Use the RISE app to have your best power nap (and nighttime sleep). RISE can predict your afternoon energy dip, run a sleep environment check, help you relax before your nap, and wake you up gradually so you're ready to tackle the rest of the day.
If you’re feeling sluggish and struggling to stay focused, a power nap can help. These short bouts of sleep can boost your energy and mood, enhance your productivity, and help you make up for lost sleep, all without post-nap grogginess.
Here, we’ll answer all of your power nap questions, help you determine if a power nap is right for you, and show you how the RISE app can help you have your best power nap (and nighttime sleep).
A power nap is a short nap, typically lasting between 10 and 20 minutes. Power naps provide a quick energy boost, increase alertness, and improve mood and cognitive functioning without causing – the transient phase of grogginess, disorientation, and impaired thinking upon waking.
Compared to longer naps, power naps offer the advantage of a quicker return to daily activities and less risk of interfering with nighttime sleep. However, they may not provide the same restorative benefits associated with longer naps, which can include enhanced memory consolidation and creativity.
Power naps can benefit a wide range of individuals, including busy professionals, students, and those with irregular work schedules, who need a quick energy boost to maintain productivity and focus throughout the day.
Despite their short duration, the benefits of power naps are proven and wide-ranging.
Power naps provide a quick energy and mood boost, increase alertness, and improve cognitive performance. These benefits can be felt immediately and last for a couple of hours.
Power naps are effective even when you’re sleep deprived and can help you pay back sleep debt. Sleep debt is the measure of how much sleep you owe your body compared to your sleep need, the genetically determined amount of sleep you need each night (it’s not eight hours for everyone). The RISE app calculates how many hours of sleep you need and tracks your sleep debt, so you know whether you need to pay some back. We recommend keeping your sleep debt below five hours to maximize your energy each day.
Whether a power nap is the best nap for you depends on your individual sleep needs, time constraints, and desired outcomes in terms of increased energy and cognitive performance.
We cover the best nap length for you and whether naps are good for you .
Research shows power naps can improve:
To power nap or not power nap? As you ponder the question, consider what you want from your nap: Do you need to make up for lost sleep? Are you dragging during the afternoon and need a quick energy boost? And your needs: Are you short on time? Do you need to be alert and on-point immediately when you wake up?
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The ideal length for a power nap hovers between 10-20 minutes (naps shorter than 10 minutes may confer some benefits, but are than those 10-minutes and longer). This short nap duration can give us many of the perks associated with naps without the downside of sleep inertia.
We all experience sleep inertia when we first wake up in the morning — it’s what drives us to keep hitting the snooze button on our alarm clock, and the reason we may feel like we’re moving in slow-motion during our morning routine. But while sleep inertia is completely normal and natural, it can take up to 90 minutes (or more!) before we’re feeling completely ourselves.
While everyone’s different, a good rule of thumb for healthy adults is that for a nap spanning 25 minutes or more, you should anticipate some post-nap grogginess.
Keep in mind that the likelihood, duration, and severity of sleep inertia all increase when we’re sleep deprived, so make sure you’re getting enough sleep at night to minimize the odds and severity of a post-nap slump.
If you’re not used to taking short naps, it might be a challenge at first to fall asleep within the 10-20 minute timeframe. Don’t fret if this is the case — like most things, napping gets easier with practice, so the more you try it, the more quickly you’ll be able to fall asleep over time (what scientists call our “sleepability skills”).
The best time of day for a power nap is during the natural dip of your circadian rhythm, which occurs for many of us between 1-3 PM. The RISE app predicts the timing of your energy dip each day.
The benefits of taking a power nap during the mid-afternoon are two-fold: it will be easier to drift off at this time of day compared to any other and it’s early enough in the day that it likely won’t interfere with our night-time sleep.
Exactly when this natural dip in energy occurs will be different for everyone and depend on the timing of our circadian rhythm. If you have an irregular sleep schedule, the timing of your dip will also shift from day to day. Learn more about how to find your circadian rhythm here.
Your circadian rhythm or internal clock runs on a roughly 24-hour cycle and dictates your sleep-wake cycle, the production of certain hormones, and body temperature and blood pressure fluctuations, amongst many other things.
If you’re an early chronotype (also known as morning type, early bird, or lark), your circadian rhythm will skew earlier. If you’re an evening chronotype (also known as evening type or night owl) it’s the opposite. Morning types usually experience their energy dip from noon to early afternoon. Night owls, on the other hand, may only feel the lull from mid-afternoon onward.
Find out what chronotype you are and how to make the most of yours here.
