Building a Sleep Discipline schedule can be easy and fun. It involves balancing many factors including the amount of extra time you would like to have, how many naps you can fit in per day, how strict you expect to be with the schedule, and how much sleep deprivation you’re willing to deal with in the beginning. Below you will find a chart of these factors and a step-by-step guide to developing a Sleep Discipline schedule that is right for you.
Review this chart to help you determine the best Sleep Discipline for you. Notice that the more naps you take during the day, the less sleep you will need at night. Conversely, the shorter your core sleep, the more strictly you will need to follow your schedule. The less Total Sleep you get, the more severe the sleep deprivation in the adjustment phase will be, however the more sever the sleep dep., the quicker your body will adjust to the Discipline.
| # 20 min Naps | Core Sleep (hrs) | Total Sleep (hrs) | Net Benefit (vs 8 hrs) | Nap Sched. Flexibility | Nickname |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 8 | 8 | 0 | n/a | Monophasic |
| 1 | 6 | 6.3 | 1.7 | +/-3 hr | Siesta |
| 2 | 4.5 | 5.2 | 2.8 | +/-2 hr | Everyman |
| 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | +/-1 hr | Everyman |
| 4 or 5 | 1.5 | 2.8 | 5.2 | +/-30 min | Everyman |
| 6 | 0 | 2 | 6 | +/-30 min | Uberman |
How to make a Sleep Discipline schedule:
- Find 30 minute time blocks where you can quietly slip away and take a 20 minute nap every day. Ideally space the naps 3-6 hrs apart.
- (What worked for me: My job allows for a flexible schedule so I can take naps at work whenever I’m not too busy to do so. I target - 11:30 a.m., 5:30 p.m., and 11:00 p.m.)
- Find a location you can go to lie down uninterrupted during that time. Sleeping pads/bags, pillows, and earplugs make this task much easier - you will become a nap expert in short order, so you can get creative.
- (What worked for me: I use a sleeping bag to take naps on our office lounge couch, or on a backpacking sleeping pad in our conference room. If I’m at home I’ll crash on my bed. Otherwise I nap wherever I happen to be (i.e. cars, airports/airplanes, floors, other peoples’ couches/beds, etc.)
- (What worked for me: I use a sleeping bag to take naps on our office lounge couch, or on a backpacking sleeping pad in our conference room. If I’m at home I’ll crash on my bed. Otherwise I nap wherever I happen to be (i.e. cars, airports/airplanes, floors, other peoples’ couches/beds, etc.)
- Using your step 1 results and the chart above, determine the number of naps you want in your schedule and find the appropriate core sleep length. Then pick a time slot for your core sleep and choose the best nap times that will space out your rest throughout the day.
- (What worked for me: I wanted to be in to work by 7:00 a.m. every day so I set my core to 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. My best times for naps are: 11:30 a.m., 5:30 p.m., and 11:00 p.m)
- (What worked for me: I wanted to be in to work by 7:00 a.m. every day so I set my core to 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. My best times for naps are: 11:30 a.m., 5:30 p.m., and 11:00 p.m)
- Pick a series of days (at least three) to commit to the adjustment phase knowing there’s a possibility of sleep deprivation. Try to avoid long drives, important business meetings, performing surgery, or any extremely important events. If something comes up, at any time you can switch back to monophasic, get a good night’s sleep and be right back to normal.
- (Ideally (assuming a M-F work week) start the schedule on Thursday by lying down for the scheduled naps. Get your core sleep in Thursday night so that way even if you get 0 benefit from your naps, you will have still had some sleep the night before. Then you have Saturday and Sunday allocated for potentially the most tiring days of the adjustment period - if attempting the Uberman Schedule, expect this “most difficult” period to last a week. The tiredness and fatigue from sleep deprivation will hopefully be reduced to only early-morning / late-night tiredness by day 4, and will disappear after full adjustment (1 month or more).
- Recommendation: If possible, choose a starting date that will give you 4 weeks to stick closely to the schedule (no vacations, trips, or prolonged times where you will not be able to get your naps). This is not absolutely necessary - especially as many of us are too busy to ever have a lull in activity for that long - however the closer you stick to the schedule for this time period, the more adapted you will be and the more you will get out of your time. As long as you make your Sleep Discipline a priority, you will adjust right quick.
Please post any comments, questions, or suggestions!
