This blog will catalog my motivation, planning, and attempt at adapting and thriving using a polyphasic sleep schedule. The timeline is as follows:
December 19 - 20 | pre-pre planning December 21 - January 5 | building alarm clock routine and planning January 6 - February 17 | attempt to fully transition to a polyphasic sleep schedule.
What is polyphasic sleep?
Wikipedia says that
Polyphasic sleep refers to the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period—usually more than two, in contrast to biphasic sleep (twice per day) or monophasic sleep (once per day)
Why are you trying it?
My motivation to achieve polyphasic sleep is to gain access to more hours in the day in order to accomplish personal goals. In addition to this main point, I enjoy a good challenge as well as lifestyle choices that run counter to societal norms.
Which variation of polyphasic sleep are you going to try?
Taken from the Polyphasic Sleep Wikipedia Article:
The official name is "Uberman" and it is easiest to understand as a 24 hour day divided by six which results in six 4 hour chunks of time. Then, in each chunk you take a 20 minute nap. The basic concept is that several days into this schedule sleep deprivation forces your body to use each short nap for REM sleep, thus increasing your sleep efficiency enough that six 20 minute naps cover your sleep needs just as well as an 8-9 hour nightly rest.
Past experiences with polyphasic sleep
I have tried previously three times to adapt to a polyphasic schedule without success. My main issue was not waking up after my naps, but keeping myself occupied during 2-7am and not just saying screw it and going to sleep.
Planning
My brainstorming and reading on the topic has generated the following points which will (hopefully) increase my chances of success:
0. (preparation step) Building an effective routine around waking up. Currently I am very bad at responding to my alarm clock. I chronically push the time back and have gotten used to setting 5 alarms on my iPod and waking up an hour after the last alarm. Using the idea of a Pavlovian response, I will use slightly less than two weeks before I begin adapting to build the following relationship with my alarm clock: hear alarm clock, wake up, walk to bathroom and splash face with cold water, return to bedroom and turn off alarm, begin my day. By building this routine between December 21 and January 5 I will be in a nice position to use my alarm clock for six 20 minute naps.
1. Measuring reaction time, typing speed, and short term memory are all ways to effectively gauge my sleep deprivation and adjustment. They are effective because they are activities where skill isn't quickly acquired (this would be an issue with a flash game I could quickly learn even though I'm getting more tired) which would throw off the results, and they require some mental wherewithal and dexterity. By creating a 'control group' with daily results from December 21-January 5 when I am not sleep deprived, I will be able to measure the dip and hopeful rise of my results while adjusting to polyphasic sleep. I'm under no illusion that what I'm doing is in any way scientific, I just wanted to used the phrase control group :D
2. Planning the right kind of activities to bide my time during particularly drowsy periods. Since my past attempts at the Uberman schedule resulted in being occupied solely with how tired I was, I am going to have ready many tasks which aren't mentally or physically strenuous but which are engaging and force me to be present. This is emphasized by Steve Pavlina in his chronicling of over 5 months living on the Uberman schedule. He used cooking as his activity. I have limited access to an oven, so I will use art as my main activity of this sort. Specifically, I will listen to music and make paper models of starcraft units using the .PDOs and Pepakura posted here on TL. This will allow me to craft out and focus on the present in times of most severe drowsiness (something like midnight-8am).
In future posts I will further describe my planning, as well as potentially refining what I have written out here.
This is pretty neat, I'm excited to see how this turns out. A friend and I were thinking about trying this, but I was read somewhere that the extra hours of sleep that is not REM sleep is important for body recovery. Anyways, I'm interested in seeing how this turns out!
Wow that seems really cool. Do you know anyone who does live like an Uberman? I would imagine that it would be really amazing to have 22 hours days. On the other hand, I like sleeping so it's not for me.
e: also as I'm trying to get fitter, alot of sleep is essential to lose fat and to gain muscle.
sounds cool. not very comfortable way of sleeping all though it is most likely just a question of getting used to it. Looking forward to hearing how it turns out
I know a friend who did this in my university when he was very young and now his body is permanently adapted so that he can usually function normally with sometimes even 2-3 hours of sleep. Not too sure if he is bullshiting but just a thought out there that maybe training of this could be beneficial in the future.
Not to be a downer, but I'm pretty sure that empirical evidence says that such a cycle is not beneficial. You don't just need REM for the brain, the actual body itself needs to rest, and the wikipedia cites studies that say that such a practice can cause problems similar to sleep deprivation.
