I just got up barely an hour ago and I'm already planning on my first nap of the day.
There's going to be multiple.
And I'm not doing the thing where I stayed up too late, woke to my alarm, and am plotting revenge on the sleepiness.
No—I'm just a shameless napper.
Just Shutting My Eyes
25 years ago I struggled with naps.
I'd pass out in office chairs or the break area behind a restaurant kitchen. I tried a couple of times to nap in a Chevrolet S-10 with a bench seat that didn't recline.
It never worked.
Then we moved to Korea and I noticed it's socially acceptable to sleep in public.
Park benches by day and even after a night out of drinking you'd see people passed out comfortably on sidewalks, pony walls and even sleeping upright leaning against a wall.
But mostly I'd see people passed out on the subway.
It was a natural spot to pause and take a physical break from the hurry-hurry culture. Add the the non-stop droning white noise, the rhythmic clack-clack and vibration with a mild hypnotic effect and the weight hits your eyelids.
Riding from Songnae to Gyulhyeon (and later Gyeyang) station to a job in Pungmu-dong three days a week I started trying.
But instead of owning it, I told myself I was just "shutting my eyes".
I'd listen for the announced stops to time myself... Did this three days a week for a couple of years. One ear always open, never fully asleep.
And I got good at it.
When I'd get to my stop I'd hear the announcement and open my eyes and they weren't as heavy anymore.
I'd have to wake people up occasionally at the end of the line where I'd get off because they'd completely pass out and no one had any idea what happened if you stayed on the train after the last stop. The lights would switch off and it would just roll down the tracks slowly, but no one knows where it would go.
Probably oblivion.
Anyways, I kept it up.
When we moved back to Canada I was pretty good at "shutting my eyes" in the truck. I'd put on the radio and time myself by listening to a certain number of songs and then open my eyes and get going.
I remember telling Jessica this and she just asked why I didn't set my alarm.
It was shame... or something. Fear maybe? Concern what people might think if they knew I napped in the truck.
I set the alarm.
And my whole world changed.
My dayjob became instantly more tolerable. I started earning more and picking up more responsibilities. I could endure the stressful accounts and challenging customers.
I'd wake up and it wasn't just relief from the heavy eyelids.
I felt alert. Well rested even.
I drive around all day. The nature of pest control work means I'd arrive at accounts with time to kill before appointments.
Sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes 7, sometimes 5. I'd set the alarm for whatever time I had and shut my eyes. Eventually I figured out the minimum: 11 minutes. I can almost always fall asleep in that time.
Often with time dilation. Sometimes with dreams—more on this point later.
My alarm goes off and it feels like I've been asleep for hours.
But it's only been 11 minutes.
A New Skill
Here's what I realized late into all of this:
I'd been practicing napping.
Like it was a skill.
First, by telling myself it was OK.
Next with "just shutting my eyes" on the subway, one ear open, listening for the stops.
Eventually I could fall asleep almost anywhere.
The weird part?
The best place to learn is in public.
The subway in Incheon. My truck in parking lots. Benches in client facilities late at night where I can lie down flat.
Not because these spaces are comfortable—they just need to be good enough.
It's because napping in the thick of it has built in urgency—you're in the middle of something when you stop and when your alarm goes off you're back in it again.
There's a job to start or resume. An appointment to make. A call to hop on.
No transition, just go.
We're already where we need to be.
And now we're sharp.
It's Caffeine's Fault
If caffeine actually did what we all go around saying it does, I wouldn't have to nap.
None of us would.
We'd all be alert and clear-eyed, making sober, rational decisions on a few hours of sleep, permanently. We'd drink our coffee or energy drink and sit down and go on a marathon of deep focused work until lunch time.
Then everyone would get back to work for the latter half of the day, repeat the same, and we'd all live happily ever after.
We can be forgiven for thinking it should work that way.
The data are real—increased time to exhaustion, increased accuracy, increased reaction time, potential gains in preserving and enhancing memory.
Caffeine does something.
Just not what we think it does.
When we get into our first coffee of the day, we feel aroused and alert. Ready to work.
And we conflate that feeling with intelligence. With productivity. With having actual "energy".
But caffeine doesn't do any of that.
It just blocks the signal that tells us we're tired.
Our brains produce adenosine throughout the day. It's the molecule that basically makes us feel fatigued, which then causes us to slow down, and then when we're asleep it breaks down.
Caffeine's molecular structure is similar enough that it can bind to the same receptors—but without activating them.
It's not waking us up.
It's just preventing us from feeling how tired we already are.
But here's the part that got me:
Caffeine doesn't just block our fatigue signals.
It inflates our confidence.
Research by Kilpeläinen et al. (2010) and Lohi et al. (2007) found subjects consistently believe they've performed better than they actually have. They feel fluent, sharp, on top of things.
Meanwhile the actual performance is unchanged. Sometimes worse.
It's called the "hard-easy" effect—the stimulant makes us feel like we're crushing it, which we mistake for actually crushing it.
We can't accurately judge our performance anymore.
And when we drink coffee every day? Our brains adapt and create more adenosine receptors to compensate for the blocked ones.
