I‘m intrigued by the midday nap, because I think I remember reading that daytime naps worsen night sleep. I do like naps though, and find them refreshing. Have you found research that supports this?
The primary benefit from mid-day naps is that they simply help you relax and get some rest. You don't want them to be long, just refreshing. This is well known in athletics where most major athletes take naps as a matter of recovery and to improve their sleep quality. Presumably, feeling relaxed and rested when you go to sleep helps you get some deeper sleep and improve sleep quality.
I recommend to read https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Best_time_for_napping
The key takeaways is that naps won't affect night time sleep much if it's timed well. I also don't recommend stopping them artificially (I've heard the "keep them short" advice a lot), naps are usually short if you aren't sleep deprived and time it well.
AFAIR was only the case if nap was longer than ~20 min? I don't remember if this was a consistent thing, I doubt it though as this stuff is inherently individual. Experimentation is the only way with sleep optimization..
It does not worsen night sleep, this is a misconception. It is better than nothing but often not as good as regular sleep since you often does not goes through a full cycle.
Naps are terrible sleep hygiene. Any deviation from a regular set sleep schedule is bad hygiene. Better to get less sleep than to nap and disturb the sleep schedule. Many people develop insomnia this way, especially shift workers.
The siesta is natural and is different from the naps taken from shift workers that are likely either interrupting night time sleep or are shifting their circadian rythm so that their "biological night" is in the day. Same thing for the "biological day" (it will be put at night)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siesta?wprov=sfla1
It’s almost like we are not some robots with scheduled downtimes - physiology is much more complicated than to have such a mathematical truths. The only true thing we can conclude is always: this factor might correspond to this effect (and sometimes may even say that it is not only correlation)
