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Polyphasic Sleep is a sleeping schedule that involves sleeping in multiple short "naps" as oposed to all in one giant chunk. Converting onto this schedule is known to be a very difficult and terrible process, but the ammount of time awake gained in a day is well worth it. A very popular schedule is to sleep every 4 hours, 20 minutes, ammounting to 20+ hours of being actively awake a day. The only flaw is that you've always got to have a place to sleep, and most of all, boredom. Does/has anybody used a Polyphasic Sleep Schedule?

Personally, I would be on a polyphasic schedule if it were possible with school; sadly it is not. My first summer out of High School I plan to convert (so much more time with college).

Hm, I don't know. How much REM sleep can you get in twenty minutes? And what if you can't fall asleep in time? It seems like a pretty strict schedule. And I like sleep!

Oh, God yes. This is something I've been considering for a while (on the schedule you described, which also goes by the name of Uberman). I just need a two-week vacation to break myself into it.
I should be able to schedule classes around it, and it'd go wonderfully with other lifestyle choices I've been meaning to make, such as eating smaller meals but more frequently and drinking substantially less alcohol in general. I've long been of the opinion that there are not enough hours in the day, so six extra would be very welcome.
Hell, I might be able to break it in around mid-December. I'll keep a vlog if I do.

Skyling wrote:Hm, I don't know. How much REM sleep can you get in twenty minutes? And what if you can't fall asleep in time? It seems like a pretty strict schedule. And I like sleep!

The idea is to train your brain to snap immediately into REM sleep. When you sleep 8 hours, only 60-90 minutes of that are REM sleep, and the rest is miscellaneous sleep stages that science has so far been unable to find a use for. Well... if I remember correctly, you dream in stage 4 or so, so snapping immediately into REM could very well mean that you skip over the stage where you dream. Anyway, I remember reading somewhere that polyphasic sleep is tricking your brain into reverting to a distant primitive that ancestors of humans might have had to rely on at some point, wherein they could only afford to sleep for brief periods before having to be active again.

I like it when I wake up after about 8 hours of sleep, and then go right back to sleep. That's when I have lucid dreams, which are cool. So no, I wouldn't consider this.

Man, I wish I could get away with this, but under my living conditions, I wouldn't even consider it until I moved out.

Other than that snag, it seems a very efficient, if slightly creepy way of living. It seems like there'd be a lot of negative side effects over time, which is another deterrent to me.

Tsukatu wrote:Well... if I remember correctly, you dream in stage 4 or so, so snapping immediately into REM could very well mean that you skip over the stage where you dream.

Many people who use the Uberman sleep schedule describe very intense and emotional dreams. Some consider this a flaw; I view it as an extreme plus.

Tsukatu wrote: Hell, I might be able to break it in around mid-December. I'll keep a vlog if I do.

If you do this, please notify me. I'm interested in how difficult it is switching.

Orange introduced me to this about a week ago, and I was going for it. The problem is that I'm starting to go to school at Monday, and if I switched to this polyphasic thing on that day, I'd get to the new school very very tired.

So yeah, I want to try this on my next 1.5 week vacation, as Tsukatu.

I've always wanted to try a polyphasic sleep system and I think I actually said I was going to do it a couple of years ago. Never got around to it. I ought to, if I can get my schedule aligned with it, because normal sleep doesn't quite do it for me.

Yeah:

2007 wrote:Jul 27 22:32:58 <KinGAleX> Man, I really want to try out polyphasic sleep.
Jul 27 22:33:14 <maestro> So do I.
Jul 27 22:33:28 <maestro> But modern life has too many commitments.
Jul 27 22:33:34 <TheSeer> Screw Polyphasic. Lucid Dream ATW.
Jul 27 22:34:38 <KinGAleX> maestro: Word.
Jul 27 22:34:42 <KinGAleX> I'm guessing I'll try it out when I finish school.
Jul 27 22:36:48 <Atilla> I would totally suck at polyphasic sleep.
Jul 27 22:37:10 <Atilla> It takes me about an hour just to fall asleep.
Jul 27 22:37:21 <Atilla> I'd spend all day in bed.
Jul 27 22:45:44 <KinGAleX> maestro: Would you be willing to be my polyphasic sleep buddy over the summer holidays?
Jul 27 22:46:00 <maestro> Heheh.
Jul 27 22:46:01 <maestro> Perhaps.
Jul 27 22:46:21 <KinGAleX> I wonder if I could do five hours at night, and five hours in the afternoon.
Jul 27 22:46:23 <KinGAleX> I'd totally dig that.
Jul 27 22:47:14 <maestro> Mm.
Jul 27 23:10:18 <KinGAleX> Does anyone else here sleep naked?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Friars_Club

there may be some inopertune side effects

Tsukatu wrote: I should be able to schedule classes around it, and it'd go wonderfully with other lifestyle choices I've been meaning to make, such as eating smaller meals but more frequently and drinking substantially less alcohol in general. I've long been of the opinion that there are not enough hours in the day, so six extra would be very welcome.

On a related note, I'm probably going to be Dwight Schrute for Halloween.

Blackson wrote:Personally, I would be on a polyphasic schedule if it were possible with school; sadly it is not. My first summer out of High School I plan to convert (so much more time with college).

That's exactly what I was planning to do when I first heard about this.

Wow, sounds great. I might try that sleep pattern one day.

Blackson wrote:Personally, I would be on a polyphasic schedule if it were possible with school; sadly it is not. My first summer out of High School I plan to convert (so much more time with college).

I could definitely sleep 20 mins. every 4 hours in my high school without there being a problem. :) Hell, I could sleep 4 hours every 20 mins.

I'm skeptical. Seems like you'd be on your feet so much more that you'd run out of energy, and doesn't sleep help your bone strength or something? Like, physiologically, we're conditioned to lie down for hours at a time, very regularly.

Oh well. I'd read more on Wikipedia but I'm really tired. ;)

EDIT: It would be Buckminster Fuller, wouldn't it? Also, way down at the bottom it mentions something about "social problems," which would indeed be prevalent, seems to me.

Growth occurs during sleep, in particular. I wouldn't recommend this to any male younger than 23 or any female younger than 19.

scythe33 wrote:Growth occurs during sleep, in particular. I wouldn't recommend this to any male younger than 23 or any female younger than 19.

I'm tall enough.
In fact, will polyphasic sleep help me shrink?

I really want to try polyphasic sleep sometime. Unfortunately, school and work schedule prohibits it for now. Perhaps one day I'll be self-employed with no social life?

Personally I think this will not work with me. You're getting much less sleep a day than usual, and I'd have trouble waking up after the 20 minutes.

For me, converting would be the hard part. It sounds damn interesting, but I'd end up giving up after a couple of tries. Although I do tend to run on very little sleep as it is, so perhaps I'm better built for polyphasic than I think.

I like sleeping way too much to sleep for only 4 hours at a time.

Zephyr wrote:Personally I think this will not work with me. You're getting much less sleep a day than usual, and I'd have trouble waking up after the 20 minutes.

The whole point of polyphasic is that you get the sleep you need in a much shorter time, since you enter REM almost immediately.

I get about 4 hours of sleep a day on school days, but all at once. Then spend the next 20 hours awake wondering "Fuck, what did I do?"

This sounds like a change I couldn't successfully make. Once I fall asleep, I stay asleep, and if I'm not really tired, I don't sleep. I'd like to shake the hand of the people who do manage this, however. That's impressive.

I was really itnerested in this 'till I read scthe's comment, and realized that my mom sure as hell would not go for this.

My only concern here is that I own only one alarm clock, and I'm pretty sure you can't go back once you go... polyphasic.

I don't understand, what is the difference between REM sleep and normal sleep apart from the fact that your eyes move rapidly?