8 ms·

I wish I was able to take naps. Do people can really fall asleep on command just like that when they have some spare minutes in their day? Shit, even when I am

• joshschreuder 12y ago
  I'm exactly the same, I find it very difficult to nap during the day even when sleep deprived. It takes me a long time to fall asleep.
  • weaponofchoice 12y ago
    Used to be similar for me. Until I discovered deep meditation (http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Meditation-Pathway-Personal-Freedom/dp/097646554X http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Meditation-Pathway-Personal-Freed...). Summarized: Repeat a chant, such as 'I am' (or any phrase of your choosing) for about 5 minutes, focusing on what the chant-phrase sounds like in your mind. With the phrase 'I am', you would try to feel the sounds 'A-Y-A-M' being pronounced in your mind, without ever vocalizing it. Gets me napping within 5 minutes, wake up charged up for a massively productive session. I hope you'll give it a try sometime.
• electromagnetic 12y ago
  Ditto this. My wife can nap no problem. I might nap every couple months, and its basically a disrupted sleep and not a nap. I wake up feeling terrible; groggy, mild headache, irritable. I'd have been better off not napping as it inevitably comes when I've got so much to do and no energy and that "if I have a quick nap I'll feel refreshed and be ready to work!" Nope!
  • sciurus 12y ago
    How long are you napping for?
  • derekp7 12y ago
    I'm the same way -- every once in a while I'll fall asleep on a weekend around mid afternoon, and sometimes wake up 4 hours later. Then I really feel like yuck for another hour. And I can't fall asleep easily that night either (usually I don't have a problem falling asleep, just not getting interrupted in the middle by the dog wanting to get let out).
    • 59nadir 12y ago
      4 hours of sleep is not a nap. The refreshing feeling you get after a nap is completely different from the one you get when you've gone into deep sleep.
  • vlunkr 12y ago
    I'm in the exact same situation. If I nap for more than ten minutes I feel awful. I assume my body doesn't know how to deal with naps since I rarely take one.
• barbs 12y ago
  > * Do people can really fall asleep on command just like that when they have some spare minutes in their day?* It depends on the time of day. I can't exactly fall asleep on command, but I'll find myself longing for a nap in the afternoon, usually around 2 or 3. I can fall asleep pretty quickly then, and usually I'll wake up about 20 minutes later.
• matwood 12y ago
  I can't nap, but just laying down for 20 minutes with my eyes closed in a quiet room gives me a huge energy boost.
  • victormg 12y ago
    Same here,somebody have an explanation?
    • yoklov 12y ago
      You actually fell asleep, but didn't enter a deep enough sleep for you to actually notice it. You can't tell if you're in NREM1 sleep.
  • murrayh 12y ago
    Isn't that exactly what a nap is? Does your awareness reduce? It's hard to notice a change in awareness. Sometimes I notice a transition from haziness to attention when a sound draws my attention. My understanding is that the haziness is a form of sleeping and is exactly what a nap is meant to be. If you fall into a deeper sleep you will get some of the side effects others talk about -- grogginess etc. The length and depth of sleep is related, so I thought that's why you need to be careful to only nap for short periods of time.
    • peteretep 12y ago
      When I nap, even for 20m, I dream. Grogginess comes if I take longer than 20 minutes or so - although if I time it right, I can hit a non grogginess event again after 1.5 hiurs. Sleep cycles, I guess
• Swizec 12y ago
  Yes. If you lay still with your eyes closed and make sure your phone and internet stay quiet, you will fall asleep in 10 minutes or so. That then leaves enough to get 10 minutes or so of sleep and get back up 20 minutes after starting your nap. Much longer than that and you risk not getting up for another few hours. Much less than that and you won't get any rest. And yes, this works perfectly well even without falling asleep. Just lay still for 20 minutes and let your mind wander without distractions or worrying about what you're thinking about. Congratulations, you've just meditated.
  • Afforess 12y ago
    Just lay still for 20 minutes and let your mind wander without distractions Just. I've never been able to do that. I'm always thinking, even when I am exhausted. (Usually then, about how exhausted I am.)
    • steveax 12y ago
      My secret: short story podcasts. Engages my brain just enough to help turn off the competing thoughts. There really is something to that bedtime story thing!
    • vijucat 12y ago
      This could be due to the momentum of thinking anxiously, or in a forced way in general, throughout the day. If you are able to think at a natural pace throughout the day, your thoughts will be calm, or at least, come to you at a natural pace, at bedtime / nap-time, too.
    • Swizec 12y ago
      > I'm always thinking Otherwise known as "lettings your mind wander". Just go with it, you don't have to not-think. It is perfectly fine to spend 20 minutes laying down and thinking.
      • masklinn 12y ago
        And what's supposed to happen when it's an hour later and the mind is still wandering but not sleeping any more than originally?
