Napping Advice, from Times to Cars to Routines
I’m trying to figure out the best way to handle missing a nap. [and I'm about to digress into a whole bunch of other nap stuff, so if naps are an interest of yours, you're in luck! ;) ]
See, work has a tendency to sometimes eat my afternoon (2:00) nap. Usually if that happens, I can take it at 5:00 (pulling the car over on the way home) and all is fine; I get sleepy again right about nine, dead on schedule. But sometimes–like yesterday–there’s just no chance. I got my “afternoon nap” at 7:00 last night.
Since I’d only had two naps (and was tired, but not bone-crushingly so), it seemed to make sense to go ahead and sleep 4 hours last night. I did, but then I was zonked tired by the end of the drive to work, and had to take a 10-minute nap at 7 a.m. just to get through ’till nine. And I’d had coffee! (I feel fine after my 9 a.m., but I swear, that nap is magickal. I always feel fine as soon as I get it, and sleep like the dead, no matter how wonky my schedule beforehand was.)
Looking back, I always seem to get tired in the morning if I sleep four hours at night, but not if I sleep three. But I’m not sure I could have just slept three hours on two naps and gotten away with it…Well, I guess the next time work makes me miss a nap, I’ll try just pretending it didn’t happen and see if that works.
Oh, here, I jotted this down the other day in case it helps anyone else:
How To Nap In A Car
I nap in my car in public, in (summer and now) winter, in Michigan. At least twice a day, five days a week, my car is my bed. If I can do it, anybody can! ;)
Obviously, you need to be warm/cool enough. Have a small fan in the summer and sleeping bag in the winter, with an extra blanket hiding somewhere just in case. In winter, have something to prop your feet up off the floor, or they’ll freeze no matter what. In summer, make sure you have an eye-mask or something to block the sunlight with, and try to park so you won’t be laying directly in the sun.
I like to have a light blanket even in the summer. With your body covered, you feel less exposed to prying eyes (though I’ve yet to have anybody spy on me that I know about). Also, a small pillow is a big big plus. It’s way hard to sleep if your neck is uncomfortable, or at least it is for me.
I have a small car (actually I’ve had two over the course of this experiment) and I prefer to sleep in the front seat, leaned way back.
Leave the car off. Unless you can sleep in a running car I suppose; I just can’t, not for anything, even if it’s not moving. Anyway, I don’t have the extra time to take away from work to let the car warm up and I can’t start it from my office, so even if I could sleep with it running, I don’t. Sometimes when I have to nap in the car in the evening and it’s dark and I’m in a strange parking-lot, I’ve left it running out of paranoia (because, um, rapists are deathly afraid of the sound a four-banger engine makes at idle…?) — and at first this gave me some trouble going to sleep, but I’ve gotten pretty proficient at sleeping “on demand”, so I can do it now. Still, running the car wastes gas, and terrorists like it when you waste gas. ;)
Definitely forego the radio or other distractions. Try to keep things as close to how they are when you “normally” nap as possible. (Sometimes this happens automatically. I lost my eye-mask a few months ago and started pulling the corner of the sleeping bag up over my face. Now I pull the blankets over my head when I’m napping at home!)
And lastly, if you don’t have a routine you use to get to sleep, it would be a good idea to develop one; it helps me a lot when I have to sleep in weird places (though to me, the car is no longer “weird”; I actually sometimes have more trouble falling asleep at home!) I’m sure everyone can come up with their own “naptime routine” (wow, we’re sounding like Kindergarteners here!) — but here are some ideas, in case you want ‘em.
* Breathing exercises: If you know ‘em, cycle through a few that involve deep breaths and/or relaxation.
* Meditation: Again, be sane. Reaching Nirvana will not put you to sleep! But there are relaxation / sleep meditations out there, if you’re interested. (Note: Personally, I don’t meditate to go to sleep — it actually messes with a specific sequence my brain needs to go through to shut down, and so it often prevents me from sleeping, even if it does relax me.)
* Counting: Counting breaths, sheep, ceiling tiles, doing multiplication tables — it’s the repetition that matters. This distracts the upper levels of your brain so the other levels can go about shutting down.
* Tension / Release: I learned this as a kid as the following exercise: For a slow count of ten, gradually increase the tension in your body until it’s 100% tense. Then for another slow count of ten, gradually release the tension until every muscle is completely relaxed. (Note: This works for me if I’m having trouble sleeping.)
* Stories: Tell yourself a bedtime story in your head. It should be the same story every night, and make you think things you won’t mind dreaming about. (Note: The general principle behind bedtime prayers? Hmm…)
…Okay, that’s enough blather for the moment. Happy napping!
-PD
17 devoted students of Roshi accepted this page in 0.284 seconds without moving, or saying a word.
Hey PD!
Thank you for all of the great information on polyphasic sleeping!
I started on an Everyman schedule a couple days ago and have a question.
I skipped my last nap because I wasn’t tired at all. Now, an hour and a half later, I’m starting to get tired. My next nap isn’t for another three and a half hours. Should I take the nap now, then take the next nap at the scheduled time, hold out till the next nap, or take the next nap a bit early?
Thanks,
Stephen
STICK TO YOUR SCHEDULE, no matter how tired you are, for a month. Seriously. That is how you make the tiredness go away! If you give in to tiredness, or the symptoms of sleep deprivation, you’re telling your brain that those things will make you sleep, and you’ll never *stop* being tired. Schedule, schedule, schedule. PERIOD. No fudging!
Luck!