19 Responses to “Getting Started with Sleep Discipline”
Andrew, thanks for providing such a good resource for getting started. I’ve been reading up a lot on polyphasic sleeping now and I think I’m ready to try it next week.
I was also talking about it to a bunch of techies when I was up in NYC. Looks like they have a Power Nap Meetup group to share experiences and ideas.
Are there any MeetUp groups in Santa Cruz for Polyphasic sleepers?
By Justine on May 15, 2008
Justine,
Thats awesome! I’m excited you’ll be starting soon. I’d love to hear how it goes.
Unfortunately not. The closest gathering I’ve found of polysleepers is a few people in the Bay Area from the Polyphasic Google group. http://groups.google.com/group/Polyphasic/web/meet-local-polyphasic-sleepers
In regards to your experiment: What schedule did you decide to try out and how did you manage to fit it in with your job?
Also, would you consider recording your progress and/or being a guest blogger?
By Andrew on May 15, 2008
Sure! Here’s my blog where I’m going to start tracking my progress. I probably can’t get started this weekend because I have a really busy schedule. I’m flying out to Chicago to visit a friend and to interview with a company.
By Justine on May 15, 2008
hello. Very informative article, I am particularly interested in the 4.5 hour Everyman cycle and have researched it for the last few days intensely. I belief that a high school senior like me can keep the everyman cycle without too much difficulty beyond normal polyphasic troubles. Please e-mail me ASAP if you want my journals because I am starting this week so that I can be adjusted by the time school starts in two weeks. Thanks again
By Josh on Aug 17, 2008
Hey Andrew, thanks so much for making this easy guide to starting polyphasic sleep. I’m a student and over-worked this semester so I was thinking about turning to polyphasic sleep to get more available time. The two things I’m wondering are a) with how much accuracy do I have to hit my target times? and b) about once every few weeks I’m going to have to work a 12 a.m. - 8 a.m. shift where I won’t be able to get in any core sleep. On those days should I just forget the core cleep and stick to the scheduled naps or should I try to make it up?
Also, I read elsewhere that this style of sleep is not as beneficial if I have to use an alarm clock. The point being that it works a lot better if I am truly subject to by my circadian rhythm and wake up when it tells me to wake up, and fall asleep when it tells me to fall asleep. Is this true? Should I use an alarm clock to begin, or should I begin training my circadian rhythm to wake me up?
Also, (again) I am not very good at making myself fall asleep. In the beginning, if I lie down for my nap and don’t fall asleep, should I get up when that time is up and continue with the day as if I did fall asleep? or should I wait till I nap for 20 minutes?
I’m shooting for the Everyman pattern 3 hour core sleep and 3 20 minute naps.
Thanks again for this guide and advice.
By Garrett on Sep 23, 2008
I think polyphasic sleep would be great for school, as long as you can keep yourself disciplined in the beginning! I wish I had know about it so I could have done it during my time in school. As per your concerns:
Definitely use an alarm clock. It will be impossible to adapt to the schedule without using one as you will sleep much past your target times. Eventually you may be able to wake up when your alarm would otherwise wake you, but that will take quite a while to happen, and even longer to happen reliably.
I too was not confident in my napping abilities. However with practice it become easy. I have a list of suggestions and tips on this page ( http://ohgodthechicken.com/2008/05/20/how-to-fall-asleep-quickly/ ). I would recommend lying down for 25 minutes regardless whether you sleep or not. You need to not only train your body to fall asleep at your command, but also get it used to a regular schedule. You will get tired. Especially the first week or so. But as you begin to nap consistently, you will become less and less tired, until you feel more rested than you did getting your normal amount of sleep while monophasic.
In order to do this however, you must be extremely strict with your schedule. A 3 hr core + 3×20 is a very aggressive schedule which will be difficult to adapt to. However, if you can manage to go at least 2 or 3 weeks (ideally 4-5) with minimal mistakes (ie. missing only a nap or two per week, and taking your naps within 30 min of your schedule), I would suspect you will be well on your way to adaptation, where you will feel fine, sleep well, and eventually be able to play with different schedule permutations, and see how you handle skipped naps, and making your schedule more flexible. Starting with a 6 hr core + 1×20, or a 4.5 hr core +2×20, will still require the discipline to adapt to, however you will most likely be less tired during the adaptation phase, and be less likely to oversleep.
I am now happily settled into a 4.5 hr core plus 1 or 2 naps at no particular time of day.
