The Idea, Some Background, and My First Nap
I’ve always hated the idea that upwards of a third of my life has been spent in a state of unproductive inactivity. Which is not to say that I’ve always had productive activities to fill the other two thirds, but simply that wasting that third never really appealed to me. Until recently, the idea of shorter naps rather than the customary eight hour block had occurred to me as a potential alternative, but I had never worked out a successful or plausible plan for significantly decreasing the amount of time spent sleeping, and following a number of unsuccessful experiments I found myself giving up on the concept.
Thursday afternoon I ran across a blog by chance here. While initial results of this specific case seemed less than promising, my fascination got the better of me and I read on to find that the uberman routine (six twenty minute periods of sleep daily, spaced out every four hours) seemed to be very successful both for the author and for a second subject. That being the case, and given my current excess of free time during which I should be able to adapt to the new routine, I’ve decided to give Polyphasic sleep a fair trial. I will, of course, be carefully monitoring my own mental and physical health over the course of the experiment, as I am not entirely without my doubts. Cutting three quarters of my total daily sleep could have some interesting effects, or some very drastic ones, and I will be monitoring both closely.
That said, I’ve found some useful little tips here (the author of these is actually the sister of the previous blog’s author), and find the author’s insight to be quite sound, in comparison to what little other reliable data I could find on the subject and in relation to what I know about human sleep patterns. I’ll be following the schedule put forth in that blog, as I’ve no reason to alter it at this point in time. Also worth mentioning is Steve Pavlina’s 2005 blog on the subject. He goes into significant detail when describing his experiences with the schedule, and really puts the whole process into intelligent perspective, injecting his thoughts and some small changes into the routine. I’m currently reading this in the time between naps.
Speaking of which, my first nap was unsuccessful. I was unable to fall asleep within my allotted time, rather beginning to drift in the last minutes before my alarm woke me. I’m going to shift my schedule back thirty minutes for simplicity’s sake, so I’ll be napping at 1, 5, and 9 – am and pm. I believe I may have eaten a bit too soon before the nap (around 12, I went for the nap at 1:30). In any event, less than an hour before nap number two, and I could definitely use it. I haven’t slept since I woke around eight o’clock yesterday morning, in an attempt to deliberately force myself to nap. It seems, however, that my body is used to long periods of forced wakefulness. I may find myself taking longer to adjust than I had hoped.
Ah well, more as it comes.
Edit: As I’ve completed Steve Pavlina’s blog, I should mention that his is by far the most in-depth blog I’ve found of a success story, and it seems likely that his blog has been the basis of a majority of research done by the other bloggers I’ve linked to in this article.