• kirse 12y ago
  It just takes practice. For a nap, it helps to unwind quickly by focusing on deep breathing and allowing your mind to wander. During a nap you're not trying to lose consciousness as if you're "totally asleep" either. It's almost like you're hypnotizing yourself into a deep state of relaxation. A pair of sunglasses or sleep mask can also help to reduce any daytime light to make it easier. Practice it for a year, you'll be an expert after that and have a highly valuable skill. This guy has all you could ever hope to know on becoming a Master of Sleep: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm
  • themodelplumber 12y ago
    I agree, it takes practice. I can't let my mind wander though. If I want to take a nap in the middle of the day I have to consciously visualize something. The visualization that has worked best for me over the last year has been sitting in my childhood home, assembling the tail section of a scale model Su-24. The end product looks a lot like this one: http://paperwings.orgfree.com/su24/index.htm http://paperwings.orgfree.com/su24/index.htm (except I never finish it, just doze off) The sleep is worth the practice :)
    • Sammi 12y ago
      Well there is a right and wrong way to let you mind wander. The right way is what is taught in Mindfulness meditation. It requires hard training, and I'm not very good at it (yet I hope). The "trick" is to let you mind wander without intentionally thinking about anything, but just letting thoughts float on by without getting attached to any one of them. Just notice all the different things your mind is bringing up, and let it happen, without grabbing hold of any one thought. My big problem is that I have a strong inner voice that is explaining or narrating almost all that I do. This voice if focusing my thoughts, so I need to stop talking inside my head for this to work. I kind of just need to shut up and watch my thoughts instead :)
      • Dewie 12y ago
        This has sometimes worked for me when I'm trying to fall asleep. When I'm successful, it's like I'm letting go of the narrative of my own thoughts, and instead just seeing it unfold. Eventually, I start to feel as if the thoughts are drifting into a dream, as I start to feel engulfed in my thoughts rather than just observing them unfold.
• bredfield 12y ago
  Have you tried 'paradoxical intention'? It's basically convincing yourself that the goal is to stay awake, instead of falling asleep. It gets rid of some of the performance anxiety surrounding falling asleep, and tends to force you to focus on something else (keeping awake). It has helped me in the past!
  • edwinyzh 12y ago
    Aha! I know what you mean - I have noticed such situations several times.
• k__ 12y ago
  Afaik it's an illusion. When I'm not sleeping alone, the other people tell me I'm snoring after 10min lying around. But I cant remember falling asleep, snoring OR waking up. Just That I had my eyes closed and tried to sleep. So I guess, I cant check for my self that I'm asleep...
  • djur 12y ago
    I've had the same experience when sleep-deprived (which is really the only condition in which I can nap). I'll grab a couch at work and recline and close my eyes. What follows is perceived as a relatively brief period -- twenty minutes or so -- of being somewhat abstracted from reality, with my mind operating in that semi-dreamlike state you sometimes get when waking up slowly. Then I'll open my eyes, slightly fuzzy but less tired, and go back to my desk to find that 60-90 minutes have passed. (This is almost always in the context of work-related sleep deprivation, like being in a crunch on a project or up late because of a crisis, so I've never gotten any guff over it; in any case, it happens very rarely.) What's interesting is that I definitely feel like I'm perceiving the world with some continuity during that time -- I'll hear coworkers' conversations, people walking around, etc. -- but apparently I miss things like people coming up and checking if I'm awake, or even the time someone laid my hoodie over me as an improvised blanket. If I sleep any longer than 90 minutes or so, I just perceive it the same way I do sleeping at night. The brain is a strange contraption, isn't it?
    • k__ 12y ago
      When I'm sleeping for >60 minutes, with those states of deep sleep, I really feel like I'm sleeping. But not when I'm just lay on the couch for 20 minutes.
• click170 12y ago
  You could try not watching TV, using a laptop, or reading in bed. For me, when I stopped watching TV and doing things on my laptop from my bed, I very quickly noticed an improvement in how quickly I fell asleep. Another big one is exercise. I notice that when I exercise I have a much easier time falling asleep than on days that I don't, I now try to exercise every day. I also got older over the past few years, which in and of itself could explain things, so, I suggest experimenting to find what works best for you. Edit: typo.
  • bigtunacan 12y ago
    This. A bed should serve for only two purposes; sleeping and we all know the other. Watching TV, laptops, reading, etc... do not train your brain that the bed is for sleeping. Now I lay in bed for a nap and I will typically zonk out in a couple of minutes.
    • ihaveajob 12y ago
      I find that reading fiction in bed is a great way to fall asleep. Nothing technical or business related, though, that's a guarantee of a short and poor sleep.
      • TeMPOraL 12y ago
        For me reading fiction in bed is a great way to fall asleep... the next day at work. I lost countless hours of sleep at night and productivity during the day thanks to people like HN's own cstross, who absolutely, positively have to create captivating, entertaining and addicting pieces of writing...
• jaredmcateer 12y ago
  I used to do it on my lunches in my car. Load up an mp3 I made from rainymood.com and some oscillating brown noise on simplynoise.com, put on a sleeping mask and a 45 minute alarm it was great. First few times I didn't sleep much but I did essentially meditate, later on I was sleeping within 10-15 mins.
• tambourine_man 12y ago
  Mildly interesting podcasts and audiobooks help me a lot. Too interesting and you get wired. Too dull and your mind begins to wonder. Some work so well that it takes me several runs to listen completely.
  • iamwithnail 12y ago
    Hah! I read technical stuff on Wikipedia for the same purpose.
  • jclos 12y ago
    What helps me a lot is listening to audiobooks I have already listened to. I find for example the Harry Potter audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry comforting and relaxing.
    • ajani 12y ago
      I do the same thing - re-listen audiobooks. My favorites are Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry.
• e40 12y ago
  If I play solitaire on my phone, when tired, it does the trick. I find it's way better than other things, like watching TV or reading random websites or books.
• skizm 12y ago
  The article says you don't actually have to fall asleep to feel the effects. Just lay in a half sleep/relaxed state for 20 minutes.