
An Experiment: Polyphasic Sleeping - googletron
http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/19990471857/ill-sleep-when-i-am-dead-1
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experiment0
I attempted the Uberman sleep cycle about a year ago. I managed to get by with
20 minutes sleep every 4 hours. I lasted 2 weeks before bad things started
happening (hallucinating, extreme weakness, and major cognitive
deterioration). It was a fun experience but something I am convinced is
fabricated and doesn't work despite some peoples anecdotal evidence.

Eventually I ran into this blog and when I read it I immediately quit the
cycle <http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm>

If anyone has any questions about it/are thinking of trying a sleep cycle I
would be glad to answer!

~~~
elektronaut
That was my experience as well when I tried it 10 years ago.

I started with Uberman, but had to shift to a schedule with 4 hours of core
sleep towards the end of the second week, as I was getting severely sleep
deprived and unable to function. I'd gone close to four days without sleep a
few years prior, and the feeling was pretty much the same.

My interest was sparked as I've always had trouble with my circadian cycle,
and my free running sleep eventually evolved to a polyphasic rythm to keep up
with work, study and social life. I eventually had to give that up, as I ended
up having extremely vivid dreams that were hard to discern from reality.

Getting a good nights sleep and possibly an afternoon nap really is the key.

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calydon
It's hard for me to say anything on this topic without resorting to hyperbole.
I have a serious sleep disorder and in desperation, I tried a polyphasic
experiment about 7 years ago.

I was determined to see it through no matter what the cost. The conclusion I
came to was that it is a complete scam, perpetrated on life-hackers who are
often, productivity hounds. Polyphasic sleep does not work; it does not
improve productivity; it is not healthy. The only people who have slept like
this on a consistent basis are soldiers or other people in extreme situations,
where wakefulness is equivalent to survival and so the damage to your mind is
a trade-off. If you are not fighting to stay alive, then you gain nothing by
not following your body's natural rhythms, and you can seriously mess yourself
up by experimenting with alternatives.

Then again, you're young so you'll probably recover. Probably.

~~~
cleaver
I know a developer who tried polyphasic sleep. He said it worked as far as
productivity goes, but his unwelcome side effect was that he would get sick
very easily.

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jdkent
I had a biphasic schedule about 8 years ago for 9 months. I slept at night
from 1:30am to 6:00am and in the afternoon from 3:00pm to 4:30pm. I was never
tired. I felt like I had two days in one. It was great. I worked from 7am -
2pm, ate lunch, and went back to sleep. When I woke up at 4:30pm, I had 9
hours of free time until I would sleep next.

I don't have a flexible work schedule like that anymore, and now that I live
in San Francisco, the environment is not exactly quiet enough at 3pm for
quality sleep.

I recommend trying it out if you have the flexibility. Avoid caffeine. Treat
the afternoon sleep time, the same as you would the night time. Block out
noise and light. Be consistent. Having two days in one is pretty awesome.

~~~
stcredzero
I have a biphasic sleep schedule, but it just means it takes me two sessions
to sleep through the night.

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brokentone
I experimented with this though college. I found the idea that you could have
extra months in your year amazing. But I could never stick with it for more
than a couple days at a time. It was primarily this that kept kicking me off:

"I also have a theory about just being conscience that long, you start to lose
a sense of time there is no finality just this never ending loop of waking up
and sleeping"

I really decided I needed significant time sleeping to reset my brain.
Otherwise it did just feel like a single extended consciousness.

And if you believe John Medina in Brain Rules (<http://www.brainrules.net/>)
sleep is what solidifies memory. Which missing that isn't so helpful to a
college student.

~~~
freehunter
I never tried any unusual sleep schedule, but I have worked third shift while
trying to keep a social life.

It _does_ get hard, even on a third shift schedule that millions of normal
people deal with, to tell the days apart. When the day switches in the middle
of your work shift, when it's light out all "night", even a normal third shift
schedule makes the days run together. I did it for a year, and not a single
day went by when it didn't feel like I took a short nap through the day then
worked the rest of the time. Even when I got 8 hours of sleep.

I started drinking. I started smoking. I got short with my friends. I had to
quit, because when there are no "days", life became meaningless to me. It was
just one long night that lasted for a year. Things that happened ten minutes
ago went into my memory as happening yesterday. When I quit my job and went
back to sleeping normal, I stopped my self destructive habits literally
overnight.