Once you’re adapted, you can work in events like working a 12 am to 8am shift, but I wouldn’t mess around with it until at least three weeks of strict adherence to the schedule.
As you can see, I cannot emphasize enough the strictness of the adaptation phase. I say this only because I want to recommend the optimal adaptation strategy for you. It will make your life much easier in the long run as you will adapt a quickly as possible and be more flexible with your schedule.
Good luck to you, and keep me posted on your progress. If you would like to use this blog to record your progress, I can set up an account for you. Let me know if you have any other questions.
By Andrew on Sep 24, 2008
I have just recently started polyphasic sleep, but the way i have gone about differs from any of the methods described here, i was wondering if the way i it do is anygood. I don’t take what you might call a core sleep, or naps, i actually take sleep for maybe 2-3 hours and then wake for 6-9 hours this gives me an overall sleeping time of 8hours, which is regular. my plan is that when i get used to this i will cut it down to 1 hours sleep every three hours. what do you think?
thanks in advance, andrew
By Andrew on Nov 11, 2008
hi excellent guide. just have a couple of questions.im thinking of having one core and 2 naps. how important is it more important to have the naps at the same time everyday or having the naps at diffrent times on diffrent days but more evenly spread through out the day?
By jon on Dec 29, 2008
Andrew,
*Sorry for the delayed response*
The sleep schedule you suggest sounds fascinating to me. If that sounds like it would be the best adaptation style for you, then you should definitely give it a try.
One thing I have learned is that the ideal nap lengths is around 20 minutes. Any longer and you will drop into much deeper sleep and have a hard time waking up and be tired once you do. On the flip side, the shortest core sleep I would recommend is 3 hrs (or two 1.5 hr cycles). By waking up in between cycles you ensure you are interrupting your sleep at your most awake time rather than in deep sleep.
So, if you plan on sleeping every 3 or 4 hrs, I would say to aim for 20 minute naps rather than hr long ones. This is the Uberman system and you can find many resources on that topic around the internets.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.
-Andrew
By Andrew on Jan 13, 2009
Jonathan,
With a schedule including 2 naps, you have a bit of flexibility with your naps. Now that I have been on some sort of sleep schedule for nearly a year, I am able to get my 4.5 hrs of sleep at night and take 1 or 2 naps throughout the day pretty much at any time is convenient with relatively little ill effects (I may get a tad tired if I haven’t had a nap all day for example).
However, when you are first adapting to the schedule (the first month or so) I would recommend being as strict as possible. This will help reduce the length of the transition period as well as keeping you less tired. I would say a reasonable adaptation phase window of nappage (if you will) would be +/- 1 hr, or within a 3 hr window (i know the post says 2, but for adaptation, 1 would be better).
If its a regular schedule, but MWF are scheduled differently from T R Sat Sun for example, just do your best to get the timing as close to each other as possible. I’m convinced it would still work out though.
Good luck to you!
-Andrew
By Andrew on Jan 14, 2009
Hi,
I need some help. I have been on polyphasic sleep for 2 weeks last year and I loved it. I had so much energy and also my health condition was much better. I had to stop it due to some business issues that didn’t allow me to do the naps. I have been on a 3h core sleep with 3×20 min naps (8am/12.30pm/9pm).
Now I am trying to get back into my sleep patter for over a month now but it seems impossible. What happens is that in the first night (I sleep from 1am to 4am) everything is ok. I wake up a bit tired but manage to stay awake. During the day I do my naps and stick to the 20 min thanks to the sleep tape I use. The next night I got to sleep on time again but when I wake up at for on the second day it is like my brain is flooded with melatonin to an extend that I only manage to switch off the alarm clock and fall down on the sofa and I am knocked out completely. A few hours later I wake up again. Sometimes I ignore that I overslept and do my usual naps to try it again the next night. However also the third night when I get up at 4am the same thing happens. It is unusually strong and the first time I went polyphasic I never had such big problems. Its like my brain saying “no way you gonna go back”. So I stop and go back to monophasic for a few day to give me a fresh start. However, it happens over and over again. Getting a bit frustrated with myself because I am very disciplined in what I am doing.
Have you had an experience like this after you stopped and started again or can you tell me how I can make adjustment so that I can get back into the sleep pattern?
Cheers,
- Carsten
By Carsten on Mar 6, 2009
Hey Andrew,
I’ve been reading up on polyphasic sleeping the last couple of days, and i figure it could help me. However, i’m having trouble making a good sleeping schedule.
