What is polyphasic sleep?

[Cosmo]

Polyphasic sleep is a strategy designed to minimize daily sleep duration to 2-5 hours by incorporating multiple short naps (20-45 minutes each) throughout the day. The goal is to increase waking hours while maintaining alertness.

Contrastingly, most people follow a monophasic sleep pattern, characterized by a single, extended sleep period per day.



A popular polyphasic approach is the "Uberman" schedule, involving regular, equidistant naps without a long sleep period:



The polyphasic landscape is diverse; no one-size-fits-all model exists. Many start with a well-known pattern and customize it to fit their lifestyle... Or they just find their own way from the get-go.

There's a really lovely pattern generator you can play with here:

https://napchart.com/app

Click on the "Sleep" tab, and you'll see pretty much all of the well-known patterns people have experimented with.



If anyone else here has tried this let us know how it went for you.

 

[Cosmo]

Lately, I've been revisiting the idea of adopting a polyphasic sleep schedule—specifically the Uberman schedule, a challenging but transformative sleep pattern I previously stuck with for 8-10 months back in 2009-2010. For those unfamiliar, the Uberman schedule consists of six 20-minute naps evenly spaced throughout the day. While this approach requires rigorous discipline and precise timing, it's something I believe could revolutionize the way we perceive and use our time.

Adapting to the Uberman schedule is a bit like going through boot camp for sleep; it's hard, especially when you're working a high-stress tech job filled with Type-A personalities. But the secret is in the struggle. The tougher you fight to stick to the schedule, the faster your body and mind adapt to this new routine.

During my research, I stumbled upon a sleep adaptation technique dubbed "Naptation" on a now-defunct forum, trypolyphasic.com. The method involves deliberately entering a sleep-deprived state (by staying awake for 24-48 hours) and then initiating a 15-minute nap every hour. Gradually, you lengthen the interval between naps until you achieve a stable sleep schedule. This approach worked well for me a few times, but ironically, my most successful stint was when I dived right into the Uberman schedule without any transitional steps.

Once you successfully adapt, you'll begin to experience something akin to time dilation. Days and nights start to blur into a single continuum of wakefulness and short naps. This gives you a fresh, almost transcendent perspective on life, unburdened by the conventional cycles that dictate the lives of most people.

Many people adopt a polyphasic sleep schedule for utilitarian reasons, like wanting to get more work done or manage household chores efficiently. While those are valid motivations, they aren't the driving force for me. I see polyphasic sleep as an opportunity to experience a different rhythm of life altogether. One where you can be creatively productive at 3 AM, then rejuvenate with a quick 15-minute nap before taking on the day.

The unique experience of time dilation, heightened creativity, and the sheer number of waking hours at your disposal can make it all worthwhile. It's certainly not a lifestyle for everyone, but for those who like to stray from the norm, it offers an entirely different way to live, work, and even dream.

The dreams you have during something like the Uberman schedule are unlike any you'll experience in a monophasic sleep cycle. Typically, as a monophasic sleeper, you enter and exit the REM phase approximately once every 90 minutes, oscillating between varying levels of wakefulness and deeper sleep. In contrast, the Uberman sleep schedule pushes you directly into REM sleep during each nap, almost guaranteeing you'll encounter vivid and sometimes lucid dreams.

On a regular basis, I was having prolonged lucid dreaming experiences that felt like they were hours long. Imagine if dreams were a canvas, and with each cycle of REM in monophasic sleep, you could only paint with shades of gray. On Uberman schedule, I had the entire spectrum of colors at my disposal.

If you place significance on dreams, whether for psychological introspection, creative inspiration, or spirituality, Uberman was an amazing playground for exploration. Each nap could be likened to a mini-vacation, where you unlock the doors of perception and venture into landscapes of a profound clarity.

Then I got a cold and it broke everything. I've made a few attempts to return to it over the years, but life changes quick when you've got kids and bills and the world's on fire... But it would be fun to return to it. Even if it could only be for a short bit.

I'm thinking about it.

 

[Lai]

Polyphasic sleep is a strategy designed to minimize daily sleep duration to 2-5 hours by incorporating multiple short naps (20-45 minutes each) throughout the day. The goal is to increase waking hours while maintaining alertness.

Contrastingly, most people follow a monophasic sleep pattern, characterized by a single, extended sleep period per day.

View attachment 190

A popular polyphasic approach is the "Uberman" schedule, involving regular, equidistant naps without a long sleep period:

View attachment 191

The polyphasic landscape is diverse; no one-size-fits-all model exists. Many start with a well-known pattern and customize it to fit their lifestyle... Or they just find their own way from the get-go.

There's a really lovely pattern generator you can play with here:

https://napchart.com/app

Click on the "Sleep" tab, and you'll see pretty much all of the well-known patterns people have experimented with.

View attachment 192

If anyone else here has tried this let us know how it went for you.

This is going to help me out a ton especially since my IGCSE tests are close. Also, I wonder if people that sleep at school whenever they want is accidentally doing this... I mean they never seem that tired.

 

[Num7]

Being able to function normally with way less sleep sounds like a big win. A regular human being spends what, 1/3 of his/her life sleeping?

Sometimes on the weekend, I used to sleep 12+ hours when I was a teenager and young adult. What a waste of time! lol

 

[Darby]

There is a problem - or three or more - with taking nothing but short naps. Going into all the gory details would be boring but sleep and the sleep cycle was a major focus in my major (Experimental Psychology). When you fall asleep your hypothalamus regulates several neurotransmitters such as histamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, hypocretin, and glutamate. When you are awake it sends different messages to change the values of these chemical concentrations. When you wake up it takes time to re-set the values; an absolute refractory period that can't be circumvented. If you are constantly sleeping and waking the values never fully settle. That is a problem in itself. Waking and sleeping for short periods also interrupts REM sleep. That's a big problem. Waking and sleeping several times a day disrupts your Circadian Cycle which is a very primitive system and an even bigger problem.

