napping.

You have to trust the not-that-long-game; that maybe, after 2-3 weeks of practicing, you can be the Serena or Venus William of naps.

There’s really only one kind of human. Napping will probably never be an Olympic sport, but naps can make you more likely and able to ascend to Olympian levels of greatness.