If you are tired or feeling sleepy and have few minutes to spare because you have a really important assignment to complete, then there cannot be anything better than a coffee nap.
You don’t need a cup of coffee to boost or a nap to refresh yourself. You need both of them. These two productivity boosters go hand in hand when used correctly. A coffee nap gives you a better boost than what only a cup of coffee or a nap alone would have had provided.
Sounds crazy. But results prove it.
Understanding Coffee Naps
Before you understand how coffee and naps work together, you need to understand how they work separately.
When you take coffee, it goes through the alimentary canal to your intestines where the caffeine is absorbed and set to boost you up. The caffeine reaches your brain and attaches to receptor sites of adenosine, which is a molecule responsible for causing drowsiness and making you feel tired. Caffeine can attach to the adenosine receptor sites easily because both of them have a very similar structure. This prevents adenosine to attach to its receptors and the receptors fail to signal the drowsiness.
This is what coffee does. It doesn’t boost you up. It prevents you from getting tired.
But caffeine does not attach to all the receptor sites, it competes with adenosine to get a spot. Even if caffeine wins most of the times blocking adenosine, this competition inside can be a little disturbing.
So here comes the nap. Take a nap, and it clears the adenosine naturally from your brain. So no more adenosine to compete. The caffeine is enough to stop those few molecules of adenosine that forms while you work hard.
The Coffee Nap Procedure
Yes, there is a procedure. A right way to take your coffee nap.
Remember that this nap should not get you a good night’s sleep. It is only to get your work done in a better and refreshed mind. Your nap must not be longer than 15 to 20 minutes because if you sleep more than that, you are going to slip into the deeper stages of your sleep. But a 20 minutes nap is just a nap, so-called “the inertia of sleep”. Moreover, caffeine will already be on the way to your adenosine-free brain in 20 minutes. So, it all makes sense.
Also, make sure you take the coffee fast because you need to give some time to the nap before the caffeine reaches your brain. As soon as you are done with the coffee, go right away to the nap. You don’t really have to worry about getting a full deep sleep that fast. Just going through to a half-asleep mode is enough. Be sure to put an alarm for 20 minutes while you sip on your coffee.
The Results
There have been quite a few studies on this. Loughborough University in the UK found that when tired participants took a 15-minute coffee nap, they went on to commit fewer errors in a driving simulator than when they were given only coffee, or only took a nap.
According to ScienceDirect, a Japanese study concluded similar results,
The effects of a short nap against mid-afternoon sleepiness could be enhanced by combining caffeine intake — Mitsuo Hayashi, Akiko Masuda, Tadao Hori
Taking caffeine also increases alertness and with a refreshed mind, you cannot find yourself in a better mood to give your best on the assignment you really want to do.
Everything gets better with coffee
But be sure not to use this productivity booster all the time. Using this at all times can also harm your regular sleeping patterns. But when you really need to be productive, this is worth trying.
