> My most productive, creative time was the hour or two in the late afternoon following the nap.

This has also been my experience. I often take naps around the same time and find that the nap calms me naturally and sort of distances me from any anxieties surrounding a problem I'm trying to tackle. This makes it much easier to work at it some more.

Separately I noticed that if I have any symptoms of depression (usually thoughts of despair), a nap like that can by itself often completely reverse the situation. Surprised, I did some research and was interested to find how much a lack of proper rest is associated with depression. So now the first item on my "feeling depressed" checklist is "try to take a nap".

Incidentally, one of the (many) recommended none pharma treatments to depression is to stay awake for one night (don't go to bed at all), then go to bed the next night as usual (similar to jetlag prevention strategies I suppose). The idea is that the extreme tiredness when you do go to sleep resets your circadian rhythms and ensures deep rest. I've tried it, and it does kinda help.

For anyone interested -- this model is called Wake therapy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_therapy

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fighting-depressi...

> In the new study, published online January 15 in the journal Translational Psychiatry, the scientists investigated whether this process is responsible for the antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation. Mice with depressivelike symptoms were administered three doses of a compound that triggers adenosine receptors, thus mimicking sleep deprivation. Although the mice continued to sleep normally, after 12 hours they showed a rapid improvement in mood and behavior, which lasted for 48 hours.

> The results confirm that the adenosine buildup is responsible for the antidepressant effects of a lack of sleep. This finding points to a promising target for new drug development because it suggests that mimicking sleep deprivation chemically may offer the antidepressant benefits without the unwanted side effects of actually skipping sleep. Such an intervention could offer immediate relief from depression, in stark contrast with traditional antidepressants, which take six to eight weeks to kick in.

Curious if it'll be mimicked somehow in the form of drugs in the future.

This is reassuring. I've done this a lot over the years, and found I enjoy life a lot more when I do this intermittently.

Interesting, as Modafinil has (one of many) mechanisms of action of reuptaking intracellular adenosine; and is also a mild anti-depressant

Although I've noticed that the come down for me feels like the comedown off some anti-anxiety medicines or amphetamines. It certainly works as a mild anti-depressant while the drug is working.

This is interesting, but isn't it a purely acute effect?

Like, you stop feeling better around the time you stop feeling dazed and exhausted. I can see the urge to get it into drug form, it's impressively powerful, but it looks like the mechanism of action and the mechanism of the side effects are both adenosine.

It would be handy in pill form, because keeping my eyes open for that long was quite tedious.

Anecdotally, I've done exactly this using amphetamine, 1,3-DMBA and modafinil. The former mainly because I couldn't sleep (due to taking it for recreational reasons) and just decided keep going until the next night (not taking any more, of course!) to not screw up my sleeping pattern too badly. It definitely does have some interesting effects mentally, though using stimulants to induce it has its downsides due to screwing with chemicals and complex biological systems!

And taking the kind of pill that keeps you awake is probably counterproductive :)

How do you resist not sleeping the next day? I know I would be exhausted the afternoon with little capacity for rational thought, and likely pass out by 7-8 PM, ruining the attempt.

Passing out by 7 or 8 is rather the point - you sleep a long time and deeply after the sleepless night, waking up with your head in a better place.

I can attest somewhat to the efficacy of the practice; in younger days I did it myself on occasion, and found it often to have the beneficial effect described upthread - as well as, on the day after the sleepless night, an interesting and generally useful upsurge of sidewise and creative thought that tended to produce ideas I could capture and usefully follow up on later, after the sleepful second night.

On the other hand, younger days being now behind me, I'm no longer able to miss a night's sleep and remain awake, much less productive, on the day following. So it goes.

I found that when I do all-nighters (although it's been a while since I've done one), I get a "second wind" of sorts from mid morning until late afternoon. So if I want to make sure I don't go to bed too early, it's only really the last two hours that are hard, although they can be very hard (especially since you don't want to drink caffeine or anything like that since that would affect the sleep quality).

