An opinionated guide to napping on purpose, and other sleephacking tips and tricks

The central insight of everything that follows is: you don't gotta force it. You gotta let it. Sleep is an affordance, i.e. something that works like a muscle does. It's a thing you can do on purpose, without having to think about it, the same way you pick up a cup; and you already use this affordance every time you sleep. The trick is to hook up the part of you that does things "on purpose" to the part that does the thing without the former getting in the latter's way.

Zeroth step. What would it take for you to choose to lie down, close your eyes, and do nothing else for 5 minutes? Figure that out and do it. Chances are you'll rederive several of the following strategies. But also: baseline. Studies have shown that even lying down with your eyes closed, awake the whole time, confers some of the benefits of sleeping. You can't lose. If you're awake, you're at least relaxing on purpose. If you can't relax, at least you're learning to relax on purpose. If you think you'll never learn, well, your body is supported and getting a break for the time you're lying down. (If that's not what you need, well, go do something else! Maybe what you actually need right now is a walk, or a run, or a snack, or to talk to a friend, or to hug a friend, or to scream for a bit, or to journal. Or even to sit down for 15 minutes and solve your specific problem. I recommend youfeellikeshit.com as a checklist resource to figure out wtf is wrong and address it. It got me through some rough years.)

Block off the time and space; make it possible to pay attention. How does that work for you?

• Set a timer.
• Find a guided meditation you like. there are nap specific ones. or just play whale sounds! or something you like in the genre of "downregulating". or just white noise.
• Lots of specific context cues work for different people. The key is to find something relaxing in the right spceific way. Learn from the cats. find your sunbeam, or spot under the blanket, or chair cushion under the table, whatever it is.

There are two ways you can go about this: let your mind learn how to sleep, or let your mind get out of the way.

• When you are very relaxed, try to to find the sleep movement in your brain. I mean the same kind of mental move as try to flex you left pectoral muscle or try to twitch your little toe. This is, I stress, a hardware hookup that already exists; you just don't have it indexed right now.
  • Deliberate sleep can honestly be a deeply powerful meditation practice, esp for the kind of refactoring / defragging dreams do.
  • related: lucid dreaming.
• Play an easy mental game, that takes your attention but doesn't make you work hard otherwise. Example games below. The idea is to work your brain about as hard as easy walking works your body; it softens and regulates you, and gives your mind something to do.
  • Like category games? Pick a word, like BLANKET. Try to think of all the animals you can whose names start with the first letter, then the second letter, etc.
  • Like free association? Pick a word, like BLANKET. Pick a word that BLANKET makes you think of. Pick a word that that word makes you think of. etc.
  • Like mental arithmetic? List the Fibonacci numbers. Don't try to do it fast, don't work too hard. Just go easy, solve the additions one by one.

• If you feel groggy getting up, consider caffeine naps. drink a coffee, set a timer for 20 minutes. the caffeine wakes you up when it hits.
• Try to avoid naps arising solely from stress fatigue (the thing where you get sleepy because too anxious). If you don't currently have a good way to relax on purpose, though, this can be a good stopgap. I used it for years.
• Do take naps to mitigate sleep deprivation, even if it occurs alongside stress fatigue. This is the best reason to sleep, and will bring the stress down for real.
• Do take naps to have ideas, even if it occurs alongside stress fatigue. "Let me take a quick nap to think about this" is a deeply underutilized move, and can be a sideways approach to addressing the source fo the stress.
  • The trick, here, is to figure out how to sleep about it instead of think about it. A good reference point for the target sensation is the feeling of being half asleep and drifting.
  • This is both a good sideways approach to deliberate sleep, and a good distraction game to play while you're waiting to fall asleep.

• sleep mask can be helpful. (this also helps set context for me: it feels like a different thing than "lying down in the daytime", more intentional, good strong sensory cue. YMMV if you don't like blindfolds.)
• white noise can be helpful.
• phone on a surface out of your reach.
• shower, or wipe down with a moist towelette, if that's bothering you.
• spend 5 minutes getting your temperature desires dialed in. the right blanket, the right shirt or pants, socks or no socks, etc.

If you plan to make a habit of napping, pick a style and a ritual to go with it.

• catnaps are quick, caffeine nap shaped, and build fluency with moving up and down regulation states. also really good for idea having.
• A biphasic sleep schedule i.e. siestas are a commitment to a routine that gets you both early bird and night owl life, at the expense of the afternoon. good for routine, a full extra 90 minute sleep cycle i.e. proper REM ie proper extra rest. Also the opportunity for dream work, if you're into that: lucid dreaming etc live here. expect a boost to your emotional stability; ime also a bit of an emotional "out of step" feeling with the people around you. circadian rhythms are the OG synced cycles.

Why do you need the extra sleep? Is it a situational need or a routine need?

You get feedback on 2-3 time horizons: immediately upon waking up, the next day, and a week out. different habits will have different response profiles. in advance of trying something, ask yourself what you expect (you'll have a reasonable intuitive answer) and then after that time has passed CHECK AGAINST YOUR PREDICTIONS.

• the caffeine nap Idea I think I got from the.fabulous app, dan ariely's old thing. I wonder if caeffeine nap meditations exist in the wild; I'll look it up after this!
• headspace guided sleep meditations, esp the wind-down ones, are gold.
• wikipedia on biphasic sleep