Since i’m a student I have to be in school for 5 to 6 hours. which means i have no time to go off and sleep for 20 minutes. i’m pretty busy from 9 till 3 everyday. Is there a way to work a polyphasic sleeping schedule around that?
I thought about using the everyman 3 nap system but then with a smaller 1.5 hour break in the middle. the naps being at 4am 8am and 5-6pm(after dinner) and the core sleep at 11pm. let me know what you think.
-Alex
By Alex on Jun 15, 2009
Hi Alex,
If I were a student with a similar schedule, here is what I would do.
With school from 9 am to 3 pm everyday, I would start with a 4.5 hr core plus 2 naps (with the option of a third). Lets assume you need to wake up at 7:30 to make it to class by 9:00. I would head to school, and as soon as I got home, I would wind down and take my first nap (likely 4:00pm ish). Then regular activities in the afternoon, dinner in the evening, and a second nap sometime after dinner in the 9:30-10:30 range. This way I will be rested enough to stay up until my 3:00 am bed time, giving me 4.5 hours till my alarm goes off in the morning. If I were to be more conservative for the adaptation phase, I would make sleep in as long as possible and split up the time after school and evenly distribute three naps rather than two.
Things to Note:
I personally prefer to wake up at as “normal” a time as possible (like 7:30am) because I’ve found it is significantly easier to stay up late than wake up early. In your plan, if I understand it correctly, you will be waking up at 2 am. This time period has a number of things working against you including your natural circadian rythm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm), friends/family/cohorts will be asleep, and the fact that nothing interesting in the real world is going on that also might help you stay awake.
By Andrew on Jun 18, 2009
Hello,
I’ve been attempting to adjust to the Everyman since Tuesday (it’s Saturday now), and I’m a bit frustrated because I still feel sleep deprived. The naps are refreshing, but whenever I wake up from my core nap (3 or 4.5 hours, although my ultimate goal is 3) I feel pretty awful. Beginnings of headaches, puffy eyes, tired body, the like. I tried 5 hours last night thinking that 1) I’m tired and 2) my ’sleep cycle’ isn’t actually 90 minutes. I felt a little more awake this morning, but I think that’s because I simply slept more. Do you have any recommendations? I would really like to make this work. I’m currently trying to adjust to a 1-4, 8-8:20, 2-2:20, 8-8:20 schedule.
Thanks for the advice,
Julia
By Julia on Jul 25, 2009
hi andrew!
i recently read and became very curious about the uberman cycle
it would be perfect for my type of sleep as i have trouble actually falling asleep and feel rarely rested afterwards no matter how long or short that sleep is
i also read it always has to be the same time span in between naps to maintain the uberman cycle
is it possible to adjust that time to better fit into let’s say a university schedule. of course i could just take a nap during lectures if my sleeping schedule tells me so but i doubt it would be of benefit for the outcome of my studies^^
apparently you seem to be able to take your naps randomly throughout the day on an everyman cycle so i hope the same is true for the uberman cycle
thanks in advance for any advice
By Morten on Nov 5, 2009
Hi Morten,
Thanks for reading.
The short of it is, the less naps you incorporate into your schedule, the more strict you will need to be to keep your body in rythm. If you’re doing a schedule with one or two naps in it, once adapted you should be able to be fairly flexible in spacing them out though the day. However if you’re doing Uberman, (from what I’ve researched - I’ve never done it) it is imperative to stick strictly to a schedule to avoid feeling tired and lethargic.
For a university schedule, I would recommend an Everyman schedule with two or three naps and attempt to have them fit in your schedule as regularly as possible - however with a light system such as this, it will not be too much to your detriment if naps are not exactly consistent.
Hope this helps - let me know if you have any other questions.
By Andrew on Nov 5, 2009
Hey curious as to why with a 3hr core sleep you couldn’t then take two 30 minute naps during the day instead of three 20 minute ones. Is your sleep cycle too different after 20mins?
Thanks beforehand for the info.
By kerry morrison on Nov 16, 2009
Hi Kerry,
The short of it is that I attain “rest” by the number of sleep cycles I go through, rather than the actual minutes slept. For me, the difference between a 30 minute nap and 20 minute nap is pretty negligible, however only taking 2 naps (regardless or length) as opposed to 3 is very significant (I would be cutting my total daily cycles down from 5 to 4).
By Andrew on Nov 16, 2009