Being lethargic in the noon may not be such a bad thing after all. It turns out; a power nap is the best way to rejuvenate your brain.

We tend to use coffee or an energy drink to push grogginess. However, what we’re so afraid of maybe the best solution to feeling motivated. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many adults tend to have a terrible sleep schedule, which furthermore ruins our productivity levels. So naps can help counter the consequences of a ruined sleep schedule. It also improves mood and performance. 

In a study on NASA astronauts & pilots, naps enhanced their performance by 34%.

There are actually three kinds of naps:

– Planned napping – when you’re not getting enough sleep at night, plan ahead of time and schedule one or two naps to ensure you are fresh enough to complete your to-do list. 

– Habitual napping – daily naps, around the same time, when you get tired may be a good thing.

– Emergency napping – with different circumstances arising through the day, you may be tired enough to NEED a nap to stay fresh. Don’t fight it. 

It helps build your cognitive ability, logical reasoning, boosts creativity, and enhances your memory. As we already mentioned, it improves your performance, which ensures fewer mistakes in the work we do after the nap. 

Now let’s get into the details about our sleep cycle. There are four main stages of our sleep cycle. 

The first two stages are relatively light sleep, while the third stage brings you into a deep slumber. The final stage, known as rapid eye movement or REM, is when you start to dream. 

The benefits of napping are linked to the amount of time we sleep for.

Naps that are a maximum of 30 minutes in length allow you to enter your sleep cycle’s first two stages. 

In stage 1, slow eye movement begins, and if you are woken up, you feel as though you did not sleep to start with. But as you go into stage 2, your brain begins to restrain processing and ignores external stimuli that it deems non-dangerous, and will give you a peaceful sleep. It also begins memory consolidation, where the information you learn is processed. Waking up during this stage can be the most beneficial. 

Beyond 30 minutes, you enter stage 3. This is when you experience sleep inertia when awaken. Because your body is coming out of a deep sleep, your grogginess to go back to bed increases, and your dexterity decreases. 

People deem naps to be a bad addition to a daily routine; it merely means that they have been napping too long. Maybe it’s time to start sleeping on the job. Just tell your boss, science said so.