Matthew Walker’s Defense of Napping: 5 Benefits of Napping

Dr. Matthew Walker is a specialist in the study of slumber and the founder-director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The influential British neuroscientist is the author of the international bestseller Why We Sleep (2017), recommended by The New York Times for “night-table reading in the most pragmatic sense” and endorsed by Bill Gates. In addition to examining how sleep affects the brain and body, Matthew has analyzed everything from its role in Alzheimer’s and depression to how it can facilitate learning and, potentially, extend our life expectancy.

Napping is the act of sleeping for a short period of time, typically during the day, to restore energy levels. According to sleep experts, you only need about 20 minutes of sleep to boost your mood and energy levels and curb daytime sleepiness. Longer naps can lead to sleep inertia, a feeling of drowsiness or grogginess; not napping long enough prevents you from reaping the benefits of “slow-wave sleep,” the restorative deep sleep cycle just before REM sleep. The health benefits of quick bouts of daytime sleep include improved cognition, better memory consolidation, and mood stabilization. While the benefits are well-documented, only a fraction of adults regularly nap.

Napping isn't a modern phenomenon; Hugely influential figures, from Albert Einstein to Winston Churchill, are said to have indulged in a midday snooze. Here are a few benefits of napping:

1. 1. Naps can improve mood and increase energy. According to various studies, daytime naps can aid recovery during sickness, remedy sleep deprivation, and improve mood. Napping can also reduce daytime sleepiness and increase energy levels.
2. 2. Napping helps with memory consolidation. For infants, napping is a crucial part of memory consolidation, especially after learning a new skill or synthesizing an experience.
3. 3. Napping aids cognition and sleep quality. As we age, napping becomes more directly linked to mood stabilization and cognitive performance. A 30-minute nap around mid-afternoon has been shown to improve night-time sleep quality for older adults.
4. 4. Napping can repair a sleep deficit. A build-up of sleep loss over a few days can wreak havoc on physical, mental, and emotional systems: Slower reaction times, impaired vision, and an inclination towards burnout are common symptoms. Incorporating a regular afternoon nap can dispel these side effects.
   
5. 5. Napping helps you understand your sleep cycles. Experts say a 20-minute nap is the ideal length of time for a short snooze, but there’s evidence that a long nap (around an hour) can be even more restorative when timed correctly. By experimenting with naps of various lengths, you’ll begin to understand your natural circadian rhythm (biological clock) and the natural length of your sleep cycles. Since it’s best to wake up at the end of a sleep cycle and not in the middle (that usually results in grumpiness), tracking your post-nap emotional and physical responses can help you identify the optimal time span for your daily snooze.

Despite reports about the efficacy of napping, stigmas about laziness persist. Sleep expert Matthew Walker lauds napping as a great way to make up for poor sleep quality.

• We desperately need the rest. According to surveys, the typical American adult gets an average of six hours and 31 minutes of sleep on work nights—well below the seven to nine hours of sleep needed for a healthy system. Rates are lower in other industrialized nations like Japan, where the average adult gets six hours and 22 minutes. The Japanese practice of inemuri, which translates to “sleeping while present,” encourages napping at work, frames the short snooze as a sign of diligence, from having worked oneself to exhaustion. Most American employers have yet to embrace the simple idea: To avoid lying down on the job, sometimes you need to lie down on the job.
• Strategic napping promotes mental toughness. When the US Army dropped its revised fitness manual in October 2020, it included a curious new recommendation: strategic napping. The guidebook, meant to “build physical lethality and mental toughness,” espouses the benefits of “short and infrequent” bouts of sleep to “restore wakefulness and promote performance.”
• Power naps increase attentiveness. In 1990, sleep researcher David Dinges and NASA expert Mark Rosekind published a study on scheduled rest for pilots during long-haul flights. They devised experiments to see if attention lapses—and, more ominously, midair “microsleeps”—could be minimized with shut-eye at specific intervals. They succeeded. But the Federal Aviation Administration didn’t like the sound of “planned napping.” And so the “power nap” was born.

Saw some of the best darn logs of your life with a MasterClass Annual Membership and exclusive instructional videos from Dr. Matthew Walker, the author of Why We Sleep and the founder-director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Between Matthew’s tips for optimal snoozing and info on discovering your body’s ideal rhythms, you’ll be sleeping more deeply in no time.