20 Minutes
They are not about what is but what is not
Hen’s recent SLF interview series surfaced a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while: the 20-minute nap. We’ve written about naps varying lengths, from 15-60+, but have not yet touched on the 20 — and yet unprompted, the SLF shared that her optimal nap is 20 minutes in length.
Twenty minutes may just be the perfect length for a nap — not too long, not too short. My personal experience has been that 60% of the time, 30 minutes works all of the time, but it can actually be too long if I’m tired going into the nap. My working theory is that I’m so tired that I slip into a deep sleep too quickly and wake up more groggy than anything else, but I think 20 minutes is a short enough time that, even if I’m super tired and slip into a deep sleep quickly, I’m not likely to be under for long enough that I’ll wake up worse off than when I went down.
Daniel Pink’s research suggests that 25 minutes is the right length of time for a nap, particularly if you slam some caffeine beforehand. I enjoy the 25-minute nap and will be sure we cover that in a future post — but for now, I need to remember that the 20-minute nap is often the move, particularly when I’m tired.
Is 20 minutes long enough for you to nap?