How much time do you spend sleeping every day? I’m guessing it’s about 8 hours. Would you like to spend less time sleeping, and more time doing stuff you enjoy? Without being tired?
One guy called Uberman thought he would like exactly that. So he did some research into sleep, and found that of the 5 sleep phases that happen during normal sleep, only one is absolutely vitally important. It’s the 5th phase, called REM (rapid eye movement). It’s the phase during which dreaming happens.
You get about one and a half hours of REM sleep every night, spaced out throughout the night in 10-20 minute chunks. Uberman fiured that if you could remove all the non-essential sleep, and only keep the REM, you would have 22-hour waking days. He experimented for a long time,and finally found a method that works.
It involves taking a 20-minute nap every 4 hours. That’s a total of 2 hours of sleep every 24-hour period.
It takes about a week for your brain to adjust. At first, it’s trying to go through the sleep phases in normal order. But it never gets to the REM sleep because you wake yourself up after 20 minutes. After a week (by this time you’re feeling like a total zombie), the brain finally realizes what you’re up to and adjusts. It jumps straight into REM the moment you fall asleep. And voila, you have 22 hours of waking time. Plus, you have actually more energy than normally! By the time you start feeling tired, it’s time for another nap.
When I first heard about it, I just knew I had to try it! It’s sooo totally nuts! So I did some preparation (like a huge to-do list to keep myself busy during the time it takes to switch) and gave it a shot. I thought I would make it.
Right. I got through my to-do list in about a day and a half, and started getting bored. I aborted the try after 4 days, since I realized I had no idea how I would fill 22-hour days.
Uberman’s sleep schedule is not for everyone. In fact, it’s for about one person in a thousand. But hey, it’s so totally nuts I just had to include it here!
Benefits of the Uberman sleep schedule:
- 22-hour waking days. Seriously, what else do you want?
- more energy than usual (unless you miss a nap). By the time you start getting tired, it’s time for another nap. So on average, each hour of your 22-hour day will be more productive than during your usual 16-hour days.
Drawbacks:
- 22 hours is a lot of time. You can get bored very easily.
- if you miss a nap, you’ll become a complete zombie until you get the next two naps in on time.
- the schedule is very inflexible. You can’t move the naps around much.
- it one week of getting used to. During this week, you’ll be a total zombie from sleep deprivation. It takes time for your brain to adjust and realize you want to get your REM sleep as soon as you lie down.
You can see there are some heavy drawbacks. The schedule is only for someone determined enough to stick through the transition period (one week is a lot longer than you think). You also need to be the kind of person who can fill a 22-hour day full of meaningful action and still complain about lack of time. Basically the mad genius type who’d accomplish twice as much as a normal human being anyway.
When I tried the switch, I went through some serious sleep deprivation (that’s normal for the transition period). I had some fun experiences with that, though.
Like one day I set my alarm clock, lied down on my bed, laid my head on my pillow, and the alarm clock sounded. I slowly got up and looked at it. Twenty minutes had passed in what felt like one second. It was the fastest I’ve ever gone to sleep in my life.
If you want to know a lot more about Uberman’s sleep schedule, check out Steve Pavlina’s account of his experiences. He successfully switched to the schedule and slept according to it for about five months. In the end he stopped because he had some changes in his life and couldn’t fit in the one-nap-every-four-hours anymore.
You can also find a lot more info there that would help you make the switch yourself, if you want to.
I’ll probably try switching again at some point in my life. But before that, I need to figure out how I would fill a 22-hour day!
Update: Hi StumbleUpon users!
If you’re interested in more crazy mind states, check out my article on Lucid Dreaming – the art of becoming aware of the fact that you’re dreaming, while you’re dreaming, and controlling what you dream about. It’s basically like having a virtual reality machine 
(plus it’s much easier than Uberman’s sleep schedule, and without negative side effects!)
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I’ve heard about this before; it’s a very interesting, but unfortunately it’s highly incompatible with the majority of the human race. If I could live as a hermit I would love to try this myself, but friends and work won’t allow me.
Good post, but I cannot understand how you would find extra hours to be boring? For me, no amount of time would be enough to do everything I’m interested in. There are just too many interesting things to learn about.
