napwell

There's a somewhat simplified answer+video to your question here: http://lifehacker.com/5991618/science-explains-why-you-should-stop-hitting-the-snooze-button

The more accurate answer (which unfortunately isn't that helpful) is "it depends."

The "I feel terrible and want to go back to sleep" feeling occurs when you wake up abruptly in the middle of a deeper stage of sleep (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Stages), and if you wake up abruptly from deep sleep, then you might experience feelings of "sleep inertia" (groggy, heavy-headed feeling after waking up).

In the perfect world, you would have access to complete EEG readings and your alarm would only wake you up when you're in a lighter stage of sleep.

There's actually a couple of devices on the market trying to do this, but to the best of our knowledge (and based on personal correspondence with world-renowned napping/sleep experts), these devices are still woefully inaccurate in terms determining what stage of sleep a person is in. We're working on our own secret-sauce ways to address this issue, but research is still ongoing.

In terms of practical advice for you: (1) Try and see if you can get a gauge on what stage of sleep you just woke out of when the alarm first goes off (I acknowledge this is probably hard to do first thing in the morning...)

(2) If you don't feel that tired/groggy (and even if you don't have to urgently be anywhere), try to wake yourself up. The risk is that you might snooze and then wake up from a deeper sleep feeling sleep inertia.

(3) If you feel super-lousy when the first alarm goes off (and you don't have to urgently be anywhere), try the short snooze but when you're snoozing try to see if you can mentally keep yourself awake/active/prepared to wake up again. This might help make it easier for you to get up ready-to-go when the next snooze hits. Again, you want to avoid going into a deeper sleep, but I think for most alarm clocks the duration of the snooze is short enough such that this won't happen (unless you're extremely super-sleep deprived, in which case you might fall into a deep sleep in just a few minutes, but in that case you might be better off resting than forcing yourself to stay awake...)

Hope this helps.

What a great idea, perhaps we can get redditors to support a petition so we can start to get this process started! Different companies in different sectors approach napping very differently. For example companies like Google, Dropbox and the Huffington Post have nap pods in their offices while others have a pretty strong stigma against it.

Yes! Luckily for me, I have a pretty understanding PI who actually encourages naps at work. They're great for you!

If you ever get "caught" napping at work, I suggest showing your boss the following:

(1) tell him to watch the following TEDx video on why Naps are awesome for workplace producitivity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MklZJprP5F0

(2) you might also want to tell him that the following companies all have very liberal napping policies (some going as far as to having dedicated napping rooms): - Google - AOL - Cisco - Huffington Post - Proctor & Gamble

(3) if he’s a sports fan, tell him that professional athletes nap to keep at peak performance. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/sports/basketball/07naps.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

(4) Naps are also great for reducing risk of heart disease, so that would be a plus in terms of medical expenses for your company as well. http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20070212/take-a-nap-protect-your-heart

Always, connect with us @napwell.

I'd consider speaking with a physician about this.

There's a lot of reasons why someone might not be sleeping well each night (e.g., depression, obstructive sleep apnea, delayed sleep phase syndrome, etc.) and your physician a lot more questions about your sleep habits in order to more accurately determine what might be affecting your inability to get good sleep.