The Nappuccino
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
Mateo's named protocol for recovering a bad night without wrecking the following one: drink a coffee immediately before a short nap so the caffeine lands as you wake. The mechanism is two-sided. Caffeine takes roughly thirty minutes to take effect, and the nap itself reduces adenosine, the compound that builds up across the day and creates sleep pressure. Cap the nap at twenty to thirty minutes so you stay in light sleep rather than dropping into deep sleep or REM, which produces grogginess and steals from the night. Crucially, actually falling asleep is optional — the relaxed, near-meditative state is already doing the adenosine work, which removes the anxiety that ruins most people's attempts to nap.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Decide the nap is warranted
Use it on days when you did not sleep well or do not feel great, or ahead of a demanding evening. Mateo notes that athletes playing at night, including NBA players, nap in the afternoon for exactly this reason.
Watch out This is a repair tool, not a substitute for a consistent night schedule — keep waking early and avoid oversleeping in the morning.
- 2
Drink the espresso first
Have the coffee immediately before lying down, not after. Caffeine takes about thirty minutes to kick in, which is deliberately timed to coincide with the end of the nap.
- 3
Cap the nap at 20-30 minutes
Thirty minutes is the ceiling and twenty is the usual recommendation. The goal is light sleep only, which relaxes the brain and clears adenosine without pulling you into the deep or REM stages that leave you groggy.
Watch out Longer naps risk entering deep sleep, which both blunts the wake-up and eats into the night's sleep pressure.
- 4
Stop trying to fall asleep
Mateo's answer to the common complaint that it takes fifteen minutes to fall asleep: you do not need to. You want the very light state that relaxes the brain. Alexandra links this to non-sleep deep rest — a meditative state that is still valuable even if sleep never arrives.
Pro tip Reframe the target as relaxation, not sleep — that alone removes the pressure that keeps people awake.
- 5
Get up as the caffeine lands and go
By the time you wake, the coffee is taking effect and the adenosine load is lower, so you get the compound effect of both. Then resume the day and hold your normal bedtime.
In the wild
Mateo points to professional athletes, including NBA players, who compete in the evening and take an afternoon nap to recover before tip-off. The reasoning he gives is mechanical rather than habitual: the nap reduces the amount of adenosine in the brain, so the athlete arrives at a night game feeling more energised and refreshed than the accumulated hours of the day would otherwise allow. He frames the founders' own use the same way — they take naps when their schedule allows it, then use the nappuccino to come out of it sharp, and carry on with the day rather than letting the nap bleed into the evening.
→ Evening performance is restored without moving the bedtime or extending the morning sleep.
Common mistakes
Napping longer than thirty minutes
Past the thirty-minute ceiling you drop into deep sleep or REM, wake up groggy rather than refreshed, and reduce the sleep pressure you need for the night.
Abandoning the nap because sleep didn't come
Most people quit after fifteen minutes of lying awake and conclude it was not worth it. The light, relaxed state is already reducing adenosine and resting the brain, so the attempt was not wasted.
Drinking the coffee after waking
The whole design depends on the thirty-minute caffeine onset overlapping with the end of the nap. Taking it afterwards means you spend the first half hour post-nap still flat.
From the transcript
“an apple chain is these let's say you were happy you don't feel great you can try to take a nap during the day but…”
“wake up from the nap the coffee will kick in and you will feel like a super Superman”
“you don't want to fall into deep sleep or rent so you want the very light sleep that is just gonna relax your brain and…”
From the episode
The World’s First Sleep Fitness Company Founders On Optimising Your Sleep - Eight Sleep
Eight Sleep