Which means our baseline shifts.
Our morning coffee isn't boosting us above normal. It's reversing the withdrawal symptoms from yesterday's dose. We're just getting back to zero.
Except we feel like we're 110%.
So yes, there are benefits to caffeine. The data show that.
But the tradeoff?
We're running on a system that lies to us about how tired we are and makes us overconfident about how well we're actually performing.
What I was—what I am—actually looking for—real alertness, actual recovery, accurate judgement about whether I could train in the morning after working all night—
That didn't come from caffeine.
It came from a nap.
Jiu-Jitsu Hobbyists Should Cross-Train Napping
Morning classes would be rough without a nap.
I'm dayjobbing 90 minutes after class ends and I fit either an 11 minute or 22 minute nap in when I get to my first stop of the day before I begin work.
I always thought this was to get me on the right foot for the day ahead.
But one of the standout pieces of information when I was learning about rest last week was how napping can be a critical component of skill consolidation.
Especially for habitual nappers like me. Research shows we consolidate motor learning better than occasional nappers—some studies found naps actually make performance worse for non-nappers (Milner et al., 2006).
So I assumed my routine was working.
Two Assumptions I Got Wrong:
- I nap after training. Napping after learning produces additive benefits even for well-rested individuals.
The timing matters: Research found that "if you sleep on the same day of training, the long-term memory transfer produces a better result."
- I sometimes dream in those 11 minutes. Sometimes experience time dilation. I thought this meant deep consolidation was happening.
Here's where I was wrong: Dreaming typically requires 70-90 minutes to reach REM sleep. If I'm dreaming in 11 minutes, that's REM pressure—my body dropping into REM immediately because it's starved for it.
So I assumed my 11-minute truck naps were helping me consolidate techniques from morning class.
Wrong.
Well, half wrong.
What 11 Minutes Actually Does (And What It Doesn't)
Research from Flinders University found that a 10-minute nap provides an immediate spike in vigor and cognitive function that lasts up to 155 minutes.
That's what I'm getting—alertness. The ability to show up ready for my first appointment.
But motor skill consolidation—the kind that hard-wires a crowbar sweep into my nervous system—requires 60 to 90 minutes.
That's when we hit Slow-Wave Sleep (SWS) and REM cycles. That's when procedural memory gets saved.
My 11-minute naps? They're staying in light NREM sleep. Great for clearing mental fatigue. Not enough for technique consolidation.
And the dreaming I thought was proof of deep learning?
That's likely a sign of REM pressure—my body is so starved for REM sleep from previous nights that it drops into it immediately.
But I do actually get six and a half to seven and a half hours of sleep most nights.
I'm going to keep a close eye on this going forward. I have enormous flexibility in my schedule and can tackle all the afterhours work differently than I am.
A New Experiment
So here's what I'm changing:
I'm keeping the 11 and 22 minute naps. They work for alertness and I need those for the dayjob.
But I'm going to add a 90 minute nap in twice a week for February—we do morning BJJ on Wednesday and Friday and both are the days where overnight work begins (and then working through Thursday and Saturday).
Previously I'd been doing the short nap after class, then doing a marathon late morning early afternoon work and getting into bed in the afternoon, sleeping for four hours, then getting up and getting my evening started.
I'm going to modify this.
A 90 minute nap before I start work, then another one in the late afternoon to set up the coming afterhours work.
Psychologist Sara Mednick found that a 90-minute nap—one that hits both SWS and REM—can produce the same magnitude of learning as a full night's sleep. And it avoids sleep inertia if timed right.
For the hobbyist juggling training and work? That's the dose worth finding time for.
It’s A Cultural Sickness We Don’t Nap
We all need breaks, and we all have been getting them wrong for years.
Everyone needs them. It's expected. It's legislated when you're working for someone.
But the culture here makes people think that means coffee. Or a cigarette or vape. Or 15 minutes of doom scrolling.
I tell people I take a nap with the same casualness someone says they need to eat.
Because that's all it is.
A break that actually works.
Research Cited:
- Kilpeläinen et al. (2010) - Effect of Caffeine on Vigilance During Extended Wakefulness - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247502794_Effect_of_Caffeine_on_Vigilance_and_Cognitive_Performance_During_Extended_Wakefulness
- Lohi et al. (2007) - Effects of Low Dose Caffeine on Pilot Performance - Effect of caffeine on simulator flight performance in sleep-deprived military pilot students - PubMed
- Mednick et al. (2003) - Sleep-dependent learning: A nap is as good as a night - Sleep-dependent learning: a nap is as good as a night - PubMed
- Milner et al. (2006) - Habitual napping moderates motor performance improvements - (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7238899_Habitual_napping_moderates_motor_performance_improvements_following_a_short_daytime_nap)
- Flinders University - Nap duration and alertness benefits - A brief afternoon nap following nocturnal sleep restriction: which nap duration is most recuperative? - PubMed
In Victoria, British Columbia?
Lolakana Martial Arts has 20+ classes a week for both adults and kids in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu and Kickboxing.
Free parking.
Indigenous-owned.
Unlimited Free Trial Week: https://lolakana.com/contact/