I’ve read a lot about polyphasic sleeping, and really the only reason I’m not doing it, is that there are no guarantees that it won’t have a negative effect on my health.
I’m curious about two things:
1. Is there any long term study about this? Can you damage your health if you do this, say, for years?
2. What happens if I try to do it, but only to sleep four hours? Can I still do it?
It’s an interesting topic anyway. I’ll dream about it later. =P
Why can’t you take one 2 hour long REM nap instead of multiple 20 minute REM naps?
I’ve actually done this myself for about 1 and a half months. I had a partner in doing it, during one summer vacation.
On the one hand; absolutely amazing experience. Often times I would be able to work around 50 hours on a project in just 3 days; the amount of time gain is immense.
The drawbacks on the other hand are quite serious. You must absolute be in good shape. If you’re not then you will quickly start to feel it physically. Your body also needs the time it spends lying down to re-adjust the spine and relax the muscles. After 4 weeks, I had a persistant neck-cramping and back-pains. Quite likely this was also related to the fact that I spent about 60% of my time behind a computer screen, which is quite a lot when you have so much time.
Another drawback is when you decide to have a social life again. When you decide to drink or take in any type of sedative, it’s more and more difficult to get into proper REM state and will turn you into a super-zombie (worse than the first week transition period).
After this experience, I had some side-effects for about 5 months. I believe this mostly happened because of alcohol consumption and still persisting the process, resulting in extreme sleep-deprevation (which can be fatal, be aware).
We called the experiment to a halt when it became impossible to focus and when we started to regularly oversleep simultaneously (the benefit of doing this with two people is that you can wake eachother up after the 21-25 minute nap, drawback is ofcourse that you can’t follow your own personalized schedule).
Side-effects afterwards were mostly purely physical, not mental. Mental side-effects were actually quite positive, it really opens up new ways of using your brain in strange ways. It also really helps to get used to naps – getting a 21 minute “siesta” during the day and actually feeling revitalized rocks.
Anyway, if you have the time and the opportunity, I’d definitely recommend trying it. Try to get somebody to monitor you though and make sure to listen to your body every single step of the way.
Doesn’t sleep affect other things as well, like muscle repair? Don’t you need full cycles to actually be awake? I remember hearing that REM sleep only is what causes the sleepy feeling to go away. Just because that feeling is gone doesn’t mean you no longer need sleep, right?
wow, my schedule fits with this. i could actually pull it off. but i’m too scared without knowing longterm effects- like peter said. also the transition is pretty harsh >_<
maybe someone can sponser a formal kind of study on it to see longterm effects and things.
@acy:
If you slept for 2 hours straight, your body would throw in other sleep phases, and you wouldn’t get all the REM sleep you need. With the 20-minute naps, you get your 20-minute cycles of REM sleep, and no other sleep type.
I think you can’t have REM sleep cycles for much longer than 30 minutes.
@Quirky:
Yeah, I heard alcohol and caffeine don’t mesh well with Uberman’s sleep schedule. Thankfully I wouldn’t have much trouble giving those up, but for some people it might suck. Nyah nyah
@Paul:
REM sleep is what you need to rest your brain.
The other sleep phases obviously have some use, but they’re not 100% essential. For example, you don’t produce quite enough of some chemicals when you’re on Uberman, so you need to get them in your diet. People on Uberman’s sleep schedule often mention getting cravings for unusual kinds of food (like grape juice). Seems like the body knows how to get what it needs. Just listen to your body and you should be ok.
I don’t see how this could work. What if you have to do something that takes MORE than 1 hour? You’re screwed!
i think einstein did something exactly like this.
I’ve returned to attempting to get on the uberman sleep schedule. I will agree that the hardest part during the adaptation phase is finding something to do. Later it doesn’t really matter much because you can sit around bored, but while adapting boredom = lethal.
