If there’s anything I love more than rewatching that one Sydney Sweeney scene from Euphoria, it’s taking naps. There is really never a bad time for a nap. In fact, I’ll probably end up taking one as soon as I finish writing this blog. However, the length of any given nap can drastically affect your post-nap clarity. Too short will leave you unsatisfied – but too long will leave you questioning what year it is. Although the amount of time a nap lasts depends on the day, usually everyone has a typical nap length that they like to stick to. Here’s what your average nap length says about you:
8 Minutes
If you follow the eight-minute Navy SEAL nap trick, you’re either a complete hardo or have an unhealthy obsession with watching Jocko Willink YouTube compilations. Regardless, any sane person would agree that an eight-minute nap is simply not enough. Hell, I would take multiple eight-minute naps during a single class during the school year and I never woke up feeling “rejuvenated”. Maybe these naps pay off when you’re trying to pull an all-nighter while cramming for an exam, but every power nap I’ve ever tried to take results in me waking up three hours later lying in a pool of sweat.
30 Minutes
This is what the ideal nap should be. Thirty minutes is enough to feel rested but not too much time where you feel all groggy after. People who average thirty-minute naps are incredibly efficient with their time and should be someone you try to model your life after. While these thirty-minute-nappers seem to be successful in everything they do, they also are the people who make sure you know just how successful they are. If you’re not running three tech companies and investing in offshore crypto start-ups, then do you even really deserve to nap?
45 Minutes to 1 Hour
A vast majority of people fall into this range of average nap lengths. Therefore, if you fall into this category, you’re a pretty average human being. If you’ve got the time to consistently nap for an hour, you’re not necessarily a degenerate but you’re also not on the same level as the aforementioned thirty-minute-nappers. Sometimes, you’ll wake up from your nap and make productive use of the rest of your day. However, when your naps are closer to an hour, you’ll wake up and quite literally do nothing for the next seven hours (except for maybe choking the chicken if you can muster up the strength).
2+ Hours
If you average over two hours for every nap you take, you are what is wrong with our world. In the time that you lay passed out on the couch, drooling like a dog, you could have done important chores, ran a marathon, and solved world hunger. But no, you refuse to set an alarm on your phone and rely on your mom to wake you up for a meal or to yell at you for being unemployed. I might seem like I’m slandering the two-plus-hour-nappers, but I actually am one of them. As I said earlier, there’s never a bad time for a nap, so why not nap all the time?