Fresh air and light exercise help me during those last hours, but it can be mentally difficult to force myself to doing that.

Again, it's been a while since I've done it, so it may have been a symptom of being a bit younger. Maybe I wouldn't be able for it now...

Similar to you, I try to go for a hike/long walk in the morning/afternoon when I get to struggling with sleepiness (while attempting to make it to the next evening of an all-nighter).

My strategy would be to constantly change "stimulus" to keep my self active and awake. I'd try reading for a bit, then of course I start to go foggy and you get a headache from focusing on the text. Then I'd play video games for a bit, then watch a film, then a documentary, then go for a walk, then do some work.

I found switching activities every 45 minutes or so kept me sufficiently engaged.

This will work especially well for depressions caused by low dopamine levels, because one night of sleep deprivation causes your dopamine level to go up.

http://www.sfn.org/Press-Room/News-Release-Archives/2008/One...

Interesting. I naturally gravitated towards both of those methods!

When I feel lots of anxiety that can't go away, I'll take a nap - there's a good chance it'll reset my "anxiety counter", letting me deal with whatever issue that was stressing me out. When I'm low on mood / even more anxious, I'll stay awake for one night - the extreme tiredness attenuates the anxiety, and at the end of the next day, I get a good sleep and wake up in a better mood.

> the extreme tiredness attenuates the anxiety

Can confirm. My morning anxiety (I got nervous when I had to leave the house) has gotten better since I started sleeping only 4-5 hours per night and stopped drinking coffee in the morning.

I don't know why but the minute I get horizontal my imagination wakes up.

Yes! Considering that the same thing happens when I take a shower (sometimes) and when I meditate (usually), and that both of these are vertical in nature (usually), I think it's primarily to do with letting your brain 'rest'. Mindfulness and all that jazz.

I don't know what your life is like, but for me that's definitely the most likely explanation. When I'm not showering, meditating, or horizontal in bed, it usually means I'm reading something, watching something, working on something, or engaging actively in an internal monologue (that usually is more about reducing variables and maintaining control or the illusion of it, and less about creativity).

The moment my brain gets some free time, and there's nothing acute to worry about, ideas start to appear and I get excited.

Not a biologist or neurologist, but my hypothesis for this is ease of blood flow to the brain while horizontal.

Nah, it's not that simple. It cannot be that simple (but that's just my intuition of course). I do have a different mindset when my blood flow it strong after sport but it doesn't kick the creativity. On the other hand, travelling, or even taking the train, does trigger the wonder-sense.

> It cannot be that simple @agumonkey

Occam's Razor: The (simplest) explanation with the fewest assumptions tends to be the correct one.

It's almost always that simple.

Also, when you're travelling or on the train, and your wonder sense opens, you are relaxed. Less constriction to the arteries and blood vessels. As with lying horizontal, increased blood flow activates the brain.

There's simple and simple. In biology the number of dimensions is large, which one is simplified ? blood flow ? visual stimulus ? change of locus (again more stimulus since memories cannot help parsing reality).

Yup, when I feel bad it's time to go to sleep. I haven't thought about napping to get rid of it, good idea.

same here...

I worked for a very small startup in London that embraced napping as part of their culture, some 8 years ago. It worked wonders (provided that you napped for 15-30 minutes at a time and didn't pass out for an hour or two). We even had a dark storage room with a sofa that was the designated nap area.

Fast forward to the current day. That company no longer exists (it was acquired), but the co-founders went on to create another company that is doing very well. I made the decision to go freelance at the end of last year and as fate would have it I am currently working for the new company. Napping is still encouraged. They're one of the most productive, driven teams that I've ever had the pleasure of working for.

Napping is good.

How do you ensure that you sleep exactly 15-30 minutes, when falling asleep could take anywhere between 0-30 minutes?

It's tricky, but there are a few options.

- Gold standard: this is a perfect use case for sleep tracking. "Wake me in the sooner of 1 hour or 30 minutes of sleep".