Honestly interested in trying this, Being a student the extra time would be very useful however i am also young and thus i have to worry about the effects of this on the body (considering over 90% of the time a person spends growing is done while they are asleep)
It would also be interesting to see how my mind copes with 20 minutes naps, at the moment i am enjoying time off and i have gone into my own routine, going to sleep at around 7 am and waking at 7 pm, to have my sleeping time to be cut six-fold would be an interesting experience
Again having a long term study done would be highly useful. Perhaps if i find another week where i am out of school i will convert.
My concern is waking up, does the body’s biological clock wake you after the nap once it has adjusted to the sleep pattern?
This is actually called polyphasic sleeping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep).
The Uberman is just the term for the schedule that uses 6 20 minute naps a day.
One interesting thing I read awhile back, is that while sleeping, the brain doesn’t actually go directly into REM (that wouldn’t even work) but as it adjusts to the new sleep schedule, it segments the sleep cycle so that each nap is a different part of the overall sleep cycle.
This is literally impossible for me since I am 14 years old and I have to be at school for 8 hours straight every day… unless I slept at lunch but that would still be six hours of school then 20 minutes of sleep (with 10 minutes of eating) and then two more hours.
ANYWAY… to those of you who say you are bored, I suggest getting guitar hero or rock band. They are quite fun and time-consuming. Or just watch TV. Or work out. I dunno. I wish I could try this Uberman thing
Very interesting. There are a few things that come to mind when I consider this though.
I’m not sure if it is a commonly accepted fact or one in dispute among psychologists but as far as I know there are 4 stages and only the second and third are dreaming stages. REM sleep in stage 4 is when the brain essentially powers down and recharges, sorting through memories and experiences from throughout the day and hard coding them from your memory banks into your subconscious. If anyone is experiencing dreams during their 20 min naps, they are not experiencing REM sleep. They are experiencing a shallower form of restoration that is meant to be experienced over hours to get the full positive effect from it.
The other thing is more of a health issue that comes to mind. There is a reason the body goes through those initial 3 phases before REM. REM restores the mind, phase 2 and 3 slow your body down to a resting state so your entire body can recuperate from the day. This is important for everyone as, unless you spend the vast majority of your 22 hour day sitting in a chair in front of your computer or at an office desk you’re going to have broken down SOME muscle tissue. If you never give your body a chance to rest for a solid chunk of each day by sleeping, allowing your system to restore those broken parts of the body fully, without stimulus, your body is simply going to break down eventually and hit a perpetual crash. Short term this might work but long term this spells disaster for your body where only extreme amounts of rest could restore your body to working order.
There’s a reason your body functions the way it does, messing around with it hasn’t ever really produced any positive results.
However, I have been wrong before and this is more of a rant off the top of my head recalling first year psych. If this truly is viable without all the possible negative side effects, sign me up!
There’s a lot of laughable and possibly dangerous, pseudo-science in your blog. Thumbs down.
I think this is absolutely genious, at least being a former architecture student. It makes me think how much more I could gotten done when there were projects. But I do wonder how it would affect a person in the long run. It’s still amazing to know something like this could work.
Please disregard this “method.” All of the sleep stages are vital. REM is important, but so is stage 1, stage 2 for cognition and memory, and stage 3 and 4 for deep sleep (growth hormones in growing children, etc). Long term studies also show that the mortality age decreases when you do not get enough sleep, including more stages than REM. When you are a baby in a womb in go through sleep stages of NREM and REM, active sleep and quiet sleep. Don’t screw up your body because you read something off of the internet. Go to a sleep conference, read information about it. I personally recommend The Promise Of Sleep by Dr. William Dement. It is a great read and very informative. This article actually disgusts me. I couldn’t just leave something unsaid. However, I have to make it short and sweet because I am trying to get over the flu; and going to sleep right now would be a wise decision because all of the stages will help me get better.
I don’t see why social life would be incompatible, it’s still only a 20 minute nap, I can pull it off at school. Actually I might need it. But does that also count coffee/tea? If so I can pull off the same thing with a 2 hour sleep time/day… but I’d still be a zombie.
Now how about a new eating regime where you eat one potato every 8 hours and not feel hungry… I’d be happy for the rest of my life.
You can still drink, but it’s either a quantity that you can process before your next nap, or get drunk and time it right to pass out at your next nap.
