Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 0

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I have a really exciting announcement today! (Well, it’s exciting for me, at least.)

Today, I am starting my switch to Uberman’s Sleep Schedule!

You can read the article linked above for more information, but basically, it involves taking a 20-minute nap every four hours, and that’s it. Which gives a total of 2 hours of sleep every 24-hour period. In other words, 22-hour days!

This sleep schedule is designed to cut down on all the not-quite-essential sleep phases, and provide you with the only sleep phase you utterly absolutely can NOT do without – the REM phase (during which you dream dreams). You normally get about 90 minutes of REM sleep per night, so this schedule actually gives you more than that.

And while without REM sleep you will start going crazy in a few days (and that’s what most sleep deprivation studies focus on), you can do without the others for months, and people have done so. Polyphasic sleep provides you with plenty of REM sleep, and so sleep deprivation is not an issue.

I’ve wanted to try this for maybe three years now, but one thing or another has always prevented me from giving it my all. Well, that’s over now. I have cleared and arranged my schedule so that I can switch, without any worries, and keep it up for months!

What I’m planning to once I’m sleeping polyphasically

I want to switch, because I have so many awesome things I would like to spend my time on that I don’t have the mental energy for right now.

Aside from keeping up with my studies (3rd-year Mathematics BSc), I want to give my full attention to my blog (thanks for reading, by the way!), and my life coaching business. And I would love to spend more time playing the piano and the guitar. Plus a dozen other miscellaneous things, like picking up my multiple mentality experiment again (which I ended prematurely because it was extremely mind-intensive, and I just didn’t have the mental energy to spare).

All of this will be possible once I’m on Uberman, because quite contrary to what you might think, people who have been on it report being more alert and full of energy because hey, by the time you start getting tired, it’s time for another nap!

There are just two major drawbacks:

• inflexible schedule – I will have to keep my naps very much on schedule, with only some 30 minutes of wiggle space either way. Yes, that means it will be pretty damn tricky to do anything that takes longer than 3 hours 40 minutes. I have accepted that, and I think the payoff will be well worth it, at least for a couple of months.
• the switchover phase – It takes the brain some 10 days to get the hang of the fact that you’re sleeping only for 20 minutes every 4 hours, and switch to the point where it goes straight to REM sleep the moment you go to sleep. During the switchover, you turn into an absloute sleep-deprived zombie… and this trips up most people who come unprepared (and most prepared people, as well).

In fact, it kind of reminds me of this webcomic. Just imagine the left column says “normal sleep pattern”, middle column says “waking up early” and the right column says “switching to Uberman’s Sleep Schedule”.

My plans for the switchover phase

To get through the switchover, I’ve started telling all my friends, to keep myself accountable, and arranged to meet some of my best real-life friends at key points to help me get through the tough times.

I have also bought two extra alarm clocks. I normally use my phone to wake me up, and it’s quite enough, but it would be quite easy to sleep through when I’m really tired.

Therefore, I have a backup alarm clock, set 5 minutes later than my phone. Which includes not only a loud alarm, but also a bed shaker. That’s right, it has an attachment you stick under your mattress and it literally shakes you awake.

And if I somehow manage to turn that off and go back to sleep, I have a third alarm clock, which has two settings – loud, and REALLY BLOODY FRICKIN’ LOUD. Guess which one I will be using?

I will set this alarm clock a few minutes later than the backup one. And I will place it in a location where I actually have to get up and walk to turn it off. If this doesn’t stop me from going back to sleep, I don’t know what would.

Further, since I will likely be a brain-dead zombie for several very long days, I needed some ways to waste some time.

Firstly, I will spend most of the switchover nights playing Minecraft, a kickass computer game with one major drawback. It’s really easy to get stuck playing it for hours. So I will be turning its greatest weakness into its greatest strength – helping me waste some time while my mind adapts to the new sleep schedule!

(The official site doesn’t do a very good job of selling the game. Check out this fanmade trailer instead.)

I have also bought some jigsaw puzzles to keep me occupied, and I will be doing some simple but time-consuming origami.

On top of that, I will of course be doing all the awesome stuff I would normally do, like going out swing dancing, playing the piano etc. – as long as I have the mental energy for it.

And that’s it, really.

I will keep you updated right here on Fun Life Development, with how the switchover is going, and anything interesting I learn from this experiment

Cheers!

Update: Here’s a list of all the followup posts, for easy reference:

• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 1
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 2
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 3
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 5
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 6 – The Tiredness Strikes Back
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 8
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Days 9-12
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Days 13-15 – Success! (whoops, celebrated too soon)
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day 23 – It’s over