I’ve been sleeping anywhere between 4 and 6 hours a night, which isn’t great because through trial and (mostly) error, I’ve determined that at this point in my life, 8.5 hours of sleep is what I do best on. But naps help quite a bit.

By the way, if you want to follow my sleep journey as well as a couple of other neurodivergent people, along with fun pop culture and knowledge tech tidbits, you should listen to Overtired.

As I’ve mentioned before, this sleep deprivation hasn’t affected my coding productivity, but it’s been a serious detriment to my social life, and affects my dysautonomia (which I haven’t talked about for a while but is still a major issue for me). overall pain levels pretty drastically. My only saving grace has been daily naps.

Origin of My Routine

I’ve always taken naps, even when sleeping well. I find it very rejuvenating and my afternoons are way more productive if I nap about an hour after lunch.

Once upon a time there was a startup called Napjitsu that sold a product appropriately called Nap. It was a combination of a chewable with mostly Valerian and 2 capsules containing mostly caffeine plus some other nootropics. You took them all at once. The chewable kicked in within 10 minutes, and the capsules metabolized about 30 minutes later, giving you a deep sleep for about 20 minutes and then waking up raring to go.

I loved those, but whatever else was in the capsules often made me wake up a bit “shaky.” Napjitsu shuttered a while back, but I found alternatives. This version of the routine doesn’t leave me shaky. To the contrary, I wake up feeling quite energetic without side effects.

Scheduled Wakeup Call

For the caffeine, I’m using capsules with 50mg of caffeine & 100mg of L-Theanine (these are Amazon affiliate links, which are helpful to me, but you can find these direct in other places, and I would support you not supporting Amazon). I only take one of those, as that’s enough to get me going without making me jittery or affecting my sleep later that night.

You can really just drink a cup of coffee or a shot of espresso before laying down, as caffeine in general takes 30 minutes to metabolize. But if you want the combination of caffeine and L-Theanine, that’s basically tea. Just drink a cup of tea. (White or green tea will give you approximately the right amount of caffeine, with white tea capping out at 55mg and green tea capping out at 70mg.) The capsules aren’t the key, just the caffeine.

By the way, if you ever see guaranine as an ingredient in energy drinks or supplements, it’s essentially just caffeine. Guarana is a plant, and guaranine is derived from it’s seeds. It includes some other compounds, but the only one of note is caffeine.

Sleep Phase

For the sleep phase of the nap, I tried a few things, but valerian root gives me the best results.

Valerian root is primarily indicated as a sleep aid. It’s rumored to be good for stress, PMS, and anxiety, but there’s no scientific evidence for those. It’s also commonly used as a tea, so if you really want to drink a couple of cups of tea before laying down, that’s an option, but you’ll have to pee, what with liquids and diuretics and all. A need to urinate might help you get back up, too, but I personally dislike waking up like that.

Velerian root offers me fast sedation, but easy to overcome with stimulants like caffeine, unlike supplements like melatonin. I’m using gummies with 6000mg of valerian root and chamomile. I take 2-4 of those, depending on how overtired I am. I don’t know about the safety of doubling the recommended serving size (2 gummies), but 4 does the trick on days I feel wired despite (or because of) lack of sleep.

Weirdly, napping is easiest for me on days I actually did get enough sleep, which happens every 7-10 days. But on the days I most need a nap, a little supplemental cocktail is both necessary and effective.

I don’t know if this routine is a good idea, or how well it will work for others. I can’t guarantee anything. But I can anecdotally endorse it as a decent way to “force” a restful nap that doesn’t leave me dragging for the afternoon. If you want to nap but have trouble dozing off, or have trouble waking up, or both, this might be worth a try.

How’s Your Sleep?

I hope that’s helpful to others 💤. Let me know in the forum if you have any of your own tips, I’m always looking for new ideas in this area.

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