Is Mastering The 45 Minute Nap The Best Part Of Growing Old

r/

I had never been a napper but as I reached 70 I have come to find the pleasures in my 45 minutes naps

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  2. RandomReddituser2030 Avatar

    Naps, at one time, were a punishment. Now, that I am somewhat older, they are a privilege and can’t wait.

  3. decorama Avatar

    I believe the true mastery is that of the 20 minute nap. The re-energization (I made that up) is equivalent IMO and leaves you with more time in your day

  4. xustos Avatar

    Are you talking about the morning nap or afternoon nap?

  5. Slick-62 Avatar

    Can’t do it. An hour and a half, maybe 2.

  6. Hardpo Avatar

    It’s awesome. I got myself into the habit of 15-20 minutes around 3:00 pm and it’s like I’m new. No groggyness

  7. Beneficial_War_1365 Avatar

    I love my naps! 🙂 But I need to keep them short, because I do stay late because of them. But then, what is the big deal getting up late? 🙂 30 min nap would be perfect.

    peace. 🙂

  8. BobUker71 Avatar

    Best part of day…1:00 pm until 1:30….nap time

  9. CraftFamiliar5243 Avatar

    I don’t like napping. It takes me an hour to get to sleep and then I’m out cold and wake up 2 hours later not sure what day it is. My husband can nod off anywhere for 5 minutes or an hour and wake up instantly.

  10. Malevolent54 Avatar

    I set a 30 minute alarm for my afternoon nap. If I don’t I’d be sleeping for a couple hours & wake up feeling like garbage.

  11. Plethman60 Avatar

    There is a 15 minuet nap, I call it a brain reset. Takes the bite out of being drowsy.

  12. Jenjikromi Avatar

    20 minutes is the best. Especially when my dogs crash out all around me. It is so peaceful!

  13. maeryclarity Avatar

    Can’t do it. Have always been a two and a half to three hour nap at minimum or can’t do it. I actually run on a split schedule a lot of the time, like three hours middle of the day and four between 3 am-7am.

    Hours after 10 am are really productive because phone calls stop, dogs go to sleep, I can get a lot done.

    But all a 45 minute nap would do would be really piss me off

  14. [deleted] Avatar

    I began training for the 45 minute nap years ago while waiting in the car while my wife was in the supermarket. 

  15. DadofJM Avatar

    Best nap: if wake up too early on weekend, go back to bed around 10. Out like a light and deep sleep for about an hour and a half.

  16. dmada88 Avatar

    Yes. Ten minutes or 60 – I love them all.

  17. bentrod64 Avatar

    I can’t sleep during the day. No naps

  18. michaelozzqld Avatar

    Am mid 60s..how do people find the time to nap?

  19. Connect_Eagle8564 Avatar

    My husband naps several times a day. If I nap, I can’t sleep at night

  20. Truckyou666 Avatar

    How is it that my 45 minute nap leaves me more refreshed than 8 hours of sleep at night?

  21. Friendly-Ebb-1183 Avatar

    I’m 70 and my typical day is get up at 8 get busy with the garden and yard @ 10 lunch break @ 1:30 then the all important nap @ 2. 20 minutes and I’m refreshed and ready for a productive afternoon. I love being retired my daily nap feels like an earned privilege that energize my afternoon.

  22. slfnflctd Avatar

    These days, I set an alarm for 5 minutes and keep resetting it until I can muster the willpower to get back up. Too many responsibilities. Sometimes I drag that out for a stupidly long time, though.

    In the past, it was either 2-3 hours of straight deep sleep or nothing. I’d like to get back to that.

  23. jxj24 Avatar

    I have a pillow in my office filing cabinet. Close my door, kill the lights and stretch out under my desk.

    Turns out I’m George Costanza.

  24. uppen-atom Avatar

    Naps are the best. I was working a job with a lot of free time, I miss it, and would get up early exercise do work or whatever, nap, and then, have what felt like, an extra day doing what I pleased.

  25. forevermore4315 Avatar

    Didn’t have to grow old to master this.

  26. fiftyfivepercentoff Avatar

    It’s hard for me to nap. Even for 10-20 minutes so I don’t.

  27. FormerlyDK Avatar

    I’m an extreme night owl, so my naps, when I take them, are as long and as many as whatever my body needs. I don’t plan them or have any schedule.

