Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic Sleep
(All times in this video are in 24h time eg "18:30")
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Hi friends my name is Tris and this is No Boilerplate, focusing on fast, technical videos.
Let me take you back to April 2020, where for a 2 month experiment, I successfully tried Polyphasic sleep.
It is 03:30, I have just woken up from my core sleep of 4h 30mins, and I feel fantastic. It will be 5 hours before I need to start work at my day job, and I felt like I had unlocked an extra day's worth of productive free time, accessed through my practice of Polyphasic sleep.
But how did I get there?
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notes: Everything you see in this video from the script to the images are part of a markdown document available on github under a public domain license.
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In 2007 I learned about Polyphasic sleep, which is the largely-untested hypothesis that if you sleep more often during a 24-hour cycle, you need less overall sleep than if you just slept once. We observe that cultures who have a midday nap tend to require less overall sleep than cultures with one block of nighttime sleep
Don't try this schedule unless your name is Buckminster Fuller
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The cited examples in support of the polyphasic hypothesis include cross-Atlantic sailors sleeping in short bursts, military personnel on watch, parents of newborn babies, and, here, Buckminster Fuller's famous "twenty-two thinking hours a day". He called this The Dymaxion schedule: 30 minutes naps every 6 hours.
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The method I tried in 2007 is the Uberman schedule. This method is as simple as it is brutal: Take a 20-minute nap every 4 hours. No other sleep.
This is the most talked-about schedule in Polyphasic circles because of the tantalising potential to achieve Buckminster Fuller-levels of waking time. In Uberman, you take a 20-minute nap at 12, 4 and 8 - both AM and PM. This is the most extreme polyphasic sleep schedule, and the one that requires the least actual sleep - only 2 hours in every 24!
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Where does this 2 hours come from? It comes from the observation that we only get about two hours of REM, of dreaming, in every night of sleep. Here's my stats for this week, if you've got a smartwatch, check yours, and it'll be about 2 hours too.
The polyphasers hypothesise that it’s only the REM phase that is useful for the brain, the rest of the time is spent in deep sleep. Deep sleep is restful for the body, but no more so than waking forms of rest. The trick with Uberman is to get the brain to drop into REM, to dream, for the whole of the 20 minute nap. That is a hell of a trick.
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Back in 2007 my brother and I tried Uberman for a week, it was MISERABLE and I crashed out HARD. He stuck with it for about another week before crashing.
The problem with Uberman is its brutal adaptation period: You basically don't nap for the first few days, because you're not used to sleeping during the day, and this means you're immediately sleep deprived. It takes two weeks for your brain to start desperately squeezing REM into your naps, to avoid permanent damage.
Record-breaking sleepers seldom can stay awake for longer than a week."
"my business associates [...] insisted on sleeping like other men"
— Buckminster Fuller, futurist.
notes:
The second problem, which also caused both me and Buckminster Fuller to fall back to monophasic sleeping, is how society is rigidly built around sleeping at nighttime.
Thus disillusioned with Polyphasic sleep, I forgot about it for a decade.
Part 2
My History With Sleep
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I've had fairly standard sleep experience in life: Though an 03:00 bedtime was perfectly normal at university, that's unthinkable now that I've had 15 years of 07:00 alarms for work.
I have always needed lots of sleep: My friends joke that once the clock gets past 23:00, I'm at risk of turning into a pumpkin.
I'd always been a light sleeper, but in 2017 I developed mild insomnia, adding the inability to fall asleep to my already-impressive inability to stay asleep.
Despite being in bed before 23:00, it would sometimes take me 3 hours to get to sleep. This then put pressure on my wake-up time in the morning, making me groggy, late for work, and feeling like I was wasting the day.
Many times during the past decade, I had thought about trying Polyphasic sleeping again Especially as a way to overhaul my dysfunctional sleep schedule, but my plans were always tempered by Fuller's experience that you have to live in a society of offices, trains, evening get-togethers, and constant interruptions.
Covid-19
(oh great THIS guy)
notes: Perhaps you can see where this is going. When I started polyphasing, I was 44 days into the first Covid lockdown in London. I'd been very fortunate to be able to work from home, and because much of my socialising is digital anyway, things were going as well as could be hoped for.
On the 10th of April 2020, we had a long weekend of two national holidays and I realised that the stars had aligned for a polyphasic experiment: Not only did I no longer live in a world of offices and the forced exodus of commuting, I had 4 days where I wasn't even expected to be webcam-present at my work.
notes:
That fateful day, I had come across polyphasic.net. I was going to try Uberman again, indeed that search led me to the site, but they categorise it as "VERY HARD" and "NOT RECOMMENDED" and go as far as saying that only people with a genetic predisposition can do it, perhaps like Buckminster Fuller!
Also, they found 0% success rate, based on trawling reddit data. They couldn't find a single account of someone sticking with it. They recommended a much more successful schedule: Everyman.
polyphasic.net/schedules/everyman/
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Reading the excellent polyphasic.net guide on the Everyman sleep schedule, I realised this was much more approachable than what I had attempted in the past!
Variants of Everyman are numbered, such as here with E1, E2, E3. They are numbered based on how many naps you have during the day.
