Polyphasic Sleep: One Man's 6-Month Experiment (2005)

I've been sleeping bi-phasitcally since I saw that article on lifehacker.com in 2005. Sleep cycle is 2:30AM - 7:00AM and another at 5:30PM - 7:00PM. Times are typically rough around the edges by 15 or so minutes.<p>I'm a self diagnosed hypersomniac (I can sleep ALOT) it helps me feel very rested from a total of 6 hours as opposed to the 11-14 hours it typically takes for me to wake up naturally.<p>"The downside to this sleep schedule is that it can be inflexible. I’ve read that you can delay naps by an hour if necessary, but missing a nap can cause a rapid crash that takes a while to recover from."<p>This is very true. If I skip a nap one day after work, I typically pay for it by sleeping 2-3 times as long the next short cycle.<p>It's definitely beneficial to me. Sleeping 10-12 hours a night and not being rested wastes alot of my not-at-work time and cuts into social obligations. Bi-phastic works for me!

Be sure to check out Piotr Wozniak's thoughts on polyphasic sleep:<p><a href="http://www.supermemo.com/help/faq/polyphasic.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.supermemo.com/help/faq/polyphasic.htm</a>

Notes from my experience:<p><a href="http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/polyphasic-sleep-experiment-background/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/polyphasic-sleep-e...</a><p><a href="http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/category/polyphasic/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/category/polyphasi...</a>

I was really intrigued by polyphasic sleep for a while, and used to fantasize about how much I could get done if I tried it. But realistically, I can barely tolerate typing 8 hrs a day as it is, and I have enough distractions and obsessions that it'd be rather unlikely that I'd spend that extra time doing much that was productive -- certainly, I wouldn't be programming.

I tried this two years ago with a friend. We weren't able to do it for very long, and we had a lot of trouble staying to the schedule (and not oversleeping).<p>Eventually, you reach this sort of zombie lucidity where you're awake and conscious, but you're not 100% there, in my opinion. I'm not sure if that affected my critical thinking skills, but certainly some part of me was always asleep on that schedule.<p>Hey, maybe this would have gone away if we'd been able to stick to it for longer. It was absolutely one of the funnest experiments I have tried and I want to do it again sometime.

This is perhaps the post / experiment I most enjoyed with Pavlina. He wrote a lot of good stuff, I fell out of love with his stuff a year or so ago but this is one that I really enjoyed reading about.

It's certainly fascinating, but I'm not convinced it's sustainable. I'd like to see someone who has held this schedule up for a period of years.

Kind of related - I tried the 28 hour day / 6 day week when I started my PhD.<p>I could still code but I couldn't do theory - turned that part of my brain off like a switch.<p>And even though I only did it for 1 or 2 weeks it took more than month for me to get back to feeling normal.<p>It turns out a lot of systems in the body like that 24 hour thing. I'm glad I stopped before my digestive system got angry :)<p>Still kind of glad that I tried it because a) I know I won't try anything like it when stakes are higher and b) the amount of discipline it took was roughly equivalent to the amount of discipline it takes to time manage myself to peak productivity on a regular sleep cycle.

I thought that Steve Pavlina ended up writing some additional follow-up articles to his polyphasic experiment - make sure to read those, too. It didn't sound like something that would work for most people IMHO.

This seems like in our diurnal world to be living against the natural rhythm of things, but for space travelers, this seems like perfect prep for a trip. Maybe Steve should consult with NASA.