I would first take a moment to thank the StumbleUpon community. Collectively over 23,000 of you have stopped by my little blog in the past year. I am flattered and overwhelmed by the interest and hope I have provided some useful advice to everyone, and to those kind enough to leave a comment or some feedback.
Now on with the story.
Exactly one year has passed since beginning my first polyphasic sleep schedule. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my experiences and share with you some of the results.
The other day, I was thinking about how much time one could reasonably expect to gain using a polyphasic schedule. That lead me to wonder:
What is Reasonably Possible?
I personally have fallen in love with the Everyman sleep schedule of 4.5 hrs core, and one or two 20 minute naps throughout the day. It has by far been the easiest to maintain and most cohesive with my body and lifestyle. I wondered how much time this could add to a person’s waking life if it was strictly followed for a full year. The results shocked and amazed me.
The calculations are simple, but here they are if you haven’t done the math yourself already. With a 1.5 nap average at 20 minutes per nap, that comes out to exactly 5 hours of sleep per day. Assuming a normal person needs 8 hrs of sleep to feel rested without napping, the resulting amount of additional time comes to:
1095 waking hours per year.
You read that correctly – 1095 hours.
That amounts to 45.6 full days, or a full MONTH AND A HALF of extra waking time!
My Personal Results
Now the above results are of course only theoretical. Life happens: naps are skipped, alarms are missed, and business trips, vacations, projects and drunken nights will take place. However, after being on a polyphasic sleep schedule for the majority of the past year, I feel I can provide some living proof and shed some light on what is realistically possible.
Looking back on the past twelve months, I spent at least 70% of it on some form of polyphasic sleep schedule. Because my exact sleep scheduled varied over the course of the year (ranging between 3 hr core + 3 naps, 4.5 core + 1-2 naps, and 6 hr core +1 nap) I have approximated my average amount of sleep to be 5.5 hours per polyphasic day. Using these estimates and the same calculations as before, my resulting totals are:
639 additional waking hours, or 26.6 days.
And That’s Not All
If I’m not adjusted and in a regular schedule, 3 hours sleep is still difficult, but when deadlines or other reasons force me to take less sleep it becomes quite easy. But 4.5 hours is just cake. I can hardly remember the time when 4.5 hours seemed like a horrific and unfathomably miniscule amount of sleep to be had. Now, 6 hours literally feels like a luxury. It is the same feeling I would get when I slept in 10 hours on a weekend in high school or college – feeling guiltily over-rested.
Other less obvious benefits include: the ability to nap nearly anywhere, being able to fall asleep quickly (no more laying in bed wasting time waiting to fall asleep), and no jet lag (the schedule is easily shifted – even if I’m not polyphasic at the time).
The downsides: finding a time and place for a nap(s) every day, if naps are missed, more likely to get tired throughout the day (if the mind is left not being stimulated), seeming strange to the general population.
Fortunately the first two downsides are easily remedied – if there isn’t a time and place to nap, I go back to monophasic. If I get tired throughout the day, a nap or a little caffeine will do the trick (but I could see it being difficult to stay awake in a particularly boring class for those still in school).
I don’t have a solution for the last one - but fortunately I don’t really mind.
Making it Work for You
The real secret behind successfully becoming polyphasic is having a reason to need more time.
For me it was my goals in my work and play. I love my work, and want to do as much as possible to become successful. I also loved my free time. Throughout the past 365 days, my pastimes and personal goals have kept me busy to the wee hours of the morning, and then I am lucky enough to have my job to look forward to when I wake up.
However, at times when work was slow, or I was less interested in the things I was doing in my spare time, I found I would sleep more for lack of better things to do.
Sleeping is easy. Sleep fills empty time. It is the path of least resistance.
Know what your passions and goals are and work your ass off towards what makes you happy. It will be the path of more resistance, but that is what makes life worth living. If having more time in the day will help you towards those goals, you will have no problem adjusting to a polyphasic sleep schedule.
Are there things you would like to know I haven’t touched upon? Would you consider a polyphasic schedule? Post a comment and let me know!
12 Responses to “A Successful Year of Polyphasic Sleep”
Woo-hoo! Nice going, and a nice roundup post too.
Congratulations on the longest year of your life!
PD
By puredoxyk on Apr 13, 2009
Glad to see an update… I readded you to the list of current polyphasic bloggers…
http://polyphasic.dyndns.org/
Hopefully, we’ll see more polyphasic posts.
By jorel314 on May 6, 2009
Found your blog through Garry Tan. Neat post. Neat blog.
By Vik Duggal on May 7, 2009
Intriguing. Without knowing it, I’ve been living the polyphasic life since my daughter was born, and of course with a baby who nurses every couple of hours, you can’t really count on uninterrupted sleep.