- Upper bound timing. If I can't start a nap within 15-20 minutes, it's probably one I don't need. So a timer set for 35 min would suffice to get me some reasonable duration. This fails if you might need 30+ minutes.

- Caffeine naps. Drink a cup of coffee, start your nap, you'll be up in <40 minutes as the caffeine hits. This doesn't guarantee you'll get a lengthy nap, but it helps ensure you don't wake up groggy.

- Practice. I struggle to nap currently because it's not routine, I usually can't sleep quickly unless I'm exhausted. But I spent a good 6 months getting healthy sleep amounts with a daily nap, and I was usually out within 5 minutes when it was expected.

Glad to see I'm not the only one using the "Caffeine nap." I was lucky enough to work in a place that actually had a dedicated nap room that I utilized regularly. It was a holdover from the old astronomy days when astronomers would spend long hours on site to complete their research.

do you feel ok afterwards? coffee makes me sleepy sometimes, somehow, but sleeping on caffeine doesn't make me refreshed at all.

Do you have AD(H)D? Caffeine-induced sleepiness (or non-stimulation) is a pretty distinctive sign of that. If so, I'd discount all caffeine-related tips from people who don't.

But in any event: if the coffee has affected you, you're already too late. The idea is to sleep immediately after consuming your caffeine, then wake up as/before it starts to affect you. If caffeine makes you sleepy instead of wakeful, that's probably going to be less pleasant because you won't wake up refreshed.

Finally: I suspect the sleep is helping but feeling useless. Adenosine is one chemical that makes you feel sleepy, and levels are reduced while you sleep. But caffeine is an adenosine blocker, so it's going to stop you feeling that adenosine sleepiness without disposing of it. Good sleep while caffeinated is probably hard to get, but if you succeeded I expect you would lower adenosine levels, but not feel the difference until the caffeine wore off.

I prefer to pretend that I don't have anything to diagnose, it's some "irrational personality" quirkiness, but yeah, my attention span is extremely short, 10 minutes on the single task, which is kinda a problem in programming world. Maybe. I don't feel sleepiness every time I drink coffee, it's highly correlated with how tired I am, but I feel changes in my body and mood almost before I finish the cup. I didn't realize that some people can get a nap before caffeine kicks in before that post.

When people talk about napping (as in this article, and these discussions), when someone says "nap for 30 minutes" do they mean actually SLEEP for 30 minutes?

Sometimes it can take me 30 minutes just to get to a point, where I might fall asleep! And another 10 to actually fall asleep!

So are these articles actually advocating that someone like me should "nap" for a total of 70 minutes? (40 to fall asleep mid-day, 30 actually sleeping)

As someone who was in sleep therapy for chronic insomnia, the golden rule is if you can't fall asleep in 20min or less, get up. You aren't doing yourself any favors by lying in bed frustrated for an hour or more.

The most dangerous thing related to sleep hygiene is creating unpleasant associations with sleep and your bed. If you're lying in bed for long periods getting pissed off, anxious, etc... Your brain will remember these emotions next time you're trying to get some rest and they will keep you from sleeping.

It sounds like hippy shit but it's super important to think of your bed like a fluffy cloud of dreams and wonders. Don't do anything in your bed except sleep & fuck or you will start associations that won't help.

Yes, 30 minutes nap.

It takes practice, routine and the actual need for a nap, to fall asleep immediately, though.

I'm pretty sure they mean lie down for 30 minutes. I'll often only get a brief period of mental shut down on a 35 minute timer, but it helps a lot. Think of it as rebooting your machine :)

Also, you can learn to fall asleep faster with practice.

I have no idea how to practice that... Any resources you might recommend?

It's way easier after you eat. Or at least it's way easier after I eat.

I might be sleep deprived, but sometimes I'll go to the car for 15 minutes and be pulled out of a deep dream by the time the timer goes off.

Even if I don't fall asleep, just focus on your breathing, slow in slow out, and try to bring yourself back to that focus if your mind ever wanders. You'll likely be more rested regardless of whether your actually fall asleep.

