If I take a nap, I nap for a long time and that leads to sleeping late. It disrupts my regular sleeping cycle.
I mean, practically speaking, how do you control how long you spend asleep?
Let's say I decide to take a nap - I lay down, I set my alarm for 15 minutes, then spend the next 10 minutes waiting to fall asleep. Just as I've finally drifted off, I'm jolted back awake by my alarm going off 5 minutes later. Is that supposed to make me feel better?
Because for me, that awful wrenching feeling of being forced awake when you haven't had enough sleep, you can feel it in your eyes, in your chest, the fuzziness in your head and sluggishness in your movement - it's all simply worse than just feeling tired. Because you're still tired - you barely slept for five minutes - and now it's worse, because you tasted sleep, then had it snatched back away from you.
How is it possible to make yourself only sleep fifteen minutes or less, and wake up feeling better than when you went to sleep? how is that supposed to work?
No idea.
I rarely if ever "sleep" when napping. That is totally fine though, because lying down with eyes closed, sleepmask and headphones with something soothing on, is enough to make me feel better.
> then spend the next 10 minutes waiting to fall asleep
Stop doing that. You are stressing yourself trying to reach a (the wrong?) goal.
> that awful wrenching feeling of being forced awake when you haven't had enough sleep
On days like this i take several naps.
Hope this helps.
I am at the point in life I am not on anyone's schedule and it is still highly variable.
I love naps but I slept great last night and pretty much woke up at the ideal time for me for the day. I can tell right now 20 minutes after getting up that I wouldn't be able to take a nap if I wanted to. On other days though, I could take a 2 hour nap that completely trashes my sleep schedule and I am up to 3am.