The industry to look to for sleep pattern studies and recommendations is commercial aviation. In assessing the causes of aircraft crashes two major causes identified include bad weather and pilot fatigue - and usually a combination of both coupled with spatial disorientation.

Pilots flying long haul international flights are allowed to retire to the crew quarters and sleep a few hours. They carry relief pilots to accommodate the breaks. But pilots coming off the sleep break are usually required to wake up and take 20 minutes to clear their head before returning to the cockpit. Historically there have been airline crashes caused by the Pilot in Command (PIC) being called directly from sleep to the cockpit during an emergency. The PIC assumes control of the aircraft but is still half asleep shaking the head to get the cobwebs out as the aircraft punches a rather large hole in the ground. Yes, there are no survivors. But the evidence is on the cockpit voice recorder. The captain is saying "What's going on here?" several times while the First Officer is saying. "Captain we're in a dive!" and the TAWS is saying, "Terrain, terrain, pull up! Terrain, terrain, pull up!" The Captain never got the cobwebs out thus never heard the First Officer or the TAWS warnings, couldn't get their eyes focused to read the instruments and because of spatial disorientation never realized the aircraft was in a dive.

The commercial aviation industry wants pilots to get at least 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep before a flight.

 

[Darby]

For me a horror story that I experienced that goes to this point:

Way back when and a long time a go I was a young cop in my early 20s working a graveyard patrol shift. Now during my 32 years in the profession I didn't work much patrol and didn't work many graveyard shifts. I worked in a different area of law enforcement that I've discussed in the past.

I was sleepy - really sleepy. Bumping the forehead off the steering wheel sleepy. I pulled under a tree in front of a school on the main boulevard to get myself off the road before I fell asleep at the wheel. I didn't intend to but I fell asleep - deeply asleep. That's scary enough. Sometime later (about 20 minutes by my estimation) dispatch called my call sign on the radio. It woke me up, sort of. My eyes opened and I saw a neon sign "Carpeteria" across the street about 50 yards away. I just stared at it. My eyes saw the sign as it was but my mind drew a picture of an entirely different sign and intersection two miles across town. My mind said I was parked in the closed Taco Bell lot staring at the "Shell" station sign across the street. "Wake up! Where am I?"

Total spatial and temporal disorientation. It took probably two minutes for my mind to clear - with dispatch calling me twice more - before I realized where I was. I had nightmares about that for a couple of weeks because I was a dead man had the wrong person walked up on me.

Now imagine that instead of being in a car it was in the left hand seat of an airliner. It took two minutes or more for me to clear my head. But in an airliner I would still have to then analyze and react to the emergency situation while in a dive. Saving the aircraft, crew and passengers would be unlikely.

 

[Jay Walker]

On a regular basis, I was having prolonged lucid dreaming experiences that felt like they were hours long.

This is where I see the trouble with this Uber Kramer routine. I have researched the purpose of dreaming, and most the answers I have come across are overly complex, such as memory consolidation, emotional processing, problem solving and creativity, mental housekeeping, preparation for future challenges, and even self-awareness and reflection. However, I have never heard or read that the purpose of dreaming is so much simpler and practical, and not physiological or philosophical. It is in my best understanding the purpose of dreaming is nature's way of keeping you somewhat entertained during this long and physically dormant state that all animals must adhere to. In other words, it passes the time. So, in this polyphasic sleep, experiencing dreams in real-time or possibly an extended version of real-time would completely bypass the love that I have for bypassing life just enough to live vicariously through my twisted interpretations of reality that dreams help me to conceive, and it all happens in what seems to be a matter of moments. It is (so far) our only access to a time machine. Albeit the damn thing only goes forward and doesn't take us back. (Yet.)

 

[Cosmo]

@Darby, your account from your time as a cop really drives home how dangerous sleep deprivation can be, especially in that environment. That spatial disorientation is a great example of why you shouldn't just "go for it" and try to plow through the deprivation.

It's important to have a plan. I mentioned "Naptation" earlier as one way to ease into polyphasic sleep, instead of just rawdogging it. Controlled adaptation can make all the difference in managing the transition. I was fortunate at the time to have a job I could walk to and access a server room for naps. I’d walk to the 24-hour grocery store at 3 AM and did everything I could to align my activities toward being safe, comfortable, and having some fun.

It's also important not to take any chemicals, drugs, alcohol or medications. The only way to make it work is through willpower and planning; anything else is going to fail. I was lucky to have a conducive environment to tackle this, quiet bachelor life (before Bojko) and a job where I could disappear for 20 minutes when it was time.

I’m not convinced it’s good for you, certainly not, but I also think there isn’t enough science to definitively say it’s bad or dangerous when approached the right way. I managed to sustain it for quite some time and felt great until I caught a cold and just lost the motivation to continue (not the best schedule for dating). Others from that old trypolyphasic.com site were able to sustain it even longer, including someone named Puredoxyk who documented it for years.

Here’s an archive link to her original site, which is now dead, might have to go back earlier in time for that stuff:

counterclockwise | better sleep, better thinking

web.archive.org

She was more active in the 2010s but got busy with her family and isn’t online much anymore. I took a lot of hints from her on how to approach this when we were both active on that trypolyphasic.com site though. It's definitely real and can be done successfully.

Planning on another go at this point (said Cosmo twice previously in this four year old thread).