@Polysomnographer: I’m tired of pseudo-scientists who spend years learning how to think along ‘generally accepted’ lines implying that the same lifestyles should apply for everyone. Please learn more about why so many people, from Uberman to Buckminster Fuller swear by alternative sleeping rhythms and come back for some enlightened debate. Otherwise, keep what disgusts you to yourself.
You absolutely should NOT try this! There have been thousands of scientific sleep studies that show 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep is optimal for peak human health.
Watch this 60 minutes show from June, 2008:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4181992n
Didn’t Kramer totally do this on Seinfeld?
That show was hilarious……
Wow, this is a very interesting idea, the only problem is for those of us who work a regular 8 hour job at a place where you only can an hour lunch at one point – maybe one day if I don’t have a job….
I have slept polyphasically before. Its absolutely nuts. The way in which you perceive time and experience are shifted to an almost dreamlike state. Its incredibly interesting but is NOT feasible for long term situations.
The human circadian rhythm will naturally fall into only 2 types of sleep, mono-phasic (like most people sleep), and bi-phasic (which includes less sleep at night as well as a nap during the day) While many animals like cats can sleep polyphasically, your body will always prefer mono- or bi-phasic schedules. As a result regardless of how well adjusted you are, you will always be fighting against your body’s natural preference.
Additionally, the social aspect is crippling. Because the effects (or aftereffects) of many drugs last longer than 4 hours. smoked cannabis for example will last anywhere between 2-6 hours depending on tolerance, and leave you “burnt” and feeling tired for about an hour or two after the actual effects wear off. Normally these aftereffects are manageable, but when your body is already under considerable strain it becomes a much bigger deal. Indeed, even caffeine had the ability to offset my rhythm. As a result, I found it incredibly difficult to enjoy social gatherings because your options are abstinence even from legal recreational drugs and ducking out for a nap every 4 hours, or imbibing and thrashing your schedule.
Now, lets talk about work. while you can shift your schedules around and consolidate naps once you are very stable with the schedule, it cannot be done regularly. So if you have a job which requires complete attention or simply doesn’t allow you to take a nap, like you might be able to get away with while working a desk job, you can pretty much call it quits. Unfortunately the rest of the world does NOT sleep polyphasically or even understand it. as a result you may receive unwanted attention and deliver an obnoxious amount of explanations of what it it you’re attempting.
And lastly for the cons, i would like to remind anyone considering this to study hard. Many of the people claiming that this is dangerous and unhealthy are likely correct. Be sure that you are in good physical condition, and are quite experienced with understanding your bodily functions and when its giving you warning signs.
The first week is utterly terrible. and in reality its only the first 3-4 days that you feel exhausted. after that hump it gets easier and by a week you should be mostly adjusted.
now for short periods of time it can be an awesome experience but be careful! it should be noted that i only lasted a couple weeks before the social aspect became a huge detriment.
Why not just allot yourself 2 hours of sleep a night? Wouldn’t your brain adjust to that as well? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about taking a 20 minute nap during working hours.
This is called Polyphasic Sleep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep). I have never been able to do it due to the fact it doesn’t fit in with most conventional and culture mediums.
Hello all.
I suppose the promise of this article is that you can have more productivity by sleeping less. How about being more productive during the time you have?
And by the way, millions of years of evolution created this pattern of sleep. REM is probably the most essential but that doesn’t mean the others are not. Further, the very long effects of such an alteration in schedule are unclear even to known science. Although there is evidence that “short sleeping” is correlated with life-span reduction.
Sigh… maybe when school gets out.