  28. Mark-harvey Avatar

    Sometimes, at 4 o’clock for an hour or two-but only if the day is boring. I put on Zen music and chill. Sometimes, just laying there is enough.

  29. discussatron Avatar

    Hell yes. I’m 57 and I started taking short naps of, say, 20 minutes, a few years ago. I found I’d wake up refreshed and ready to go, where in my youth a nap made me feel sleepier and drowsy when I woke up.

    My work gives me the ability most days to grab a short one, and I almost always do. If I don’t grab one at work, I can nap for 30-60 minutes at home late in the afternoon and I still fall asleep at my regular time at night.

    The feeling of napping from 4:30-5:30 is glorious.

  30. Hanginon Avatar

    Yes, with the (my) option of it being twice that. I will lay down early aftenoon, do an hour and a half and wake up like it’s ‘second morning’.

    The natural precision of always being 1 1/2 hours for me with no alarm, no assist kind of intrigues me. It seems to be some natural sleep cycle of mine.

    But yes, I get some real pleasure from my afternoon time outs.

  31. ferndoggler Avatar

    2 hours, but ok.

  32. Urbanwolft64 Avatar

    90 min is my preferred length just because it takes me 20-30 minutes to fall asleep.

  33. EMOQ-2742 Avatar

    Napping whenever I want to is the best part!

  34. beardsley64 Avatar

    45, hell, I only need 15. At least so far… and maybe more than once a day 😂

  35. Several-Avocado783 Avatar

    45 year career coming to a close. Routinely 60-80 hour weeks (sometimes much, much more). I was routinely up at 2-3 AM averaging 5 hours of sleep a night. Naps are new to me. I have to say, they’re pretty nice.

  36. ethanrotman Avatar

    Having the ability to slow down, it’s a really good part of growing older. But naps are far from the best part. They’re just an added bonus like a cherry on an ice cream sundae.

  37. iamadventurous Avatar

    When i nap, i nap for at least 3 to 4 hours.

  38. 83chrisaaron Avatar

    I’m only in my early 40s and have loved naps for nearly 10 years. I call them Biden Naps.

  39. Lemonwater925 Avatar

    My dad now age 95 has always been able to do a Power Nap. He would lie down and wake up 30 minutes later refreshed. Asked him how he does it.

    Clear conscience. Appears I will never master the Power Nap.

  40. julianriv Avatar

    To be honest I started taking mid day naps in college. I grew up watching my dad come home for lunch and take a nap before heading back to work. I started the same habit when my college class schedule allowed and I loved it.

  41. thefuckfacewhisperer Avatar

    No. Being able to take a 3 hour nap is

  42. SmokinHotNot Avatar

    I’m 75. One never “masters” the nap, but merely “succumbs.”

  43. Notch99 Avatar

    Right after final jeopardy, the tv goes on low…

  44. JWMoo Avatar

    45 minute nap and I wake up grouchy. Give me a 1 hour to 2 hour nap and I’m good. Any thing longer than 2 hours I am groggy and have a headache.

  45. Emergency_Property_2 Avatar

    I’ve always been big power napper. I can dose off judt about anywhere and wake up 15 minutes later ready to go.

    But as I’m getting to enjoy a longer nap too!

  46. Pickle_12 Avatar

    Best thing about retirement. If I’m home doing nothing at 4:00, there goes the next 90 minutes!

  47. No-Profession422 Avatar

    I’ve come to embrace them. My grandpa swore by them.

  48. gowahoo Avatar

    I can’t seem to master the nap. I’m not there yet, still learning.

  49. Twinkie4ever Avatar

    I am 61 and never do naps. I try to go to bed around the same time each night and usually wake up around the same time . Typically, get 8 hours of sleep.

  50. Scary-Ad5384 Avatar

    LOL .you don’t need to master anything. Get tired .. close your eyes.

  51. therealjustkurt Avatar

    I feel so bad for all of the anti-nappers here. Falling asleep in less than 2 minutes is a blessing.

  52. mosselyn Avatar

    My body has screamed for a nap every day around 3pm since I was young. All that’s different now is that I’m allowed to indulge it instead of sitting at my desk, pretending to be productive, until the need wears off.

    Now, I take a nap almost every afternoon. I let my body have however much it wants, which turns out to be about an hour. You can almost set your watch by it.

