I recently tracked how much time I spent on various tasks throughout 24 hours. I downloaded an iPhone app which made this tracking job easier. I tracked my everyday for two weeks. I found out the top time goes to two main things. First is sleep and second is personal care plus Transport. Personal care means getting ready to work and relaxing after days work.

Time Tracking

This is not a revelation, but I noticed that much of the time goes to sleep. I normally sleep between six to eight hours per day. In a seven day week, I am sleeping for 56 hours. That is 2.3 days solid. My seven day week has about 4.7 days of wake time and 2.3 days of sleep time. For personal care and transport I am spending around 36 hours per week that is 1.5 days. That leaves me with 3.2 days. I am spending 24 hours per week for family, eating, Internet, reading and thinking. That leaves me with 2.2 days. After discounting idle time, I have about two days to work. In a typical seven days period I am working only for two days. Most of the time is spent on sleeping and getting ready to work. :)

My Monophasic Sleep

Monophasic sleep is sleeping once per 24 hours. We sleep in a single block of six to nine hours. For me even after six to nine hours of sleep I still feel lousy and tired when I wake up. My energy level increases after few hours and then falls back again. By the time I reach the evening I get tired and ready to sleep. I usually sleep within five mins of lying down and almost never wake up in the middle. Technically I have a sound sleep, but I don’t understand why I feel tired. If I have a nap in the afternoon I feel refreshed for another three to four hours.

Also I like to wake up early as I believe I will get more done in the early morning without distractions. In monophasic sleep to wake up early I need to sleep early, which is difficult with my current business and family conditions. I need a sleep habit that allows me to sleep late and wake up early.

Polyphasic Dream

I decided to try Polyphasic sleep to fulfill one or more of the following

[1] Increase my energy level, which I am not getting in Monophasic Sleep. I understand my energy level may be due to other issues like breathing, food, etc. But I want to see if Polyphasic sleep helps improve some aspect of my energy level.

[2] Gain more time. Due to business commitments I am spending less and less time with family. Gaining more time will allow me to spend time with business and family without compromising other. Anyway I will not feel overwhelmed to hurry on something as I know I have all the time in the world.

[3] Ability to sleep late and wake up early. So I get best of both worlds, I can enjoy my late night movies and also feel the breeze as I exercise viewing the glorious sunrise over the beach.

[4] Just Curious. I want to experiment to satisfy my curiosity. What it would be like to sleep two hours and live a long day and night?

Polyphasic Sleep Variations

I explored further and found out there are different variations of polyphasic sleep.

Uberman Sleep: Sleeping for 20 mins every four hours.

For e.g. Sleep for 20 mins at these times 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm, 12am, 4am. That 6x20mins = 2 hours per 24 hour period. This is exciting. You get 22 wake hours per day that is like squeezing two days from one day. If you normally sleep eight hours per day, with Uberman you save six hours per day. It is 2190 hours per year. Equivalent to 90 days or three months solid wake time per year. It is like having extra three months to spend for every year of your life. Excited?. Wait! the grass is not that green.

First it is not easy to follow the strict regime of 20 mins sleep every four hours. And according to people who tried Uberman, complained it is very difficult to follow Uberman after a period of time. Missing a nap will be a disaster. It will be much more difficult if your work schedule is unpredictable. Unless you live in a jungle alone, it is close to impossible to implement Uberman’s unforgiving schedule. And when you live in a jungle alone you don’t need 22 hours anyway :)

EveryMan Sleep: This is an interesting variation where you sleep for three hours (core sleep) in the night and 3×20 mins throughout the day.

For E.g. Sleep for three hours from 1am to 4am, then sleep 20mins at these times 8am, 1pm, 8pm. That is four hours of sleep per 24 hours. This is more practical as you sleep only three times when others are awake, as opposed to four times in Uberman. Also, I believe Everyman is more forgiving when you miss a nap. Everyman has different variations too, like adjusting the core sleep from 1.5 hours to 4.5 hours and increasing or decreasing the number of naps based on the length of core sleep. If the core sleep is 4.5 hours then you will only need 2 x 20 mins naps.

My first reaction to all this was, it all sounds crazy and interesting. Sleeping two or four hours per day consistently and still feeling alive?

I am kind of a guy who would like to experiment before declaring it is good or no good. Due to my need for more time to complete my long task list and also see if Polyphasic helps increase my energy level, I decided to try sleeping polyphasic. I am also running my own business so time is flexible for me.

As an experiment I decided to try Everyman Sleep.

