Naps were a way of life for me in college. Whether it was a 3-hour “nap” between an early morning class and lunch, or nodding off unintentionally while studying in the library, sleep was naturally interspersed into my daily schedule.
My wife, on the other hand, was very anti-nap in those days. But she was a regular at the coffee shop down the street from the practice building, making multiple stops either there or at the coffee machine in the lounge.
Getting caffeine into your system is admittedly a lot easier (and tastier) than napping.
But in recent years, a number of athletes have spoken out about the importance of sleep, with Lebron James, for instance – who became the NBA’s all-time scoring leader at age 38 – reportedly sleeping an average of 12 hour per day. And naps are such an integral part of an NBA player’s routine, that the league office knows not to call players at 3pm, as that’s when players are likely to be napping.
Both can certainly help to perk us up and get us through the day, but is one better than the other? Especially when it comes to maximizing learning and making the most of your practice time?
Wakefulness vs. learning and performance
Most studies on the effects of caffeine or sleep tend to focus on attention or wakefulness. This can yield helpful information when it comes to safety in the workplace or when driving, but it doesn’t shed much light on more cognitively demanding processes, like learning your part to a new piece before rehearsal in the morning.
So, a group of researchers at UC San Diego (Mednick et al., 2008) ran 61 participants through a series of cognitive tasks emphasizing verbal memory, motor skills, and perceptual learning to see how caffeine and naps compare when it comes to learning and performance.
Three tasks
Participants came to the lab in the morning, and were trained on three different tasks:
- a verbal task (involving the memorization of lists of words)
- a motor task (involving tapping fingers on a keyboard in a particular sequence for speed and accuracy)
- and a perceptual task (involving picking out two targets against a background designed to make this a little tricky)
Lunch, nap or caffeine, and a test
At noon, they were given lunch.
And at 1pm, they were randomly assigned to either a “nap” group or “drug” group (i.e. caffeine or placebo).
The nappers then took a nap (90-minutes max), while the drug group spent that time listening to a book on tape.
At 3pm, nappers were awake, and half the drug folks were given a 200mg caffeine pill (roughly the amount of caffeine in an 8 oz “short” size coffee at Starbucks), while the other half received a placebo.
And then at 4pm, everyone was tested on all three tasks.
So how’d they do?
Caffeine vs. nap
When it came to wakefulness, caffeine was the winner, as the caffeine group reported feeling more alert right before their tests than either the nap or placebo groups.
However, when it came to performance, increased alertness did not translate into better scores.
For instance, the nappers outperformed their caffeinated counterparts on the verbal memory task.
And when it came to the motor learning task, it’s almost like caffeine impaired the caffeine group’s learning. Because while the non-caffeinated participants (even the placebo group) improved their performance pretty significantly from the morning session to the afternoon session, the caffeine group’s performance stayed pretty much the same and didn’t improve much at all from morning to afternoon. Like so:
So what are we to make of all of this?
The limits of caffeine
Well, at the end of the day, it seems that caffeine can be an effective way of staying alert and awake – but it might be less effective for enhancing the learning and performance of more complex cognitively-demanding tasks.
So while you may love your 4pm Venti Blonde Roast pick-me-up, with its 475 mg of caffeine, if you have a lot of studying or practicing to do, a short nap may translate to better learning and performance.
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How long a nap is best?
Well, it depends on what you need, and how much time you have. But the research suggests that something is better than nothing, and assuming you’re pressed for time, 10-20 minutes is probably your best bet.
For more fun reading (and videos) on sleep and naps, check out this collection of links, which also includes the 5 nap lengths you can choose from (at the end of the article):
And if you have difficulty getting to sleep or getting back to sleep, check out this trippy sleep hack that has been “life-changing” to some:
References
Mednick, S. C., Cai, D. J., Kanady, J., & Drummond, S. P. (2008). Comparing the benefits of caffeine, naps and placebo on verbal, motor and perceptual memory. Behavioural Brain Research, 193(1), 79–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2008.04.028
yay naps
Why one or the other? This piece suggests the ‘coffee nap’, where you drink a cup of coffee, then take a thirty minute nap. It takes about thirty minutes for the caffeine to enter your system. Apparently leaves a person more alert than either cof or napping alone.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5753360
There are numerous other reports around the internet .
Ah yes, the infamous caffeine nap. I don’t seem to get much from caffeine, but have you ever given this a try? Curious to hear how it feels…
True, but these studies have looked at the effect on wakefulness of coffee-naps compared to wakefulness of not having coffee-naps. I don’t think they looked at coffee-naps compared to just naps alone. (And the effectiveness also depends on your baseline coffee intake so ti gets complicated.)