Note: High sleep debt will make you feel drowsier than usual, and encourage an earlier nap time.
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The number of power naps you can take in a day depends on your individual needs, sleep patterns, and lifestyle. Generally, one power nap per day is considered sufficient for most people to recharge and avoid disrupting their circadian rhythm and interfering with nighttime sleep. However, some individuals might benefit from taking multiple short naps, especially new parents and shift workers with irregular schedules.
Drawbacks of multiple naps:
If you consistently feel the need to nap multiple times a day, it could be a sign of an underlying issue that needs to be addressed. Reasons why you might be experiencing excessive sleepiness include:
If you find that multiple naps are negatively impacting your nighttime sleep or overall well-being, it may be best to limit the number of naps and focus on improving sleep quality during the night. Consulting a healthcare professional can help determine if there is an underlying issue causing your excessive sleepiness and recommend appropriate interventions. We cover why you might be sleeping so much all of a sudden .
However, if you can take multiple naps without disrupting your overall sleep patterns or daily functioning, it may be an effective way to maintain energy levels throughout the day.
Not everyone is an ideal power nap candidate, and there are some specific instances where we should avoid napping altogether:
If you have a diagnosed sleep disorder like insomnia or generally have trouble sleeping, any type of nap can interfere with your sleep schedule and make it more difficult to get healthy sleep at night. In this case, you should steel yourself against the temptation of a midday catnap in order to let sleep pressure (the natural urge to sleep that accumulates during waking hours) build up over the course of the day, which will make it easier to fall asleep at bedtime.
If you're a night owl trying the early bird lifestyle, either out of curiosity or necessity, you may be attempting to shift your circadian rhythm earlier. In this process, you might find that napping interferes with your ability to fall asleep at your desired bedtime. This difficulty can then make it harder to wake up when you'd like to, creating a cycle that makes shifting your sleep schedule more difficult. Learn more about how to become a morning person here.
Similarly, if you’ve recently moved or are traveling to a new time zone and need to acclimate to an earlier bedtime, you may find it more effective to maintain a regular wake and sleep schedule, which means you’ll want to avoid naps until your circadian rhythm adjusts. We cover how to get over jet lag and how long jet lag lasts here.
Taking a nap too late in the day can interfere with your ability to fall asleep at your regular bedtime, as it may reduce more sleep pressure than you can build back up before bedtime. Consequently, this can lead to difficulties in falling asleep and staying asleep, resulting in sleep debt.
Power naps can provide a short-term boost in alertness and cognitive performance for sleep-deprived individuals and are an effective way to pay back sleep debt. However, they aren’t a long-term solution for sleep deprivation, and their when you’re sleep deprived. A longer nap, or an extended nighttime sleep (or ideally both), is necessary to address high sleep debt. If you have the time for a longer nap (plus some buffer time for sleep inertia to pass), save the power nap for another time and opt instead for a longer 30-90-minute nap. Learn more about how to catch up on sleep here.
The longer you snooze, the more lasting the nap benefits are. The advantages of short naps , while those of longer naps especially those that run a full sleep cycle (circa 90 minutes) can last up to several hours.
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Your ideal power nap will be one where you wake up feeling better than you did before you fell asleep — i.e. restored, invigorated, and ready to tackle the remaining tasks of the day.
Here’s how to power nap according to sleep experts:
If you don’t have time for a power nap or a comfortable place to get some shut-eye, there are plenty of science-backed ways you can give yourself an energy boost. These include:
Learn more ways to beat the afternoon slump as well as get energy without caffeine here.
The ideal length for a power nap is between 10-20 minutes. This short nap duration can boost mood, energy, alertness, and productivity without the downside of sleep inertia or post-nap grogginess.
Research shows naps shorter than 10 minutes aren’t as effective as naps 10 minutes or longer, but 5 minutes may still confer some benefits if that’s all you can manage. Power naps of 10–20 minutes offer the best chance of waking up restored and energized.
A 30-minute nap is too long for a power nap. A 30-minute nap may result in post-nap sleep inertia, which can make it more difficult for you to get up and move again after you wake up. Cap your power nap at 20 minutes to minimize post-nap grogginess.
The number of power naps you can take in a day depends on your individual needs, sleep patterns, and lifestyle. Generally, one power nap per day is considered sufficient for most people to recharge and avoid disrupting their circadian rhythm and interfering with nighttime sleep.
To take a power nap without oversleeping, set an alarm for 10-20 minutes. Find a comfortable, dark, and quiet environment, and consider using relaxation techniques to fall asleep faster.
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