10 Amazing Life Hacks That Are Actually Backed By Science

2. Take A Coffee Nap To Supercharge Yourself

Not only is napping finally becoming a more accepted pastime for adults, but people are now finding ways to supercharge the nap, making you feel so alert on waking that you can actually hear colours.

The "coffee nap" hack combines the powers of, you guessed it, coffee and napping to produce a result greater than the sum of its parts. Although it sounds like a good excuse for millennials to just amalgamate two of their favourite things in the world, it's actually based on some pretty solid brain chemistry.

Coffee works by mimicking a neurotransmitter in your brain called adenosine. This brain chemical would usually attach to receptors and suppress their activity to make you feel drowsy. If the similarly-shaped caffeine molecule gets there first, it blocks the adenosine without making you sleepy.

The other thing that gets rid of adenosine is sleep, so taking a quick 20 minute nap after drinking a cup of coffee will maximise the amount of receptors that the caffeine can attach itself to, blocking way more adenosine than either the nap or the coffee would individually.