And in any case, they weren’t looking at memorization/learning ability, just how alert you feel.
Putting the coffee-nap information together with the stuff in the article above I would say that if you need to be alert then a coffee-nap is a great idea, and if you can’t get both then either a nap or coffee would be the next best thing. BUT if you need to learn something then a nap or nothing at all would be better than coffee. So I guess what I do depends on what my plans are for after lunch 🙂
Naps can be refreshing and effective, but they can also interfere with depth and length of sleep during the night.
As for stimulants, I learned my lesson in my sleep deprived college years that Caffeine is no substitute for a good nights rest and will only make you more aware of how tired you are and how little you remember. This can be an illusory pick-me-up feeling so that if all you require is the mechanical energy and positive attitude to power through a mindless task, a coffee or an energy drink can get you through it. However, if it is a memory test or any kind of exercise that requires mental agility, then Caffeine on a sleep deprived person is about as effective as splashing water on a drunk person.
Good point about naps affecting night-time sleep. I’m really cognizant about this with my kids, since if we let the little one catch a little snooze in the middle of the day, it means her bedtime gets pushed back, which means we end up staying up later and getting less sleep too.
I can’t stand the term “power nap.” Adding “power” implies that there’s something wrong with a regular, Brand-X sort of nap. Adding “power” betrays a fear that, if I nap, I’ll appear lazy, that I’m not the type-A go-getter I’m supposed to be. But if it’s a POWER nap, I’m in the clear.
Notice that the author of “Why you should really take a nap…” says nothing about “power” naps, only nap naps (though there is something about “Power Sleep”–aaaargh!).
Ha. Yep, I believe James Maas (of Power Sleep) is credited with coining that term. I’ve always been annoyed by the term “cat nap.” I don’t have a good reason why, I like cats and I like naps and I like napping cats. The combination of words is just irksome somehow…
That’s fascinating–I’d never given the term “cat nap” a second thought. I guess it’s because I’d be more than happy to take a cat nap, but you’ll never catch me taking a power nap. On the other hand, I could see myself power knapping.
I have seven cats so I have experience with this. Cats sleep about 18 hours a day, and—at least in the house—much of that sleep looks like deep sleep to me. The term “cat nap” refers to the lighter sleep they might take to conserve energy while waiting by a chipmunk den, or while having to keep an eye out for coyotes. They emerge easily from their “cat naps” and are ready to spring to action. I think for people the hope is that a short nap will be restful, but not so deep that you have a groggy hangover.
I have wondered this. Thanks for the article!
Best of both worlds: coffee naps of around 20 minutes http://www.vox.com/2014/8/28/6074177/coffee-naps-caffeine-science
There’s a whole heap of research on sleep and learning including a lot specifically on musicians.
Like this study
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130415124804.htm
Sleeping on a new tune improves your performance, but if you learn two similar tunes, the benefit of sleep disappears!
And sleeping with the new tune playing makes it stick even better
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120624135013.htm
So if you can somehow divide your daily practice with a nap, while listening to your pieces, you should be set!
Same goes for learning a language.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140630093629.htm
Great stuff, thanks Samantha!
All bets are completely off if you have narcolepsy!!! Which is completely misunderstood. I can’t nap (I have only been able to actually nap – sleep – 3 times in the past 2 years), I can drink a gallon of coffee and still not wake up, and when I do sleep (narcoleptics are infamous insomniacs), I only ever have REM sleep. What looks like I just ‘fall asleep’ isn’t sleep at all. I am fully aware of everything that goes on around me. I just have no control of large motor function.
In short – a total career killer.
But I do remember back when I could nap, and I highly recommend it over caffeine!!! The dreams are much better at helping you sort out the tricky passages you have a hard time figuring out when you are wide awake and buzzed out on coffee.
[…] This article originally appeared on The Bulletproof Musician. […]
[…] task results were particularly interesting, in that while the folks who took naps or a placebo pill demonstrated significant improvement and turned in markedly higher scores from the morning session to the afternoon session, […]
[…] Sleep is especially important since most college students are still developing mentally. In no way should coffee replace sleep. Prioritize your schedule so you have time to get 8-10 hours a night. […]
re the vanilla coffee recipe – go full affogato…….vanilla ice cream, espresso, amaretto biscuits and amaretto liqueur…….mix or not as you like. Enjoy