Cheating the Sandman - An Introduction to Polyphasic Sleep, pt.1
Part 1 - What is Polyphasic Sleep?
Dymaxion Sleep
Sleep is just a bad habit. So said Socrates and Samuel Johnson, and so for years has thought grey-haired Richard Buckminster Fuller, futurific inventor of the Dymaxion* house (TIME, Aug. 22, 1932), the Dymaxion car and the Dymaxion globe. Fuller made a deliberate attempt to break the sleep habit, with excellent results. Last week he announced his Dymaxion system of sleeping. Two hours of sleep a day, he said firmly, is plenty.
Fuller reasoned that man has a primary store of energy, quickly replenished, and a secondary reserve (second wind) that takes longer to restore. Therefore, he thought, a man should be able to cut his rest periods shorter by relaxing as soon as he has used up his primary energy. Fuller trained himself to take a nap at the first sign of fatigue (Le., when his attention to his work began to wander). These intervals came about every six hours; after a half-hour's nap he was completely refreshed.
Everyman Sleep Schedule
Everyman is another type of polyphasic sleep schedule that grew out of the experiments I first wrote about in 2000 under Uberman's Sleep Schedule. As of this writing -- January 2007 -- I have been living on the Everyman Sleep Schedule for approximately six months.
For Uberman, Napping is All There Is
Its not every day that I get contacted by people regarding polyphasic ultrashort sleep, or Uberman sleep, as its called in all boasting seriousness, or perhaps irony, I haven’t quite figured out yet. So the fact that I received three such contacts this week led me to this blog entry regarding the topic. For people who are not familiar with this practice, we discuss its merits and short falls in the Extreme Napping chapter of Take a Nap!
How to Fall Asleep Immediately
Since my first polyphasic attempt approximately 6 months ago, I’ve been having an afternoon nap pretty consistently, so I’ve had time to figure out the ideal conditions necessary to fall asleep as quickly as possible. Currently, under quasi-monophasic conditions, I’m able to fall asleep in about 2 minutes, and this is how I do it.
Napping Advice, from Times to Cars to Routines
I’m trying to figure out the best way to handle missing a nap. [and I’m about to digress into a whole bunch of other nap stuff, so if naps are an interest of yours, you’re in luck! ;) ]
See, work has a tendency to sometimes eat my afternoon (2:00) nap. Usually if that happens, I can take it at 5:00 (pulling the car over on the way home) and all is fine; I get sleepy again right about nine, dead on schedule. But sometimes–like yesterday–there’s just no chance. I got my “afternoon nap” at 7:00 last night.
Naps Can Help The Heart
Office nappers now have the perfect excuse: New research shows that a little midday snooze seems to reduce the risk of fatal heart problems, especially among men.
Optimal Sleep
Published by Mark Shead on October 20, 2005.
Sleeping is something we don't usually think much about, but if you could do something to convert just 90 minutes of each day from sleep time into productive time that would give you and extra 10 hours each week.
Polyphasic Sleep 101
Most adult humans sleep for about eight hours per day, in one block, usually at nighttime. (Think of it as a really long nap.) Some people may take a short nap during the afternoon - this is a form of biphasic sleep, which isn’t technically the same as polyphasic, but many people think they fall under the same category.
Polyphasic Sleep Applications
Stampi has been hanging around docks for the past 20 years, placing custom-designed sleep-tracking wrist monitors (which record movement over time) on more than 100 solo sailors. His untraditional research raised questions from scientific sticklers, but according to James Maas, a professor of psychology at Cornell University and a leading specialist in sleep deprivation and performance, Stampi\'s open-ocean work has been very useful.
Polyphasic Sleep: The Conclusion
For the last three weeks, I’ve been deeply engaged in an experiment with a sleep pattern known as polyphasic sleep. What follows is an eclectic mix of my observations, hypotheses, and responses to questions about the adaptation.