^ Sounds like something you could do at school lol
i dind’t see it posted by anyone else, but in artschool, we were taught that Michalengelo did this. it was one of the things that he did that made him seem crazy to others, and it also made it difficult for him to interact well with others. i believe he expressed that he knew he only had a limited time on earth and that he had to accomplish as much as possible, so he worked a complete day schedule where he would take small naps every few hours
when i read this i thought it would be an awful choice for me although i did see how it would really benifit my life giving me more time to do things and i can also study for longer.
so .. i gave it a go over my half term which was two weeks long ( i thought this was good becuase iwould be able to recover if it didnt work). honestly i felt like crap the first week i could hardly stay awake atall but i managed it and after that week i did feel better when i could sleep for longer periods but now i realllyy want to get back to my usual sleeping pattern!! i really dont want to be awake for so long becuase i get so bored with the time i have becuase everyone else is sleeping! although i can study. i recomend this to people who work all day and need to do house stuff later without being tierd.
i already try to sleep 3-4 hours per day ( from 3am to7am) and @ 8.30 go to work
in the first few days its no problem but after the 4th day every thing is getting bad
i try it with 3 daily 20 min naps 1 @ 11.30 am the next one @ 50.00 pm and the other
@ 11.30pm and it still don’t getting better…
even worser head ache, muscle pain, my eyes starting to hurt and getting easily nervus
now im taking my normal scedule again 7 hours sleep and a small nap per day
(after i had a motorcycle crash because i fall asleep)
i think the best resolution for this is to sleep normal 7-8 hours per day and produce or make more in the time you are awake
our race wasn’t built to sleep 4 hours per day
7-8 hours sleep per day already exist over millions of years
i think since the human race exist we sleep 7-8 hours per day
so i think better dont brake the rules in 2 or 3 days…
but every thing is up to person
NOTE: There was no ‘Uberman’ who did the research. She’s known on the net mostly as Puredoxyk, and she coined the term ‘Uberman’. She did this sleep method for around 6 months while majoring Philosophy in college back in 1999/2000. Her website is http://www.puredoxyk.com
Ashwing13
P.S. Her book, ‘Ubersleep’ is brilliant. A definite must-buy if you’re interested in sleeping polyphasically.
I am definitely going to try this. More study hours. Easier time falling asleep. Seems to be a solution.
yeah like i said my exams finish on tomorrow (wednesday) and im gonna do it from then ill keep you informed about what happens and stuff
@Michael:
Definitely do, I’m interested in how it works out for you!
Hey Vlad! Excellent blog
Didn’t know you had this excellent site when I met you!!
It’s interesting that you mention this – I tried it a long time ago; I had a month to kill with free accommodation in Dublin and nothing to do. I was inspired to try it when I read that Leonardo Da Vinci tried it! (“It” being “polyphasic sleep” as others have commented). He certainly needed it for his vast amounts of inventions and investigations.
The material I read about it suggested staying awake for 40 hours to reset your sleeping clock. I did that (it was HARD staying awake; and coffee cannot be used of course) and got into it quick enough, but I had the same problem as you… back then (2000) I could only access the Internet from the university computers and they closed at 9pm
I tried reading and all sorts of other projects but it was incredibly boring. So I had to give up. Also, having a normal working timetable soon after made it impossible to maintain it.
Luckily I’ve found a good solution! A few years later I moved to Spain and got used to the concept of a siesta. This is necessary in Spain with everything closed (due to the heat) in the afternoon, and the small amount of sleep younger people get at night because of going out very late. I now bring my siesta with me everywhere in the world
Our bodies have a natural low-point in the afternoon as blood is diverted to digest your lunch and your body temperature goes down. It’s hard to focus and it’s people’s least productive time of day. I have my 20 minute siesta and do indeed enter REM sleep, remembering my dream! I don’t need an alarm anymore as I come right out of it on time; refreshed and energized. Better than coffee could ever do 
Biphasic sleep is a good compromise for the 9-5 lifestyle. For those with just 1 hour break if you are imaginative enough you can find somewhere safe and secluded, put on an eyemask and earplugs and get your snooze. I give myself more time for lunch than most people, but it means that when I start in my afternoon work session I am totally energized and efficient
Don’t know if you noticed, but I had one the whole week at both the ISo and the SES!
Give siestas a try
Benny the Irish polyglot’s last blog post..Imagination: your key to enjoying memorizing hundreds of words quickly
@Benny:
I Actually switched to biphasic sleep some years ago… and I don’t even think of it as biphasic. I simply take a nap in the afternoon, when my brain gets too tired. Definitely worth it
Also, I’ll be re-trying polyphasic sleep this September. I’ll be posting about the experience here on this blog, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out.