This is sick, wish i had the motivbation to do it. I wish i could sleep less though (feels like a waste of time). However if i dont get 8hours, i am a fucking wreck!
I've heard about this. Can you elaborate more on the building up portion? Are you just breaking the day up into more and more pieces until you have 6 waking periods and 6 naps? The point with being so sleep deprived that you're forced into REM sleep for the naps seems reasonable enough.
I hear that if you are going polyphasic, you really get punished if you miss your naps. Sounds like shit, couldn't go on a date, couldn't go driving, go to the gym, go to lectures, even work on a normal schedule, without the risk of running past nap time and crashing your system. The only thing it's good for is being an anti-social researcher or something.
Good luck! I looked into this but ultimately decided that there's just too much we don't know about the function of sleep vis a vis health and that if we sleep in chunks at a time there's probably a reason for it.
That and as people have said, it's tough to fill 22 hours a day!
I was curious about this as well so I did some research. There's no proof at all that non-REM sleep is just useless unconsciousness, if anything, it's most likely beneficial for the body. But good luck anyway.
This looks interesting. But aren't there any drawbacks or side effects? I could imagine that it would affect your health in some way (both physically and mentally).
actually i have been planning the same thing for a while, i was reading some other persons journal about this and they were saying that polyphasic sleep doesn't give you any real advantages over 'normal' sleep. the reasoning was something along the lines of: sleep is comprised of some basic mechanisms which aren't complimented one being that the body has a clock, which is naturally close to the day/night cycle, and when the clock is up for the "day" it releases melotonin and basically tells your body that it's time to sleep after it reaches that it goes through a few periods of sleep which are similar to defragging your computer, which apparently has a 'reboot phase' right which is right at the end of your sleep.
so long story short, the guy was saying alarm clocks are bad because you interrupt that reboot phase before defrag can finish, furthermore if you base your entire sleep schedule on interrupting that reboot phase then it will only cause you to be drowsy
despite having read that article, i naturally decided to do this anyway. trying the ubermensch version but it's difficult to build up to. some tips that i've had trying to avoid the "it's 7 am now, fuck it going to sleep"
try going for large time intervals for nap periods and work your way down, which results in overall more sleep (maybe like 10 hours)
once you get down to lower hours start waking yourself up constantly, maybe every 10 mins or so during the course of a 1-1.5 hour nap. eventually you get to the point where you start dreaming immediately as you lay down but you are very well rested when you wake up
I imagine if you had any level of physical activity going on, your body would implode with this schedule. I can understand forcing your brain into going straight into REM and getting a proper amount of brain rest on this weird schedule (even this is a little far fetched, but I've had success with meditation and lucid dream things in the past, which makes me believe the mind is pretty powerful and adaptive), but your body would suffer a ton. I don't know how you could stay in shape with so little sleep
As a child I read the book "Never Cry Wolf" that sums up the experience of an biologist that researched wolves.
One of the points in his book was that he observed how wolves slept:
They curled up, got up every ~10 minutes, turned their body around and got back to sleep for another 10 minutes, they did this for about an hour and got up after that. He claimed that he tried this out during his field studies and that he had great results in the sense that he reduced his sleep time tremendously - he claimed that one of the reasons probably was that it increased the rate of the blood flow in your body.
I tried it as a kid for several months and it worked out okay-ish as far as I remember. I wasn't any fitter than usual (he claimed that) but I only slept 2-3 hours per night and could still use the rest of the time to its fullest. Even today I move a lot while sleeping and only sleep 4-5 hours per night without being exhausted at daytime. My approach to that as a child simply was to try out this way of sleeping which led to a couple of days where I was really down and exhausted but as I had vacations I simply pulled trough.
Its obviously not about your approach but it seems relevant when you try to get the most out of your minimized sleep time.
I'm curious to see how your productivity adjusts to your sleeping schedule. If you're up 20hrs, but can only function well for 8hrs, obviously this isn't the best idea. I would suggest recording some sort of baseline amount of work that your can normally accomplish during your prep/pre-adjustment time.
Well, good luck. The problem is that these schedules have no scientific basis. You're still fighting against your circadian clock, so you will feel extremely tired near your circadian core body temperature minimum. You will also have considerable difficulty sleeping at times of day when your circadian clock is promoting wake. The net result is not enough sleep, which over time turns into sleep deprivation. With high enough sleep deprivation, you will be able to fall asleep more quickly at all times of day, but your waking performance will be sub-optimal.
