Polyphasic Sleeping : What is it?
The normal sleep pattern of one approximately eight hour session per day is somewhat inefficient. Basically, you can get rid of inefficient sleep by sleeping only six times a day for twenty minutes at a time. This type of sleep is called “polyphasic sleeping,” also known as “Superman” or “DaVinci” sleep. You train your body to immediately start a REM cycle the moment you fall asleep such that you only need to sleep in several sessions for a total of two to three hours per day. The most common convention seems to be a twenty to thirty minute nap every four hours.
Why the hell would you want to do that?
Most people look at me funny when I tell them about this schedule, but it sounds like a fantastic system to me. Having twenty-one or twenty-two hours of waking time per day? Imagine how much you could get done! However, it does sounds like a pretty hard thing to get into because the first couple weeks, while you’re training your body, you feel extremely sleep deprived. Some people probably wonder why the hell you would ever want to start a sleeping pattern like this, but sleep manipulation is something I’ve always found interesting, and I’ve wanted to try this ‘Superman’ sleep schedule for a while, a convenient opportunity just never presented itself. I started it on something a whim and mostly because I have the time to try something like this at the moment, but I have several other beneficial reasons too.
Potential Benefits
A cure for insomnia?
Sleep has been a tricky thing for me ever since life got a little bit during college. I developed terrible insomnia, which of course makes a normal sleep schedule even more inefficient because you waste so much time trying to fall asleep. Also, lying awake because your mind is buzzing with usually pretty miserable thoughts is awful and annoying as hell. It seems like all the things that are bothering me can’t be pushed out of my head when I’m trying to fall asleep. I often feel progressively less tired after lying down to go to sleep. If polyphasic sleep can make me fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow… well damn, that would be amazing, not to mention a nice work around for the incessant buzzing going on in the back of my mind.
More Time
Needless to say, gaining about six hours or more per day would allow me to get so much more stuff done. I’ve recently had this problem where I do a lot of nothing and end up wasting a good amount of my time. Polyphasic sleep would probably force me to be more productive because if you’ve got to be awake 20+ hours a day, you might as well find something to do or else you’re going to die of boredom. I’d have to find something to do with myself in order to not fall asleep.
Lose the emptiness
Another problem I’ve had lately is that I get to the end of my day and feel like I haven’t accomplished anything or that there hasn’t been any meaning to my day. So far, my observation with polyphasic sleep is that you don’t really have defined days, just time when you are awake and the short times when you sleep. Hence, the emptiness I sometimes feel at the end of a day is negated due to the lack of a normal ‘day’ structure.
Mask the loneliness
For eighteen years, I slept with a warm cat snuggled up next to me and for certain periods thereafter, I slept next to another person. I definitely sleep better when cuddling up next to another warm body. Right now, that’s not something I can count on having. But hooray! If I only sleep 2 hours a day and in short, instantaneous-sleep, naps at that, then I won’t notice the lack of another presence next to me.
Long work days? No problem!
I start a real world job in about a month. (Scary… ) Anyway, it’s entirely possible that I will have to work days that are more than eight or nine hours. That’s just the unfortunate nature of the beast in some science jobs. I think I will be less unhappy with 10+ hour days if I can go home and still have another ten hours to myself to do whatever I want.
Spend time with self
I’ve felt very disconnected and apathetic with respect to myself lately or just not had any real sense of myself or what I want to do with my time. I’ve found that staying awake more on the polyphasic sleep forces me to spend time alone and actually do something productive with that time. In a sense, I am forced to ‘hang out’ with myself, something I’ve been avoiding recently. It’s only been about one day and I already feel more connected to myself. Hopefully, I can continue to establish and strengthen this connection and not let it fall by the wayside.
An exercise in will power
Polyphasic sleep seems like a pretty tough thing to adjust to, and I have very little will power when it comes to things that are difficult. I usually throw in the towel pretty quickly when things get tough and no one is relying on me. My will power decreases even more when I’m sleep deprived so… this will be good for me? I’ll be pretty pleased with myself if I manage to get this working because I know it’s not going to be easy.
An interesting experiment
I’ve been monitoring my sleep for about two and a half years now, and I find all the different ways I’ve messed with my sleep up until now pretty interesting. Why not try the extreme? Seeing as I have a month to do whatever I want before life starts, I might as well try this polyphasic thing now. I don’t know when I’ll have a convenient chance to try it again in the future, and if it works out well, I think I stand to gain a lot or at the very least and interesting experience.