According to the book 'Night School' by Richard Wiseman, just lying down for a nap, even if you don't manage to sleep, is still beneficial.

When you get into some routine it's pretty predictable. I like the pzizz app for timing and nap enhancement.

If you just set your timer for when you want to wake up and close your eyes, you'd be amazed how quickly you can doze off. For me it helps if it is dark, quiet, and cool.

Its all part of learning to listen to your body. My body tells me when it needs a nap, my thinking process gets cloudier, I have a harder time focusing. Time for a nap!

I can usually go to sleep with 5 minutes, if I can't, then I don't need a nap!

I set a timer for 20 minutes and get up when it goes off regardless. Sleeping for 30 minutes or more makes me feel tired when I wake up, and takes much longer to recover.

Was it called The Twentieth Century Motor Company?

I knew a guy who refused to take a nap. Even if it costed him an afternoon of fighting gravity, trying to stay awake browsing websites and feeling utter guilt for wasting the whole afternoon. To him, napping was morally wrong, period. Something I can understand to a poing, if one guy allows himself to sleep while others are sweating it's bad. But he could nap 20 minutes, and enjoy creativity/productivity for hours and even stay 20 min longer (at the same hourly rate) after to pay back his employer so the numbers check out.

If your boss and coworkers new about it, why didn't they provide you with space inside the building to take naps? It's stupid having to walk outside and nap in your car. Google has special quiet rooms where people can go take naps and relax during the day.

I think quiet rooms or rest spaces are difficult to maintain when there's too few people using them.

At one company it ended up being a temporary closet room with printer supply and all kind of stuff people randomly tossed in to clear the way. At my current company there's so few people using it it smells dusty and closeted to the point it's unusable to relax.

ad-hoc places worked better for me, like small meeting rooms that are unused at noon, actual storage rooms that are actually very clean and tidy compared to temporary ones, or even a park bench when weather is nice enough

One of the reasons I like to come to work late and leave late - in the evening there's always a conference room available to hide in and do some productive work, and there's even a good chance that by 5PM, all my cow-orkers will be gone, so I'll have the whole office room for myself to either work or take a nap first and then continue to ~8 PM.

My SO doesn't approve of this schedule though, so I do this only on days we're not going to see each other.

Google being Google is a bit different, but I'm sure there are a lot of companies where some low-productive employees who've been checking Facebook all day will point fingers at you for sleeping during the butt-sit hours.

I nap in my car. There's not a single nappable spot at my company. And my car is 20 seconds away.

First, not all companies have the finances of Google. Then, offices are still busy when you take your nap. I do mine, in the open space and there is always conversations or movements around, but after a few minutes I don't hear them anymore. Usually I put a 15min alarm and wake after 12min, sometimes I need 30min.

I think the argument FOR napping is the financial one; if 20 minutes of napping gives more than 20 minutes of productivity/efficiency afterwards (which turns out it does, backed by numerous academic studies), then it is worth it.

There's a few things in American culture, in particular, working against it though: our backwards cultural attitude that sleeping is considered "lazy" (USA is one of the most sleep-deprived population) and the fact that working on little sleep is falsely considered a "badge of honor," even though the occurrence of mistakes made by workers is MUCH higher when said workers are sleep deprived.

Good points -- I agree that your suggestions would be optimal for nap-friendly companies.

At this particular workplace, it took 90 seconds or so for me to walk from my desk to my car, so it wasn't a big deal. I was also used to the routine, and preferred the certainty that no one would ever walk in on me.

Would you run the AC?

Sometimes. Managing that issue was definitely something I thought about, and it affected where I parked and what direction I would point my parked car to avoid the sun. Usually I just rolled the windows down a few inches, though, instead of running the AC. I live in a temperate area and I have more tolerance for temperature swings than some. And I was usually setting my alarm for 20 minutes, so I wouldn't be there that long.

I feel guilt for this where I work. It gets to 120f outside here during the summer. It's not great to run the car for just ac, but I benefit from the alone time.