I will never understand why people (read "crazy idiots" xD) would ever want to do such a thing to themselves, but it's your life, go do whatever you want to do with it. ^ ^
So, good luck. You will need it with this plan of yours as I got my doubts wheter you will actually succeed with this kind of approach. And when you do get there, you will probably not like the idea of holding that kind of sleep pattern up for more then 2 weeks, but only time will tell that.
People giving health arguments why it's a bad idea --
I'm quite unimpressed by the amount of studies I could find into sleep. Also, as far as I can tell the point of sleep is to cure feeling tired. Something interesting to think about is Randy Gardner who stayed up for 264 hours without caffeine and was monitored by a navy research unit. Always thought that was cool.
There's a blogger who documents really well transitioning into polyphasic sleep and I found his extremely detailed accounts fairly inspiring (I linked his blog in the OP).
On December 19 2011 05:46 Felo wrote: As a child I read the book "Never Cry Wolf" that sums up the experience of an biologist that researched wolves.
One of the points in his book was that he observed how wolves slept:
They curled up, got up every ~10 minutes, turned their body around and got back to sleep for another 10 minutes, they did this for about an hour and got up after that. He claimed that he tried this out during his field studies and that he had great results in the sense that he reduced his sleep time tremendously - he claimed that one of the reasons probably was that it increased the rate of the blood flow in your body.
I tried it as a kid for several months and it worked out okay-ish as far as I remember. I wasn't any fitter than usual (he claimed that) but I only slept 2-3 hours per night and could still use the rest of the time to its fullest. Even today I move a lot while sleeping and only sleep 4-5 hours per night without being exhausted at daytime. My approach to that as a child simply was to try out this way of sleeping which led to a couple of days where I was really down and exhausted but as I had vacations I simply pulled trough.
Its obviously not about your approach but it seems relevant when you try to get the most out of your minimized sleep time.
This is really cool. I don't get why people buy into the "you need 8 hours a day." Seems like it's largely backed up by "common sense."
On December 19 2011 08:11 aerotonox wrote: I just started with this program on 5 december, good to know that people are also giving it a chance on TL! :D
How's it working for you?
The idea that I'll be able to do it but my brain and motor functions will suffer will be challenged by my testing before and during my adoption of polyphasic sleep.
Edit - another awesome thing discussed on the wikipedia page for sleep deprivation is a nightmarish experiment where they put a rodent on little stand too small to comfortably sleep on, and they're surrounded by water. The rodent falls asleep when it gets tired but is instantly awaken by the water and crawls back onto the stand so it doesn't drown.
On December 19 2011 09:38 Riot grrrl wrote: People giving health arguments why it's a bad idea --
I'm quite unimpressed by the amount of studies I could find into sleep. Also, as far as I can tell the point of sleep is to cure feeling tired. Something interesting to think about is Randy Gardner who stayed up for 264 hours without caffeine and was monitored by a navy research unit. Always thought that was cool.
There's a blogger who documents really well transitioning into polyphasic sleep and I found his extremely detailed accounts fairly inspiring (I linked his blog in the OP).
On December 19 2011 05:46 Felo wrote: As a child I read the book "Never Cry Wolf" that sums up the experience of an biologist that researched wolves.
One of the points in his book was that he observed how wolves slept:
They curled up, got up every ~10 minutes, turned their body around and got back to sleep for another 10 minutes, they did this for about an hour and got up after that. He claimed that he tried this out during his field studies and that he had great results in the sense that he reduced his sleep time tremendously - he claimed that one of the reasons probably was that it increased the rate of the blood flow in your body.
I tried it as a kid for several months and it worked out okay-ish as far as I remember. I wasn't any fitter than usual (he claimed that) but I only slept 2-3 hours per night and could still use the rest of the time to its fullest. Even today I move a lot while sleeping and only sleep 4-5 hours per night without being exhausted at daytime. My approach to that as a child simply was to try out this way of sleeping which led to a couple of days where I was really down and exhausted but as I had vacations I simply pulled trough.
Its obviously not about your approach but it seems relevant when you try to get the most out of your minimized sleep time.
This is really cool. I don't get why people buy into the "you need 8 hours a day." Seems like it's largely backed up by "common sense."
On December 19 2011 08:11 aerotonox wrote: I just started with this program on 5 december, good to know that people are also giving it a chance on TL! :D
How's it working for you?
