Data point: I used to have a 20-min nap after the work, and it helped me to “reset” the brain. The rest of the day felt like a mini-weekend. I need to start this habit again.
The failure mode is when I start going to work late and leaving late, and then I feel like it’s too late in the day to take a nap when I get home. I haven’t made any effort to determine whether a short nap at, say, 18:30 would make it hard to get to sleep at 22:00.
I don’t think that would prevent you from falling asleep, but you would get more benefit from the nap if it is earlier, so your waking periods are more even. You should also be able to sleep less at night, typical biphasic schedules have a 6.5 hour core.
Melatonin might fix the problem where you have trouble getting to sleep early enough to wake up early enough to go to work early enough to get home to take the nap at a sensible time.
There is probably some low-hanging fruit I was ignoring till now.
For example, at my job I have flexible working hours… when I read the rules carefully, they say that each day I have to work between 5 1⁄2 and 10 1⁄2 hours, together 40 hours every week. Now that I think about it, perhaps I could split the week in two long days, 10 1⁄2 hours each, and three short days, 6 1⁄3 hours each. During the long days I would simply come home from the work, watch some movie and go to sleep. During the short days, I would be home soon enough to take the nap and then have a long free afternoon.
Not sure until I try (I guess the next week is as good as any other), but it feels like it would be an improvement to the regular schedule of 8 hours, where it’s kinda late to take a nap when I get home, and I feel tired and out of time to do anything meaningful. -- I just need to prepare a specific schedule and commit to following it.
You need to have an alarm clock or sleep tracks that will mechanically wake you up after 20 minutes. You go to deep sleep if you sleep over 30 minutes, and then you start getting sleep inertia and messing up your night’s sleep.
I just set the clock to something like 25 minutes and lie down. It seems to be more refreshing than staying up even if I don’t end up falling asleep. If I do fall asleep, even five or ten minutes of sleep seem to help quite a bit.
Data point: I used to have a 20-min nap after the work, and it helped me to “reset” the brain. The rest of the day felt like a mini-weekend. I need to start this habit again.
The failure mode is when I start going to work late and leaving late, and then I feel like it’s too late in the day to take a nap when I get home. I haven’t made any effort to determine whether a short nap at, say, 18:30 would make it hard to get to sleep at 22:00.
I don’t think that would prevent you from falling asleep, but you would get more benefit from the nap if it is earlier, so your waking periods are more even. You should also be able to sleep less at night, typical biphasic schedules have a 6.5 hour core.
That’s exactly the same reason I stopped taking the naps.
So, how can a rationalist solve this problem? :D
Melatonin might fix the problem where you have trouble getting to sleep early enough to wake up early enough to go to work early enough to get home to take the nap at a sensible time.
There is probably some low-hanging fruit I was ignoring till now.
For example, at my job I have flexible working hours… when I read the rules carefully, they say that each day I have to work between 5 1⁄2 and 10 1⁄2 hours, together 40 hours every week. Now that I think about it, perhaps I could split the week in two long days, 10 1⁄2 hours each, and three short days, 6 1⁄3 hours each. During the long days I would simply come home from the work, watch some movie and go to sleep. During the short days, I would be home soon enough to take the nap and then have a long free afternoon.
Not sure until I try (I guess the next week is as good as any other), but it feels like it would be an improvement to the regular schedule of 8 hours, where it’s kinda late to take a nap when I get home, and I feel tired and out of time to do anything meaningful. -- I just need to prepare a specific schedule and commit to following it.
Have you tried taking the nap at work?
It worked in the past, but it’s not possible now. (Office politics and general irrationality at the workplace.)
I already need melatonin for that purpose even without an evening nap. :-( It’s an interesting idea, though.
For me the failure mode is the naps becoming too long. Taking naps too late makes it impossible to sleep in time for me, too.
You need to have an alarm clock or sleep tracks that will mechanically wake you up after 20 minutes. You go to deep sleep if you sleep over 30 minutes, and then you start getting sleep inertia and messing up your night’s sleep.
This is true, but since I can’t reliably predict how fast I fall asleep, I can’t set the time properly.
Most of the times would just end up lying awake, and not feeling refreshed afterwards.
I just set the clock to something like 25 minutes and lie down. It seems to be more refreshing than staying up even if I don’t end up falling asleep. If I do fall asleep, even five or ten minutes of sleep seem to help quite a bit.