Going on with minimal sleep? Possible?

On June 28 2008 18:20 Goosey wrote:
I would go dig out all my old debunkings on the subject of the uberman sleep schedule, but I am too tired.

Seriously though, when I first heard of the concept it took ahold of me for several weeks. I was obsessed with finding everything I could about it and scoured the internet for any information (both pro and con).

My conclusion at the end is anyone who thinks this is sustainable long term (for more than several months) is fooling themselves. The longest I had run across anyone doing it was something like 2 years, although investigating their blogging from the start to finish it became painful to see... I dunno, their spark die or something. All the joy and creativity that was in their earlier posts was completely sucked out over time. The worst thing was that the change was gradual enough that they couldn't recognize it in themselves.

I am not saying this as a nay-sayer.. I really, really wanted to find out that ubermann is safe and the benefits as fantastic as some of it's proponents say. I wanted to do it for myself and use the extra time to pursue the dream of being an independent developer.. It simply isn't safe in the long term. :|

He can use that time to think of what to write on his grave. Reminds me of the Korean/Chinese gamers that died from playing games nonstop.

On June 29 2008 01:01 evanthebouncy! wrote:
he's going to kill his IQ...

On June 29 2008 00:49 bash9 wrote:

Here's an interesting link (PDF): http://www.spokane.wsu.edu/researchoutreach/Sleep/documents/2003SLP-VanDongen-etal.pdf
Summary: if you sleep regularly (but not enough) you won't feel as sleepy but your productivity will be significantly reduced over time

They didn't examine segmented sleep, but my guess is that their results would carry over.

doing it for the sake of doing it seems to be

useless :\

Can anyone elaborate on exactly what this is And what the purpose of it is?

Dr. Claudio Stampi, as a result of his interest in long-distance solo boat racing, has studied the systematic timing of short naps as a means of ensuring optimal performance in situations where extreme sleep deprivation is inevitable, but he does not advocate ultrashort napping as a lifestyle.[3] Scientific American Frontiers (PBS) has reported on Stampi's 49-day experiment where a young man napped for a total of three hours per day. It purportedly shows that all stages of sleep were included.[4] Stampi has written about his research in his book "Why We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functions of Polyphasic and Ultrashort Sleep" (1992).

The US military has studied fatigue countermeasures. An Air Force report states:

"Each individual nap should be long enough to provide at least 45 continuous minutes of sleep, although longer naps (2 hours) are better. In general, the shorter each individual nap is, the more frequent the naps should be (the objective remains to acquire a daily total of 8 hours of sleep)."[5]

Similarly, the Canadian Marine Pilots in their trainer's handbook report that:

"[u]nder extreme circumstances where sleep cannot be achieved continuously, research on napping shows that 10- to 20-minute naps at regular intervals during the day can help relieve some of the sleep deprivation and thus maintain minimum levels of performance for several days. However, researchers caution that levels of performance achieved using ultrashort sleep (short naps) to temporarily replace normal sleep, are always well below that achieved when fully rested."[6]

NASA, in cooperation with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, has funded research on napping. Despite NASA recommendations that astronauts sleep 8 hours a day when in space, they usually have trouble sleeping 8 hours at a stretch, so the agency needs to know about the optimal length, timing and effect of naps. Professor David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine led research in a laboratory setting on sleep schedules which combined various amounts of "anchor sleep," ranging from about 4 to 8 hours in length, with daily naps of 0 to 2.5 hours. Longer naps were found to be better, with some cognitive functions benefiting more from napping than others. Vigilance and basic alertness benefited the least while working memory benefited greatly. Naps in the individual subjects' biological daytime worked well, but naps in their nighttime were followed by much greater sleep inertia lasting up to an hour.[7]

There really hasn't been enough research on this, but the one study I do know of suggests that segmented sleep can keep you productive with far less hours.

Stampi has shown that polyphasic sleep can improve cognitive performance in conditions of sleep deprivation as compared with monophasic sleep: Individuals sleeping for 30 minutes every four hours, for a daily total of only 3 hours of sleep, performed better and were more alert, compared to when they had 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep. In other words, under conditions of dramatic sleep reduction, it is more efficient to recharge the sleep "battery" more often. Many use this as the argument for the superiority of polyphasic sleep, while silently skirting around the fact that Stampi also notes that the performance on polyphasic schedule is still far less than that in free running sleep conditions.