The idea that I'll be able to do it but my brain and motor functions will suffer will be challenged by my testing before and during my adoption of polyphasic sleep.
Edit - another awesome thing discussed on the wikipedia page for sleep deprivation is a nightmarish experiment where they put a rodent on little stand too small to comfortably sleep on, and they're surrounded by water. The rodent falls asleep when it gets tired but is instantly awaken by the water and crawls back onto the stand so it doesn't drown.
Read Micro's Insomniac thread/guide on these forums (link: Insomnia guide) , it will give you a better insight in sleep and the things revolving around that. Even though it focus lies with Sleeplesness/Insomnia, which is different of course then this, it still is damn informative, in my eyes at least.
My advice is just don't do it, it's really not worth it wheter there is truly a risk to it or not.
I know that my personal experience (as a Insomniac) will be different then what you are trying to achieve here (regulated sleep is a "whole" other story after all), but I can tell you that it may hurth your health either way if you keep this sleep pattern up for long enough (more then 1 year). If you are just going to do it for.. a week, a month or so, then I doubt it will really give you any permanent damage (or any at all for that matter).
But even if this regulated sleep pattern you want to achieve is not harmfull to your health in any way, then it's merely (as already pointed out in the blog you linked) not practical to keep it up seeing the society we live in. Of course, it's quite a achievement to pull off and probably a unique experience as well to go through, so in that way it may be worth for you to do so. If you think so, then well, yeah go for it. ^ ^
I also doubt you will truly get more hours in a day out of this. Yes, technically speaking you may be awake longer a day, but that extra time will be less worth because of your state of body and mind. I doubt you will have the same energy reserves as you would have with a normal 8 hour sleep pattern here. So in the end you will most likely find out that, while you may have more hours, you will need more time to complete tasks and thus.... not gain any real "extra" time.
Though, this all comes from someone who would do almost anything to get more sleep then she get's right now. So I see no good reason in doing something like this. Alot of people just don't realise how good you have it with the 6-8 hours sleep a night, it's not something that comes natural to everyone. >.<
Anyways, your life, your choice, so don't let me hold you back from doing something you really want too. (doubt I could hold you back if you really want to do it. xD) And once again good luck with this all. ^ ^
I'm quite unimpressed by the amount of studies I could find into sleep. Also, as far as I can tell the point of sleep is to cure feeling tired. Something interesting to think about is Randy Gardner who stayed up for 264 hours without caffeine and was monitored by a navy research unit. Always thought that was cool.
There is in fact a large literature on the topic. Sleep is a relatively young field of science, but we nonetheless have quite a good understanding of the processes that regulate sleep and wake, and just about every sleep/wake schedule you can imagine has been tested. Ultradian (or polyphasic) sleep/wake cycles have been used in many experiments, which have demonstrated that it is extremely difficult and unpleasant to maintain this type of schedule. The reason people who adopt these schedules need to invent activities to keep themselves going through the night is because the body is desperately attempting to enter sleep. These schedules are incompatible with the basic drives our bodies have evolved.
Regarding the point of sleep being to cure feeling tired, that's not true. That's like saying the reason you eat is to cure feeling hungry. Like feeding, sleep serves many important functions. These include memory consolidation, hormone regulation, metabolic regulation, immune function, etc. Attempting ultra-long wake episodes, or chronically restricting your daily sleep quota cannot be recommended.
If you do decide to go through with this, I highly recommend not driving or engaging in similarly dangerous activities, especially during the nighttime hours.
@Gnight, I appreciate your concerns regarding sleep deprivation and the value of a good night's sleep. These concerns, for me, do not outweigh the potential benefit of more productive hours in a day. On the social concern, I am currently curtailing my social life in order to get more time to work. With more hours overall, I could hypothetically get more social time and more work time.
@whathtefat. My comment about a lack of literature on the topic was definitely from a place of ignorance. A handful of searches on polyphasic sleep only yielded one book called Why We Nap, which discussed various experiments as well as examples where people are forced to adopt polyphasic sleep. However, just as with Gnight's comments, the arguments I've read against polyphasic sleep don't outweigh the benefits I could see of successfully transitioning to it.
You'll be pleased to hear that from January 5, when I begin adjusting to a polyphasic schedule, I have zero obligations for a month and a half and I don't own a vehicle of any kind.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2IoUq.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/N07cB.jpg)