However, I did notice a few things over the past 4 years of this. One is that if I get less than 3 uninterrupted hours of sleep at night, I become murderous and psychopathic. Seriously. The second thing I noticed is that left to my own devices, I take 3-4 hour naps. I just don’t wake up any sooner than that. Sometimes not even with an alarm.
Is it possible that I was just meant to sleep in 4 hour stretches?
By Reka on May 10, 2009
This is absolutely something I’ll be adapting when I graduate and am self-employed/freelancing, but it is, as you admit, very hard to keep when you are still in school, and pretty impossible to keep if you have a stricter office (that doesn’t allow for naps)
It would be very nice to actually be able to fall asleep relatively easily, too, on top of the time benefits
By Iaman on May 17, 2009
This is an interesting concept. For over thirty-five years of fifty, I’ve existed on something similar - without the naps. As a scientist, I’ve always recognized that I was probably working on a sleep deficit but my physically and intellectually active lifestyle, and my continued ability to achieve success and stay on the leading edge allowed me to discount the prevailing wisdom regarding numbers of hours of sleep required. I typically average 2-4, 36-48 hour no-sleep, constant productive output episodes per month, on average over the past 35 years. I rarely get more than 4.5 to 5 hours of sleep per night. Every eight to twelve weeks I’ll take a two day period or so and sleep 7-9 hours for two consecutive nights. I don’t have the ability to nap during the day, but I have developed a form of waking concentration/meditation that allows me to gain restorative periods that exclude outside interference save for the immediate task at hand. I fully believe that we can use our time more wisely and that exercise combined with concentration and meditation can allow us to spend far less time sleeping than we think we need.
I’ve often related that if I had three wishes I’d only need one - perfect memory, all else would fall into place. If forced to take the other two, I’d wish for the ability to eliminate sleep altogether and to eliminate the need to eat, gaining sustenance through a pill or some other form. Given these three wishes, individual productivity and creativity could achieve exponential growth. It’s good to see others working on ways to better control the sleep deficit.
By existentialed on May 25, 2009
Congrats! I have been sleeping in 20 minute intervals 6 times a day for the past week. This is the uberman sleep schedule. So far, so good, and I’m only 15. Right out of freshman year of high school. I think we would be much more productive society if everyone switched to some form of polyphasic sleep. If we can organize businesses around uberman, for example, we could increase the average lifespan of, lets say, Japan by x years. The current average lifespan in japan is 82.07 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy).
82.07 x 365.25 = 29976.0675 =average days alive.
Normal monophasic dictates we get 8 hours of sleep a night. Uberman gives us 2. 8-2=6
Thats 6 extra hours every day.
29976.0675 x 6 = 179856.405 extra hours in your lifetime.
179856.405 / 16(hours spent awake on a monophasic sleep) = 11241.0253 normal extra days.
11241.0253 / 365.25 days a year = 30.7762 extra years
Switching from monophasic to uberman in Japan increases lifespan (time wise) from 82.07 years to 112.84 years
Isn’t that worth the trouble?
By Jake on Jun 22, 2009
hi I’ve read your guide and it’s very helpful. and I’ve been trying polyphasic for several weeks. but it comes to me as a problem that i often wake up half consciously and turn off my alarm. But I don’t really remember i’m just taking a nap and often over slept. This happens every few days and it really ruined my schedule. Can you give me some advice? Contact me with email. Thx.
By Hot.pxl on Oct 10, 2009
Hi!
I’m sorry to hear you have been having troubles - that has definitely happened to me before (especially in the mornings) and has resulted in a few missed meetings/appointments over the years.
Some suggestions:
For naps, I personally really like the Placebo Sleep tracks from http://placebo.serv.co.za/?page_id=7. I really like the white noise for sleeping and have grown accustom to waking up to the ending where it goes from silence to progressively more intrusive noises.
If I suspect I may unconsciously turn off my alarm, sometimes I like to set multiple alarms in a row, spaced a few minutes from each other. I can do this on my IPhone, but if that is not an option, multiple alarm clocks may work.
One other possibility is finding or creating an alarm that will turn on the lights at a set time.
Hope this helps - let me know how it goes!
By Andrew on Oct 13, 2009
I’m am SO trying polyphasic sleep RIGHT NOW. (Don’t worry, I have been thinking about this for awhile. I’m in college, and my sleep schedules are so messed up this will probably make me feel LESS tired, not more.)
By Niniel on Nov 14, 2009
Best of luck to you Niniel! Let us all know how it goes!
By Andrew on Nov 14, 2009
Congrats. Glad someone else made it for a year, makes me hopeful for myelf –> I’m starting the “Dymaxion” sleep schedule for myself. Check it out: http://www.danceproof.com/2009/12/28/dymaxion-sleep-intro/
By Arsene Hodali on Jan 1, 2010