And in other news, I was learning about Leonardo DaVinci’s uberman sleep schedule — apparently the man only slept in 20-minute increments every four hours — and that reminded me of the time that I tried a modified version of the uberman schedule. It went like this:
- 3.5 hours of sleep from about 1:30am – 5am
- Four 30-minute naps spaced regularly throughout the day, but I can’t remember when exactly
- For a total of 5.5 hours of sleep in every 24-hour period
Why I did it
I’m weird.
No but really, doesn’t it ever bug you that you spend almost a third of your life asleep? It’s one thing to spend our lives metaphorically asleep, that’s bad enough, but we actually literally sleep our lives away. I haven’t personally done the math, but somewhere I saw something about sleeping decades of our life away. DECADES. Nooooooo
Humans didn’t used to be monophasic sleepers, you know. We were polyphasic back in the day. We were at least biphasic until after the Industrial Revolution. Seriously. The idea that we are supposed to sleep a solid 8 hours in a row is a relatively new idea.
When I did it
I want to say it was May/June 2013. Maybe 2014? Somewhere in there. However, I only did it for about 7 weeks. Or… I don’t remember… 6 weeks? 8 weeks? Between 6 and 8 weeks.
What it was like
It sucked at first, but I’d anticipated that. It took about 3 weeks of sticking to the new schedule religiously before the feeling of being a zombie finally wore off.
The four weeks after that were amazing in some ways. You know that feeling of finding $20 stuck in between your couch cushions? Imagine that feeling, but with time. Sleeping so little suddenly gave me more hours in the day, and that was amazing.
Buuuut
I also found I tended to waste those extra hours. I didn’t know what to do with the extra time! And sometimes, especially late at night, I was so tired that I couldn’t use that time productively, anyway. LOL
Why I stopped
The hardest thing about a polyphasic sleep cycle is that it just doesn’t fit with ordinary modern life. We very much live in a 9 to 5 world, and trying to hold a schedule that goes against the grain of that structure is tough.
For example, if I missed one of my half-hour naps, or even got to it late, I was RUINED for the rest of the day. I had to have them at very precise times or else I would get very messed up, very quickly. Given the schedule that I had at the time, my weird polyphasic sleep schedule was doable for while, but then I realized that my schedule was too variable for it to be sustainable. In the end, sleeping like a normal modern human when everyone else sleeps was far more flexible.
But I do like getting up at 5am.
That’s been my new habit, and I really like that. It’s not quite giving me back 3 hours of my day like the polyphasic sleep cycle did, but it comes close. I’m not productive after 9pm anyway, and I am most productive in the morning. The simple change of deciding to go to bed by 9 and get up by 5 has been nearly as good as a polyphasic sleep cycle.
Yeah, anyway. Now you know.
Random information you didn’t ask for, but there you have it. My eight week polyphasic sleep experiment. I tried it so you don’t have to! You’re welcome.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
2 Comments
Candace Sommer-Van Auken · February 12, 2020 at 12:08 pm
A good book to add to your reading list: Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, by Matthew Walker. That third of our lives that we’re “wasting”? It’s not wasted. As someone who writes, who hopefully values higher mental functions and creativity, you need to understand that skimping on sleep is the single worst thing you can do to your mind and body. And no, you can’t just “make it up later.” As someone with severe sleep apnea, someone who.is unable to get enough deep, restorative sleep each night (and who is therefore chronically sleep- starved) I always want to dope slap people are perfectly capable of having a good night’s sleep but who complain that it’s “a waste of time.” Grr. Rant-mode: Off.
The Real Person!
Well, you write as though I do not value sleep or do not sleep. If you notice, at the end I mentioned my 9pm bedtime and 5am wake-up time — I get 8 hours 90% of the time. And I’m sorry you have sleep apnea. That really sucks.