At some point I read that Edison used to hold a spoon in his hand and have a platter on the floor. When going into deeper the hand relaxes, dropping the spoon, hitting the platter, creating noise to wake him up.
I did this once, but I don't really have a problem with sleep inertia, so I just set an alarm, usually for 15 minutes.
From this perspective the device on kickstarter seems problematic: the goal should be to avoid deep sleep rather than just focus on a gentle wakeup.
I am sure the device will help some people out though and their approach is a lot easier than sleep monitoring.
There are two ways to nap: a quick 20 min nap doesn't take you into deep sleep (characterized by delta wave patterns--google SWS) and let's you wake with much less sleep inertia. It's refreshes, but doesn't consolidate memory. A longer nap (60-90 min) typically takes you into deep sleep, and is harder to wake from. However, a long nap will give you memory consolidation and recovery on par with a full nights sleep.
How do you guys time this? Whether napping or sleeping it often takes me at least 30 mins to even fall asleep lol (sometimes longer). I will say though that I do get a good 9 hours sleep 95% of nights, so I haven't often felt a need to nap.
I wrote a bash script (and somewhat later, a Javascript version) where you press a key and when you release it the timer starts, effectively getting you to sleep just 15 (or whatever) minutes. Also prevented taking more than a set amount of minutes between falling asleep and sleeping. It works pretty well, as long as you sleep close enough to a real keyboard (for Bash) or an iOS device (haven't tested the JS solution in other than Mobile Safari)
I assume I will start napping (sometimes it doesn't seem well defined when a nap truly starts) pretty immediately. After 3 minutes I am going to give up.
Napping is a skill that takes practice, you need to get your body accustomed to falling asleep quickly and consider giving up after 5 minutes. Probably only try it on days when you don't get 9 hours of sleep. Consider intentionally getting less sleep on a weekend day and trying to nap then. Timing a nap after eating a large meal helps me a lot, along with a caffeine let-down.
Me too. 30 mins minimum, unless I'm very, very tired. The comments below seem to indicate this can be trained though. I hope it's true and I hope I'll have the discipline to train myself. Falling asleep fast would be great. Usually I listen to some boring audio lecture at night and it helps.
kozlovsky has better advice in a link, but I learned during a period of intense sleep deprivation. Enlisted military personnel are famous for their ability to nap anytime anywhere; this is a skill that is trained into them through sleep deprivation during boot camp. Edit: I didn't mean to imply that I'm a soldier, I'm not.
