Everyone's talking about it.
My polyphasic sleep schedule.
Hey everyone. It seems nowadays everybody is talking about polyphasic sleep. If you haven't heard of it, here's a quick rundown: a monophasic sleeper has one rest time, the big chunk of the day they spent producing z's where a biphasic or polyphasic sleeper sleeps less at a stretch, twice or several times a day, respectively.
I don't know quite where I fit into all of this. If you didn't know, I work two jobs and spend a lot of time writing and researching otherwise. Most days I sleep 2-4 hours at night and maybe another 2-3 hours in the middle of the day; I get about 18-20 waking hours per day in usually.
It was really hard to get used to. When I first got my second job I was downright exhausted constantly. Now, having done this for going on seven months I really like it. I get a lot done (or not done sometimes) every day, I've also become talented at sleeping. That might sound strange but I'm serious; it used to take me a while to fall asleep at any given time but now I can put down my head and be out within minutes.
Some people have asked if my health seems to have deteriorated and the answer is: I don't think so. I have a rather stout immune system to start and I'm very in tune with what's going on inside. If I run a couple days in a row with only an hour or two sleep at most I can feel illness sneaking up on me. With a day's rest I can be back to normal, no problem.
On a side note it really slays me nowadays when the girls I work with complain about being tired when they woke up three hours ago and spend, at most, 10 hours per day conscious. I'm not exaggerating those numbers either -_-
Maybe over time I'll have more thoughts on the subject. For now, what do you guys think? What sort of schedule rules your life?
-- The only constant is change --
Resources and other stuff:
Wikipedia
Steve Pavlina's Site
A blog about polyphasic sleep"
More info at Supermemo
Posts
It is a known fact that the less time you spend in bed trying to sleep, the quicker you will be able to get to sleep.
ReplyDeleteThis is where several strategies arose from:
If you are unable to sleep for more than 30 minutes, get up, walk around the house once, do something really boring for 30 minutes, and then try go back to sleep.
I am a polyphasic sleeper myself, and If you check out my block I have some more resources which are a little more scientific. http://thegeck.blogspot.com
Regular sleep is more important than the amount of sleep, in my opinion, and how you sleep seems to be a completely reasonable structure. Other popular structures are Everyman, Uberman, and Siesta. Check them out!
i've been polyphasic my whole life, just didn't know what to call it...
ReplyDelete