Millions of normal healthy people do it every day. But beware of forcing
yourself into sleep schedules that you are not mentally prepared to handle.
Know when to throw in the towel.

~~~
calloc
My sleep schedule naturally is all over the board, that is just the way my
body is designed, I can't help it, and I have found my days running together
in some sort of glob, like there is nothing in between.

To me it is a weird sensation, but being a work-aholic I hardly noticed it
till I started being off by a day or two and my boss caught me on it. I
started making sure to take the weekends off and it has slowly corrected
itself, now I take the weekends off and do what I want to do not work and it
is absolutely fantastic.

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Monotoko
I saw an article that debunks a lot written by a doctor, that might be biased
but it's still worth a read:
<http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic2010.htm>

Don't get me wrong, I've tried it, and failed like many others before me. I'd
tried the uberman method for about 2 weeks before falling, and I didn't feel
very productive during that time at all (although there were times that I felt
more awake than I ever have done, and time seemed to merge, days didn't
exist... it's a weird feeling)

I've now adapted the old version of polyphasic sleep, take a nap in the
afternoon and sleep for about 6 hours on a night and it seems to be doing me
well :)

But! I am tempted to give the uberman method another try, and I will write
about it if anyone would be interested?

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stevejalim
I'm the dad of a five-week old and, give or take a little, this seems pretty
much the pattern I had for weeks 0-3. The thing I found most surprising was
how I did manage to function after waking, and in a relatively short space of
time after waking. The second most surprising thing was how hellish, for me,
it felt to be waking after the naps.

Edit: Since about week 4, I've tried to pack more 'regular' sleep in.

~~~
MartinCron
That's something I remember about having an infant, how the experience of
waking up was literally painful. Sometimes, I would stay up later than was
wise, just because I was dreading the experience of dawn. Obviously, that's
not a smart strategy.

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pchristensen
This comes up on HN about once a year. Here's my blog where I wrote about
trying it: <http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/category/polyphasic/>

tl;dr version: \- the first 5-7 days are just awful but after that you're not
tired \- deviating from the schedule (say, staying awake 7 hours one time
instead of 4) is devastating \- you do feel different and perceive time
differently. Kind of like San Diego weather instead of Boston.

Interesting experience, worth a try, I'd do it again in a heartbeat if my home
and work schedule accommodated it.

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gilrain
I wouldn't even try something like this, so good on you for giving it a shot
and writing about it.

However, having researched polyphasic sleep before, my reaction at coming to
the end of your essay was surprise that you'd ended the experiment
prematurely. It seemed like you hadn't given yourself time to fully adjust. I
expected a Week 3 during which you were able to drop immediately into REM and
wake up refreshed.

I assume you just ran out of vacation, which is understandable. But it seems
unfair to judge polyphasic sleep based on an incomplete run.

~~~
googletron
That maybe the case; I am not sure; albiet by that point I quickly realized
other affects that would be make the sleeping routine, undesirable. The
sleeping may have been better in Week 3, but I did run out of vacation. :)

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Loic
If you are interested in polyphasic sleep, the best long run experiment I know
is from Steve Pavlina. 90 days of polyphasic sleep:

<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/>

~~~
Lewton
I read this some years ago.. I've since then become very skeptical about his
story. The guy makes money off of his blog, he's basically the internet
version of a life coach. Writing "inspirational" articles on how to improve
your life, with almost nothing to back them up. There's plenty incentive for
him to have fabricated this. And back when I was interested in the uberman
sleep schedule, he was the only person on the internet I could find who
claimed he had done it for more than a couple of weeks

~~~
calydon
Steve Pavlina is a known charlatan whose lies have been disproved on several
occasions.

Further reading: <http://stevepavlinalies.wordpress.com/>
[http://www.scottfreethinking.com/2010/02/why-steve-
pavlina-i...](http://www.scottfreethinking.com/2010/02/why-steve-pavlina-is-
wrong/)

I don't think he lasted 5 months on his polyphasic regimen for the same
reasons listed in the sleepmemo article.

~~~
dshaw002
I'm not debating your position on whether or not Steve did the polyphasic
sleep, but none of those links don't really have much actual evidence of him
being(or specifically call him) a liar or a charlatan.

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nsns
Interesting experiment, thanks for sharing.

Original polyphasic sleep was divided into two periods of night sleep. The
historical evidence shows this was considered normal in most pre-industrial
societies.
[http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah00034...](http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah000343.html)

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FaceKicker
Is there any actual evidence that anyone has ever been able to stick to one of
these polyphasic sleeping schedules for a long period of time? All I ever hear
about it is vague unsubstantiated claims about how a bunch of really smart
people did it their entire lives and stories about how people tried it for a
week or two and then stopped.

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AndyNemmity
I have a sort of strange sleep schedule.

I work for international teams with no one I work with being on my timezone, I
work from home.

So every day my sleep schedule is different. My wake schedule is different. I
should record my schedule since it's difficult to remember since it changes
every day.

To give some impression, yesterday I had meetings at 2am, 6am, 6pm, and 10pm.
Through that I slept, and had social time. I ate and had normal experiences.

They just weren't on any sort of real schedule. Tired? I sleep. Awake? I go do
things or work.