  53. Even_Contact_1946 Avatar

    Wtf is a 45 minute nap ?

  54. Mysterious_Tax_5613 Avatar

    I say kudos to you to find your perfect balance in life right now. It’s really all about the simple things in life, isn’t it?

  55. valley_lemon Avatar

    I need to get better at it, because in my 50s my naps often tend to turn into 2-hour droolers with wildly vivid dreams, and I’m not a fan. Wake up super disoriented.

  56. Grasshopper_pie Avatar

    The nappuccino! I take a shot of espresso before my nap and it kicks in in about 30 minutes or so.

  57. anotherkeebler Avatar

    Either 25 or 45 is the magic number of minutes, but I can never tell ahead of time which it needs to be. Either I wake up feeling alert and ready to get back to it—like I just paused the world for a few minutes—or the nap simply cleared all my caching buffers and I spend the rest of the day having to think to remember how spoons work.

  58. markevens Avatar

    Man, if I’m tired and take a mid day nap, it’s likely to go for hours and then I can’t fall asleep at night.

  59. criswell Avatar

    I’ve never been someone who can nap voluntarily.

    It only ever happens unplanned and suddenly. Otherwise, if I try to nap, I just lay there wide awake.

    Honestly, I’ve never been great at sleeping in general, it’s always been a struggle to fall asleep. I have an annoying amount of energy. My dad did too.

  60. tracyinge Avatar

    45 is too long, mastering the 25 min nap is the thang.

    After 30 mins your body tends to start falling into the deeper-sleep stage, so at 45 mins you’re likely to wake up really groggy.

    I set my alarm for 23 minutes. It doesn’t sound like a long-enough nap but it really gives you a second wind, and when the alarm goes off you’re not groggy you perk up immediately.

  61. RonSwansonsOldMan Avatar

    If I lay in my bed for a nap, it’s 3 hours and waking up feeling like crap. If I nap in my recliner, it’s 30 minutes and feel great.

  62. HaymakerGirl2025 Avatar

    I always had trouble napping until I started training for a marathon a few months ago. Naps are now unavoidable.

  63. JackFate6 Avatar

    Not allowed, I’d embrace it but warden sez no

  64. PutosPaPa Avatar

    Up until 2 years ago I got by with a 15-20 nap each day at 2-ish PM everyday.

    Since I hit 70 yrs (I’m 72 yrs) most days I can drop off at 1PM and almost wake up exactly one hour later.

  65. SpaceMonkey3301967 Avatar

    I’m not sure if this is true, but my grandfather told me, “If you take a nap, you will get 10% of a full night’s sleep.”

    Not sure if he was correct, but he read that somewhere. And he napped often and lived to 86. He was born in 1910 and had great stories. I was a kid and would sit and listen while eating a minced baloney sandwich.

    Hiram Joseph Gilbeaux told me a funny story about taking my grandmother on a date in a horse-drawn cart when they were 16 and 19 years old in Detroit City.

    His family’s old horse had flatulence. Every time the horse would step, it would fart and shoot poo-flakes onto the passengers in the wagon cart. Yes, grandfather said “poo-flakes”.

    So, on the date with grandmother, Anna Winter, dressed in their best clothes, grandfather had to cover she and himself with a blanket to keep the poo off themselves as they drove to a dance hall to drink beer and eat peanuts and popcorn.

    Yes, they drank beer. No age limit then, and soda wasn’t a thing yet. In the old days, drinking beer was better than drinking water because it was safe. The water had been boiled; purified, to make beer.

    Hiram was on my mother’s side. My own father was born in 1925 and married later in life (age 39). Dad still took me to see Van Halen play in 1981 in Detroit, even though it wasn’t his bag. Dad’s jam was seeing Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller play live.

    Grandfather and my father lived through the Great Depression. Their stories: OMG, It was awful. Starving. No work. Dad and his mother and her 6 siblings ran a speakeasy during prohibition in Detroit just to get by. Bed bugs and lice everywhere. Age 16: dad walked over a dead body in the street like no thing; it happens….

  66. sdhopunk Avatar

    1 cup of coffee and a 20 min nap is a game changer.

  67. BobUker71 Avatar

    30-45 mins daily does wonders….more than that I drag the rest of the day