Cars consume very limited amounts of fuel idling so you shouldn't feel guilt for that anymore than you should feel guilt for driving to a restaurant on the way home.

Just avoid doing this in a closed space like a garage, because carbon monoxide can kill you... Otherwise I also use my car as a "calm down" place (for 5-10 mins before coming home, about 5 minutes away from my home), or before having a meeting and so on. Sometimes also for the naps (during work or after work).

For some reason my brain thinks it's dangerous to run the AC when the car is stationary. I don't think this is the case and I'm complecting it with something else - is anyone able to shed some light?

How do you think it is dangerous? ACs do not emit any gases themselves, so except for the CO2 produced by the engine to keep it running it should not be dangerous.

I think CO and CO2 are what I'm thinking of. Maybe if you sat in your car in the garage...?

CO and CO2 produced by the engine is going to come out of the exhaust at the back. Your AC will take in air from the front of the car. In a parking lot or other well ventilated areas, I don't see a big cause for concern.

Also modern cars produce orders of magnitude less emissions its actually somewhat difficult to kill yourself with one now, you essentially have to run a hose from the tailpipe to the cabin.

You still have an engine that is producing a certain amount of power, and this is associated with a minimum rate of production of CO2. Some of the other interesting emissions are greatly reduced in modern engines, but the CO2 production hasn't fallen that much.

I was just going off what I heard from a EMT to be honest, he said those types of suicides were much more successful early in his career.

I work just across the corridor from one of those Google nap rooms, but I don't feel right going inside. And then I end up nodding off in front of my monitor.

But I must say that this only only happens when (a) I am doing something boring and (b) I didn't get much sleep at home. So while cat napping at work is probably better than fighting it, it is more a mitigation strategy than a preferred option.

Providing a quiet, disruption-free and hygienic environment for employees to sleep in seems like quite the commitment to make. I'm all for it, and can just the same understand why it would not happen in most environments.

I can see how taking a break from the regular grind can help things, but not sure that naps are really the answer. Going to a buddy's office to shoot the breeze, or taking a walk around the block seem equally beneficial.

More or less the same here. My average nap time is around 15 minutes. Then I need 5 min. or so to fully recover the awareness, and I feel completely reenergized. My nap is almost becoming a daily pattern now so I feel sleepy in afternoon even if I don't eat. I have no overtime either. Thanks to my employer who's understanding of this.

Out of curiosity which car did you get that was nap friendly (if you don't mind sharing?)?

A Prius. With the back seat half down, I fit just well enough. There are certainly other vehicles that would be better, but the Prius was adequate and nap-friendliness was only one of the criteria used to evaluate potential vehicles.

During my early consulting career, i'd often nap around 6pm before returning to work. I had different rental cars each week and almost any car works -- just recline the front seat all the way back and make sure to keep a pillow and eye-covers.

Whatever you do, don't get a Jeep Wrangler, unless it's a four-door model or one of the longer wheelbase ones...

That's one of the main reasons I signed up for the gym. The other being the showers. I can bike to work and take a coffee nap in a hammock after lunch.

My old gym used to have "sleep pods" in a darkened room. I'd go for a half hour sleep at lunchtimes some days. Fanatastic, but they renovated the gym and removed them, and I canceled my membership.

Wow, your gym has hammocks?

Only 2... no one seems to use them. They also have sun loungers by the pool which are well suited for napping.

I did exactly the same. Not on a regular basis though, but on days when work was tiring I used to head out to the parking lot and sleep in the back of my car. Typically 20 min. That made me much more productive than I should have been w/o the nap.

When one of my co-workers found out, he started borrowing my car keys (he didn't own a car then) to sleep in my car :) - apparently, he thought it was a great idea.

Why don't you do it anymore?

What car do you have? I tried to nap in the back of my Civic once, but it wasn't successful. Partly I felt self conscious that someone might come near my car and see me, though.

I'm not the original poster, but I used to do this in my minivan. When the weather was right, it was perfect.