Anyone else do this sort thing? So far I don't ever feel "wrong" about the
schedule physically, because it's always changing. Now constant change feels
right.

Sleep all night tonight? Sure. Wake up at 2am and work till 10 am this night?
Sure. Have a meeting a 3am, then sleep till 6am, then work some more? Sure.

I just follow whatever seems like the most reasonably course of action.
Including work 10 hours today, and 6 hours the next. Whatever makes sense.

International-Logic-Phasic Sleep. Heh.

~~~
cop359
There was a while in college I was like that. It's like you confuse your
circadian rhythm enough that it stops bothering you. It was super convenient,
but once you sleep the several days in the row it starts breaking down. You
just need to constantly be changing it up a bit.

~~~
AndyNemmity
My experience is the same. If I constantly change it up, I have no problems.

On weekends I try to hold to a more timezone specific schedule, but include
odd naps at odd times to sort of keep the schedule of broken sleep.

One other aspect I've noticed is I used to feel more tired and people would
always comment on how tired I looked. Now I feel much more awake and in the
moment, although honestly I have no idea why this would matter.

I think I'm always kept at a constant state of having slept not all that long
ago, even if it was a short period of time, and that helps? This is guessing.

The other aspect is, I try to keep my sleep intervals at an hour 30. so, 1:30,
3, 4:30 hours. Not sure if that has anything to do with it, but easier for me
to wake up when I do that.

~~~
MaysonL
About 1:30 is usual natural sleep cycle length.

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jwuphysics
I've gotten locked into strange sleep cycles simply out of necessity (I am an
undergraduate student at Carnegie Mellon). I've found that, while my body will
accept a psuedo-equilibrium of somehow getting ~ 20 hours of sleep a week, it
will almost always become unsustainable after 2 weeks... in which I'll need
another day or two to recover. But after that (usually I take an entire week
off, where I get at least 30 hours of sleep) I go back into my regular routine
(note that I have a 105 minute sleep cycle, which is a little longer than most
people's:

M3:30 T0:20 W3:30 R0:20 F3:30 S7:00 U3:30

~~~
piinbinary
I'm curious: how did you figure out your sleep cycle that precisely (105
minutes)? I have been feeling like 90 minutes is not exactly right for me, but
I haven't figured out a way to measure my sleep cycle.

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scott_s
This is a perennial topic on HN. Prior discussion highlights:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464142> and
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652747>

------
googletron
Just some notes; on what I thought about polyphasic sleeping; I will answer
any questions people may have.

~~~
xutopia
It seemed like all the other articles were super positive about it. This one
seems more in line with my own experiences. I've settled on a biphasic sleep
(5-6 hours + 30-40 nap midday) but only when I can. If I have too much trouble
waking up or if I can't take a day nap I sleep like a normal person.

~~~
jerf
Can you find one of these "super-positive" people that are still doing it
after, say, a year?

Honest question, BTW, if you've got a link. I'm not aware of any, though.

------
rabble
I tried what might be called polyphasic sleeping twice. When both of my kids
were born. It sucked. Babies do it, and their parents are forced to join them
for the first few months of life. It's a damned good thing we teach kids the
normal way of sleeping, when it's night.

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jrmg
The BBC published an interesting article recently about how it was possibly
customary until fairly recently to sleep in two sessions at night, with an
hour or two of wakefulness in between them. People would get up, read, eat,
talk with their partners etc. in the wakeful hours.

TBH, I'm not sure the evidence is convincing, but it'd an interesting concept.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783>

[edit: earlier HN discussion of the BBC article:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3620742>]

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mpetr
Well, I'm not sure that's a very good idea. Apart from the fact that sleep
helps solidify facts learned during the day (not sure whether this is really
true or not but from my experience I'd say there is something to it) I
remember reading a paper claiming sleep could have a crucial function in cell
refreshing and rest even on a molecular basis. In fact, the former
physiological and psychiological effect could be very well implicated by the
latter one actually.

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fioll
"I found myself constantly switching between reading, coding or the next shiny
thing finding it hard to focus on any given one."

This is a symptom of ADD, however it is caused by lack of sleep. I experience
this, so I'm very familiar with it. I've tried CPAP, oral sleep appliances,
and everything else. Nothing has worked perfectly.

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rizumu
Well what about the siesta? Or, before lighting, people more commonly had
segmented sleep. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep>

This seems to be a modern, social issue, not so much a physical one.

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sammyo
The sailors that cross oceans single-handed use some variant of this. The
reports I've read is that the first two days are quite hard to handle but once
in the quite issolated routine it works for certain folks.

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gwern
Hm, no concrete data on mental performance on benchmarks, or recordings of
sleep data (eg. via a Zeo).

Oh well. Someday someone will do the experiment better.

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bicknergseng
Maybe it's just my lousy Dell laptop... but the difference between those two
colors on the graph is nonexistent.