They represent a gradient between efficiency and easy-of-adaptation. E1 on the left here, is effectively a siesta schedule, and E3, on the right, requires only double Uberman's sleep total. I resolved to try E2
After a late-night explanation to my extremely patient wife, I set a silent alarm on my watch for 03:00, and began the experiment!
Part 3
Easter Adaptation
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What a dream the adaptation was! The first 24h of any polyphasic experiment are always best, in my experience: Even if you can't hack it, your sleep debt won't catch up to you on the first day, and you'll feel like you're breaking out of a stupid societal default. It's very profound to be pulling an all-nighter with the knowledge that this isn't a one-off, these are hours that will be permanently available to you, rather than being borrowed from the next day.
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Compared to my university memory of the constant-sleepiness of Uberman, Everyman 2 was so much easier, even right at the start. I certainly felt tired, and during the first few days I had to keep busy and be aware that to lie down was to risk sleeping (which would have ruined adaptation). But by the 4th day, back at work, I had basically transitioned to my 5 hour in every 24 polyphasic schedule!
I'll tell you in detail about my daily timetable and tips after a huge announcement:
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notes:
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Part 4
Timeline
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OK, let's talk sleep details
10/04/20
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Back in April of 2020, I woke up at 03:00 and hit Everyman 2 cold turkey. I didn't prepare in advance, other than setting a silent alarm on my watch.
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My plan was to get up, shower, and sit in front of my computer, with a cup of tea. During this first weekend, I knew I'd need to have strategies to keep myself awake, so I played video games, Fallout mostly, during this time. I think this worked well, as games don't require much brainpower (which I was lacking in the first weekend), but kept you awake through the adaptation period.
On my first day at work after the long weekend's adaptation, I had no problem getting back to it. My tiredness was now much reduced, and I was in no danger of falling asleep while working!
My first nap at 07:00 and second at 13:00 fit well into my work schedule. The first didn't affect my 08:00 start time, and the second I took during my lunchbreak.
Everyman 2 is flexible enough that I was able to move my afternoon nap +/- 1h without much difficulty, depending on what my work schedule was. I did note that I feel a little tiredness the next day if I moved it a lot.
20/04/20
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2 weeks in, and I felt 90% adapted, and had survived
- missing a nap,
- poor sleep quality due to sickness, and
- the constant clamour of people telling me that this is a bad idea.
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Running this timetable for the two month experiment gave me some pretty big life changes:
As I mentioned I used to have insomnia. I'd be in bed before 23:00, but not asleep before 01:00. As I hoped, the upheaval of Everyman 2 has cured me of this. I'm really good at sleeping now!
The other side of the being-cured-of-insomnia coin is that I'm VERY tired at the end of the day: After 21:30 I'm falling asleep, and am ready to drop at 22:00.
While I understand this is quite normal for early-birds, it's a novel experience for me!
My tiredness at the end of the day means that I'm keen to wind up social gatherings before 22:00. Though this isn't much different to how I was before, I'm now completely disciplined about logging off at bed time.
Part 5
Advice For The Curious
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Many things surprised me during this experiment. The biggest one has been that about half the people I talk to ABSOLUTELY HATE it:
"I don't think it is a good idea. In fact, it might be construed as heuristic to the point of being selfish"
— My Dad
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This is a very typical attitude. Sleep is a topic similar to diet and exercise - everyone has an opinion because we're all experts in the subject matter.
My advice is to experiment quietly, telling only those around you that you need to nap during the day. You'll either succeed or fail, and both will be a valuable learning experience. You can then confidently come out in a big way! This method probably works for other big life changes too!
Those without dirty hands are wrong.
— @Bre, Cult Of Done
notes:
I'm reminded of one of the rules of the Cult Of Done manifesto that states
Those without dirty hands are wrong.
This means, I think, that you can safely ignore those who haven't tried something, if it's safe enough, give it a go, find out for yourself!
https://medium.com/@bre/the-cult-of-done-manifesto-724ca1c2ff13
Things That Helped Me During Adaptation
- Pick your schedule
- Listen to background noise
- Start on a weekend
- Prepare low-effort busywork
- Don't eat at night
- Have a routine
- Cut the light
notes:
Pick a schedule that works well for you, even if that's just a siesta.
listen to white noise while napping, if you are a light sleeper, like me. There's different kinds of white noise, brown noise, which has the harsh high frequencies rounded off is my favourite. This one
Start on a weekend you can isolate yourself from obligations.
Programme some low-effort distractions for the first few days, and don't worry that you're not productive; that'll come.
Don't eat breakfast at night. I found after a week of NEEDING to eat to stay awake, I preferred to wait until after my first nap to have breakfast. My digestion seemed slow and uncomfortable at night (Something about 'circadian rhythm', perhaps?)
I found that having meals after each nap (breakfast and lunch, respectively), washing my face, and having a drink of water, really helped me bounce back into wakefulness.
If you are able to get blackout curtains or blinds for your bedroom, that's a great way of helping you nap during the day.
Further Reading
It's all at http://polyphasic.net
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If you would like to talk about polyphasic sleep, get advice, or tell me I'm wrong, hit up my discord, links in the description,
Thank you for your time!
11:20
Thank you
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notes:
OUTRO
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