Polyphasism: Tricks to Avoid Oversleeping
A quick reminder first: It's NORMAL to want to oversleep during the first month; this schedule is a bear to adjust to and you WILL be exhausted at first. (How badly depends on the schedule you're adopting to, and other factors which you can probably figure out if you think on it.) Don't freak out, but also don't assume that you're such a superman that you won't need any of these measures. It's always better safe than sorry when it comes to oversleeping — you don't want to go through all that trouble and then have to start over!These tips run from the Simple to the Nigh Ridiculous — the trick is, what works for you? So be smart: Think about what wakes you up the fastest and take advantage of it. You probably won't need all or even most of these, but they're here to give you ideas of your own. Be creative!
Top Eight Kinds of Nap
Since we started sleeping polyphasically, I've noticed the quality and nature of naps varies quite a bit. Most naps are just "standard" naps, but I get at least one of these naps each week or so:
8. The Paradox (AKA The Traitor, The Pan Galactic Gargle Nap)
Everything seemed to go so well. You lay down on schedule, fell asleep right away, and had a lovely dream involving cake, meadows and fluffy animals. Yet you wake up feeling like someone stuffed your head full of polystyrene and poured bleach in your eyes.
Luckily, the effect tends to fade away after a few minutes.
7. The Time Warp (AKA The Forgotten Oversleep, The WTF Nap)
Three hours have passed, both alarm clocks have been switched off, along with the light and the MP3 player. You may also have had a drink and been to the bathroom at some point. The last thing you remember is lying down.
6. The Newbie Nap (AKA Murphy's Nap, The Coffee Victim)
Your eyes refuse to stay open. Your body is exhausted. Your brain feels like it's been stuffed with cotton wool. You lie down expecting the best nap of your life.
Instead, you spend 20 minutes thinking about how badly you want to get to sleep. The ticking clock, humming refrigerator, faint noises from next door and blinking LED on the VCR also don't help.
5. The Phantom Nap (AKA The Non-Nap, The Wake)
You were awake when you lay down. You were awake when the alarm went off. You don't remember waking up. Did you sleep in between? No-one will ever know. Unless someone heard you snoring.
4. The Nap-22 (AKA The No-Win-Nap, The Nap-And-A-Half-Without-The-Nap)
You wake up feeling pretty good. Eyes open, head clear. But there's a problem. You still have half your time left. Do you get up, or go back to sleep?
If you get up you'll feel tired later. If you go back to sleep you'll feel tired when you wake up. You may as well just give up and sleep through to the next nap (not really).
3. The Micronap (AKA The Surprise, The iNap Nano)
Why did the hand of that clock jump forward two minutes?
2. The Snap (AKA The Epiphany, The Crystal Pillow)
You suddenly snap awake, with one minute left on the clock. You feel like your whole life has been a lead-up to this one moment of startling and unexpected clarity.
Work fast. You have about 5 minutes before you go back to normal.
1. The Chrono-Nap (AKA The Bullet-Time, The Saga)
You fall asleep almost immediately and have an incredibly long and detailed dream. You wake up what feels like hours later, cursing yourself for oversleeping, only to realize you've been asleep five minutes.
You resist the urge to call your monophasic friends and tell them how awesome polynapping is.
Uberman Sleep Schedule
The Uberman sleep schedule is a method of organizing your sleeping time to maximize your REM sleep and minimize your non-REM sleep. The goal of the sleep cycle is that you are actively in REM sleep within a couple of minutes of falling asleep and remain in that state until you awaken. I originally read about the schedule on everything2.
What You Can Do About Sleep Deprivation
I have been involved with numerous studies over the past 20 years that have shown that multiple napping schedules (or polyphasic sleep strategies) have allowed trans-Atlantic sailors to maintain much of their performance levels. Based on these observations and on the fact that over 85% of species in nature show typical polyphasic rest-activity patterns, we believe that polyphasic sleep is the strategy of choice for maintaining acceptable alertness levels under situations of continuous work. This strategy...
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