Polyphasic Sleep

Polyphasic sleep is a brain hack.  The goal is to spread sleep out into naps throughout the day while decreasing the time of the nighttime core sleep.  The pinnacle of success is the Uberman sleep schedule in which you only sleep for 20 minutes once every 4 hours for a total of 2 hours of sleep a day.  I had heard about the ability to sleep a mere 2 hours a day from various sources such as history (Napoleon Bonaparte, Leonardo Da Vinci, Ben Franklin) and yoga which claims that meditation and proper diet can reduce the need for sleep.  It was not until I found Steve Pavlina's blog about his experience with polyphasic sleep that I thought it was either possible or practical.  He stressed that starting a polyphasic sleep schedule would be easiest on a vegan diet and a schedule more flexible than the standard 40 hour work week.  I became intrigued by the benefits like having more time and being better able to focus waking time.

I first thought about the time gained from trying polyphasic sleep.  What would I do with an extra 6 hours every day?  Would I be able to find enough worthwhile activity to fill a 22 hour day, or would I be better off working on my standard 16 hour day time management?  The real first step to sleeping polyphasically is to assess how you spend your current waking hours.  I started becoming more conscious of how much I really could do with my time.  I often fall into the trap of becoming anxious about running out of energy.  It frustrates me that I consistently get sleepy throughout the day even after getting plenty of sleep at night.  Just by changing my perspective to imagine life from a polyphasic view, I gained incredible insight on how I could take conscious control of my time and make it work for me instead of just being an obstacle to pass through.

I have been working my way through an adjustment period of polyphasic sleep.  I started by napping in the day time.  I set my watch timer for 20 minutes and give myself the freedom to check out of consciousness for a while.  At work, I worked harder during normal working time and used my lunch break to try napping.  I can close the door to my office for privacy, but the thought of sleeping at my desk still seems wrong.  However, the alternative of getting so tired that I spend about an hour a day just staring into space seems a much greater waste of time.  I have since learned that I can easily spend my half hour lunch break on a 20 minute nap and 10 minutes of eating.  I always bring my own lunch since I view going out for lunch every day as an excessive waste of time, money, and gasoline.

My sleep schedule is a cross between Uberman and Everyman schedule.  Everyman is the warm up to Uberman that allows for a longer core sleep at night in addition to multiple day naps.  I set up times to sleep every 4 hours: 4, 8, and 12 o'clock intervals, give or take a half hour.  At midnight, I stay asleep through the time of the next nap, but if I wake up early, then I stay awake and continue the same nap-wake cycles.  I go to work early to account for an afternoon break nap and stay until my regular time.  So far, I feel really refreshed by the naps and miss long sleeps less and less.  A good set of adjustment schedules can be found here.  I don't feel constrained by an adjustment deadline so migrating from a siesta schedule to Uberman seems a feasible plan.

One of the advantages to more time awake is that I no longer have the excuse that I don't have time to exercise.  I can do a few minutes of a workout video in the morning, take a walk in the evening, and still have time to do yoga at night.  The exercise keeps me alert and makes me feel better about being awake.  I plan to continue this sleep pattern for a while longer, and maybe break up the core sleep into 2 distinct naps.  I find the challenge of controlling my sleep invigorating and feel that I am learning so much about myself and existence in the process.  I have had a huge leap in creativity, and I take advantage of that by spending a lot of time writing.