Correspondence Regarding Nap Timer Optimism
A twenty-minute nap alarm has been set by someone who has not taken a twenty-minute nap in recent memory.
To: The Alarm From: The Person Setting the Alarm Subject: Twenty Minutes, Please
The alarm is being set for twenty minutes from now. The intention is a brief, restorative rest that will produce alertness for the remainder of the afternoon.
The governing rule: if nap timer optimism promises better sleep, it may consume the sleep it was meant to protect.
For context: the last three alarms set for twenty minutes produced naps of forty-five minutes, ninety minutes, and one instance that was not a nap but a night.
This alarm will be different. The fatigue is moderate. The room is slightly warm. Twenty minutes is achievable when conditions are calibrated correctly.
Twenty minutes is not a nap duration. It is a statement of aspiration.
The alarm is set with genuine confidence, which is itself evidence of how little the setter has learned from the previous alarms.
The sequence will proceed as follows: the alarm will trigger at the twenty-minute mark. The person will be in a state of sleep whose depth has not yet been determined but will be, at the twenty-minute mark, incompatible with a clean stop. The alarm will be silenced. An additional ten minutes will be negotiated. The ten minutes will become twenty. The afternoon will make its own arrangements.
A second alarm has been set for forty minutes as a safety mechanism.
This is the alarm that will do the actual work.
To: The Alarm (Follow-Up) Subject: Re: Twenty Minutes, Please
The twenty-minute alarm fired. It has been addressed.
A brief note: the forty-minute alarm will be required.
The person who sets a twenty-minute nap with ninety-minute intentions does not lack self-knowledge. They lack, specifically, the capacity to act on self-knowledge between the moment of lying down and the moment the alarm fires.
The forty-minute alarm is currently the best available technology.
Eventually the attempt to optimize sleep becomes the main reason sleep starts late.
Status: resting. Updates to follow.