Neither. I wake up less tired - but by no means refreshed.
I also, unfortunately, wake up sweaty as hell, if I don’t get a full night’s sleep.
Just about the only time I get to have the twenty-thirty minute naps is if I’m a passenger in a car that’s on a fairly long journey, and I doze off. Most of the time, I may treat myself to an afternoon kip (rarely happens these days) if I know I won’t be doing much when I wake up again. The short ones are fairly refreshing, and the recovery time is much briefer than after the longer ones.
Give me a 20 minute nap and I’m a new man. I regularly close the door and take a snooze during lunch.
Zombie here. I dont’ know what it is, but if I try to nap, it just makes me worse for the rest of the day until I can get a full nights sleep.
Y’know, I agree. I know there’s all this research done about REM sleep and dreams, but I (sounding like a cantankerous old coot) just don’t buy it*. I dream during a 20 minute nap AND I’m much more likely to waken aware that I was dreaming than when I’ve slept all night. Maybe our dreams are more numerous or somehow qualitatively different during REM and full sleep cycles, but it’s just not true that I, personally, don’t dream at all during a short sleep.
*ETA: Maybe I just “don’t buy” the theory as it’s written about in popular magazines. Wouldn’t be the first time the reporters twisted what the scientists have actually found to be true. I haven’t, honestly, read the studies and conclusions themselves, only about the theory as written for laypeople.
Being an old fart and all that I often take “Power” naps as I like to call 'em 
A couple of hours or maybe less and I’m once again bright eyed and bushy tailed.
If the nap goes to a natural conclusion, I’m refreshed. Should the phone ring, the wife bellow, or the dog decides he needs a walk while I’m out cold, I stumble around like an extra in the Thriller video…
Heck, my mom calls her nap time “happy hour” because she wakes up happy and refreshed.
I used to be one of those people who took 3 hour naps and woke up feeling awful. After I read about the 20-30 minute “power nap” I realized that I usually woke, briefly, during my 3 hour nap after 30 minutes or so but would usually feel so good that I just wanted more…more is better, right?
I’ve trained myself to get up as soon as I wake up the first time, which, depending on how sleep deprived I am, is anywhere between 15 and 45 minutes. I always feel a little sleepy at first but it sets me up for the rest of the day.
If I am going to nap I need at least 1 hour and no more than 3. If I take a 20 minute nap I just wake up angry and more tired than when I started. If I take a 3 hour nap or more I just can’t function. Nuts to that “sleeping too long” theory. I could easily sleep for 9-10 hours a night and feel great though, so maybe the 20-40 minute nap people are the same people who feel rested and alert after only 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night?
Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains.
Definitely braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains.
Even if I only nap half an hour (and while I was in college I tested this extensively during breaks between classes - the break was only 45 minutes total and when you subtracted transit time between classes and time taken falling asleep it came out to pretty close to half an hour), I’m a zombie.
I didn’t even nap when I was a tiny thing. According to my mother, even when I was an infant, I didn’t nap. If I managed to fall asleep during the day (like, say, in the car), either she had to let me sleep at least 6 hours (and I would - when I fall asleep, I’m damn near always down for the count) or she had to deal with cranky baby for an hour or so. But then I apparently also slept through the night from day one. She used to plop me in a playpen during what would be naptimes. I was good about staying quiet, but I wouldn’t generally actually sleep.
Naps are good, usually. Sometimes not, but say, for example, today–I’m dyin’ here. I need rest. So if I go to my car, in a shady spot, put the seat back and “nap”, I don’t really go into a deep sleep, but the 30-40 minutes of stage 1 and stage 2 is very energizing to me.
This is my experience, as well. When I doze off (and I love sleep…it’s a hobby of mine), I tend to come out of unconsciousness at about 20 minutes. It is really easy to fall back into a deep, extended sleep at that point, so I believe this is the crucial moment when a quick, refreshing nap becomes a longterm, zombiefied slumber.
IIRC, Thomas Edison used to take naps while holding a spoon in his hand. When he drifted off enough to drop the spoon, he’d finish his nap (i.e. just enough unconsciousness to be out for a few minutes, rather then into a deep sleep).
I am an olympic-level napper. It perks me up. I only zombify when deprived of my nap. I fall asleep fast, sitting up or laying down. I normally power nap 20 min before or after lunch, but will take 40 min if I can. During college I developed a deluxe sleep-with-eyes-open nap, but I am informed that my eyes point in unconvincing directions. It was good enough to allow me to work for 3 years in a building with a strict “employees may not fall asleep” rule. (If you can smoke on breaks, I can darned well nap!). Twice I have had people consider inflicting medical assitance at me. Naps are good.
If I get even a minute of actual sleep, I’m good for the rest of the day.
Unfortunately, I always have trouble sleeping, so most of the time I lie there approaching sleep but never quite making it there, and I’m a zombie for the rest of the day.
Napping is a real gamble for me.
I love having a 30 minute nap when I get home from classes around 3-4 pm.
If I sleep for more than 45 minutes though, I’m gonna be sleeping for a few hours.
You know people, the folks who invented the *siesta *(or at least the word) take a half hour nap after lunch and before coffee.
You are doing it all wrong.
They zombify me, but kind of in a good way. I wake up a little draggy but completely relaxed. I’d take them occasionally before street hockey games and find myself playing in some sort of zen mode. I wasn’t as zippy, but I was a lot more composed and played more consistently.
I very rarely nap, but when I do, I’m a zombie when I wake up, even if the nap is very short. When I nap, I must fall directly into REM sleep, because I end up having vivid, unpleasant dreams. For a while, these dreams all followed the same pattern/theme: I’d be engaged in some activity, and suddenly find myself unable to breathe, and unable to obtain help. Either I’d crawl across the room to get to the door, but couldn’t reach the doorknob, or couldn’t reach the phone, or somebody would extend a hand to help me up, but I couldn’t reach it or they wouldn’t reach down to me far enough. I’d always wake up with my heart pounding, and sweating profusely, and feeling like utter crap for the next couple of hours.
These mostly stopped (both the naps and the dreams) when I knocked off drinking three energy drinks during an 8-hour shift at work.
When I’m driving a long distance I often find myself getting drowsy. I pull over into a rest area if there is one, or just an off ramp out in the boondocks with a wide enough space so I won’t be hit by other cars, put the car in park, leave the engine running so the air stays on, and close my eyes. I usually go to sleep very quickly and wake up in about 20 minutes. That’s enough to hold me for another two or three hundred miles.
I have the ability to go to sleep sitting up even in a low-backed chair, so when I’m in a waiting room I can just nod off in a minute or so, but hear my name called immediately. It makes waiting a lot more tolerable because it goes by pretty quickly.
It doesn’t work so well in emergency rooms, though, because the waits in there are averaging six hours these days!
I feel much worse after a nap and always subsequently have trouble sleeping at night. I avoid taking them.