Polyphasic sleep
Last week I decided to try something sort of radical. I decided to try to change over to Polyphasic sleep.
The gist of this sleep is, rather than take one chunk of time to get all your sleep in, you instead take several naps throughout the day, training your body to go into REM sleep (apparently the most important part of the sleep cycle) right away, rather than towards the end of a 90 minute cycle which is how most people experience it. There are many, many different ways to approach polyphasic sleep, I went for the straight forward, hard core 6 20-30 minute naps during a day, with no "core" sleep time at all. I started on Thursday, feeling confident that I would need the weekend to recover from the worst part of the sleep deprivation that one goes through in the first several days. I'm glad I did. My lifestyle is such that this is an easy thing to make work. I work from home, and my work is flexible enough with my hours, where they really just care that I turn my work in on time and done well. I would imagine this would be a pretty challenging thing to make work for someone who has to drive to work every day.
It's been about 123 hours since my last full night's sleep, and I have turned a corner in the last 36 hours. We'll see tonight if last night was some sort of fluke, but I feel my energy levels going back up after a very rough stretch over the weekend. I only overslept on a few naps, and of those, two of them went to 45 minutes and that was my longest nap. The night times were the roughest, but I would always become alert as the sun came up and be good throughout the day.
The sleep deprivation is rough, but manageable, so long as I keep physically active while my body makes the adjustment to instant REM sleep, and that process is close to being over. The hardest part is training your brain not to make night time "the time you sleep". Psychologically, the process is extremely difficult. Until last night, I could not trust myself to sit and watch TV or even work at my computer. I had to be up and moving. Coincidentally, the house it much cleaner this week. I still won’t trust myself to sit still for very long. The other psychological hurdle to get over is the realization that you will never “catch up” on any of your lost sleep. At my most tired, I longed for one good catch up sleep, and was faced with the notion that my body would just get back to normal on it’s own over time, in fact, if it works out like I hope, I will be getting more REM sleep than most people get every night.
The schedule reads:
9AM
1PM
5PM
9PM
1AM
5AM
The 1AM to 5AM is easily the hardest bit so far, so I am squeezing in a 15 minute nap at 3. for now, but I hope to eliminate that before my body makes it something I depend on. Right now the naps are at about 25 minutes. I would like to get that down to 20, but getting my body used to a routine that works fine for now is more important. I can tweak things after I’m able to work at my computer for more than 20 minutes at night.
If this works out, I can say with some confidence that this is in my tope five most awesome things I have ever done. I have a really fantastic wife to let me try this with 100% support.
The gist of this sleep is, rather than take one chunk of time to get all your sleep in, you instead take several naps throughout the day, training your body to go into REM sleep (apparently the most important part of the sleep cycle) right away, rather than towards the end of a 90 minute cycle which is how most people experience it. There are many, many different ways to approach polyphasic sleep, I went for the straight forward, hard core 6 20-30 minute naps during a day, with no "core" sleep time at all. I started on Thursday, feeling confident that I would need the weekend to recover from the worst part of the sleep deprivation that one goes through in the first several days. I'm glad I did. My lifestyle is such that this is an easy thing to make work. I work from home, and my work is flexible enough with my hours, where they really just care that I turn my work in on time and done well. I would imagine this would be a pretty challenging thing to make work for someone who has to drive to work every day.
It's been about 123 hours since my last full night's sleep, and I have turned a corner in the last 36 hours. We'll see tonight if last night was some sort of fluke, but I feel my energy levels going back up after a very rough stretch over the weekend. I only overslept on a few naps, and of those, two of them went to 45 minutes and that was my longest nap. The night times were the roughest, but I would always become alert as the sun came up and be good throughout the day.
The sleep deprivation is rough, but manageable, so long as I keep physically active while my body makes the adjustment to instant REM sleep, and that process is close to being over. The hardest part is training your brain not to make night time "the time you sleep". Psychologically, the process is extremely difficult. Until last night, I could not trust myself to sit and watch TV or even work at my computer. I had to be up and moving. Coincidentally, the house it much cleaner this week. I still won’t trust myself to sit still for very long. The other psychological hurdle to get over is the realization that you will never “catch up” on any of your lost sleep. At my most tired, I longed for one good catch up sleep, and was faced with the notion that my body would just get back to normal on it’s own over time, in fact, if it works out like I hope, I will be getting more REM sleep than most people get every night.
The schedule reads:
9AM
1PM
5PM
9PM
1AM
5AM
The 1AM to 5AM is easily the hardest bit so far, so I am squeezing in a 15 minute nap at 3. for now, but I hope to eliminate that before my body makes it something I depend on. Right now the naps are at about 25 minutes. I would like to get that down to 20, but getting my body used to a routine that works fine for now is more important. I can tweak things after I’m able to work at my computer for more than 20 minutes at night.
If this works out, I can say with some confidence that this is in my tope five most awesome things I have ever done. I have a really fantastic wife to let me try this with 100% support.