My sleep schedule

Core Sleep – 1am to 4am - 3 hours

Naps (20 Mins) – 8am, 1pm, 8pm – (3 x 20mins) 1 hour

Total - 4 hours of sleep in 24 hours

Everyman Disaster

Everyman sleep was a disaster for me. I am able to do the three naps, but I am unable to follow the strict core sleep. The 20 mins naps were easy to do, as I was able to get up easily after the 20 mins period because I did not go to deep sleep. But the core sleep of three hours drags me to deep sleep and I am unable to wake up after the three hours period. Sometime I wake up, but will go to sleep after 30 mins or so. I began to sleep more hours than Monophasic and feeling tired all day. :)

I realized I am trying to change my lifelong sleeping habit. I have been sleeping like this for couple of decades and it is not going to be easy to change a habit that has a strong neural highway in my brain. This is like trying to change the way I walk or smile permanently. My sleeping habit is so natural to me that my body will resist with all its power to keep it the way it has been doing for so many years.

I know if I do Uberman sleep I will be able to change my sleeping habit because Uberman only allows you to sleep for 20 mins it may be little bit easier to wake up from 20 mins nap than waking up from a three hour sleep. But Uberman sleep has a very rigid schedule and I don’t like anything that is too rigid. I like flexible systems because we never know what demands you will face daily and being too rigid will break you.

As I read through most of the people who did polyphasic, they give up after sometime. Buckminster Fuller claimed that he did Dymaxion Sleep for two years. Dymaxion is sleeping 30 mins for every six hours. That is sleeping two hours per 24 hours. Buckminster Fuller gave up after two years. The main reason being social conditions. When you are doing polyphasic, it will become increasingly difficult for you to interact and work with monophasic people due to clash in sleep timings.

EverUberman Sleep

I wanted something that will give me the time benefit of Uberman and flexibility of Everyman Sleep. After much trial and error, I concluded on EverUberman. EverUberman is same as Uberman Sleep, but it has the flexibility like Everyman Sleep. You still sleep for two hours per day, but you can miss a nap and adjust your time with future naps.

EverUberman : All Core Naps

All core naps is just that, you sleep 5 x 20 mins per 24 hours at the exact set timings. So you will be sleeping a total of 1h 40 m per 24 hours.

Nap#1 – 12Am –  20 Mins

Nap#2 - 4Am –  20 Mins

Nap#3 – 6Am –  20 Mins

Nap#4  -  8Am  - 20 mins

Nap#5 - 2pm  - 20 mins

Nap#6  - 8pm – 20 mins

Total – 2 hours Sleep in 24 hours period

You have two naps from morning to evening and four naps from evening to next day morning. For my schedule it is easier for me to follow all naps except Nap#5 which falls at 2PM. So I try to minimize naps in the daylight. But still you need to closely follow this schedule. This model itself is not true Uberman. In pure Uberman you take 6×20 mins nap every 4 hours, total 2 hours of sleep of 24 hours. But EverUberman the naps are not evenly spaced. What is the idea or theory behind this?

Based on the circadian rhythm you body temperature raises after you see the daylight and then keeps on increasing until around 2PM. At 2Pm there is a slump and you will normally feel sleepy. We take advantage of this circadian rhythm and staying awake between 8AM to 2pm will not be too much problem.

Life will not happen as  planned always, you need to have a flexible sleep schedule, otherwise it is sure to fail. But unfortunately Uberman does not like flexibility. You cannot simply miss a nap and feel alive.

So the most interesting thing I want to try is what happens if I skip some naps. I know from previous Uberman sleep experiments, skipping a nap is close to impossible.

Let us add eight Nap Balancers and see if it helps to shake the rigidity of Uberman. Nap Balancer are naps taken at different time to compensate for the missed core naps.

EverUberman : With Nap Balancers – One Skipped Nap

Due to important client call I have to skip Nap#4. I see if I can  balance the skipped nap#4 by utilizing a nap balancer. I will choose to sleep in one of seven available nap balancer slots to compensate for missed Nap#4. In this example I choose Nap#nb6 – 6pm nap balancer to compensate for my skipped Nap#4

DAY 1

Nap#1 – 12Am –  20 Mins

Nap#nb1 – 2am – 20 Mins – OPTIONAL

Nap#2 - 4Am –  20 Mins

Nap#3 – 6am – 20 Mins

Nap#4  -  8Am  - 20 mins

Nap#nb2 – 10am – 20 Mins – OPTIONAL

Nap#nb3 – 12am – 20 Mins – OPTIONAL

Nap#5 – 2pm – Skipped

Nap#nb4 – 4pm – 20 Mins – OPTIONAL

Nap#nb5 – 6pm – 20 Mins  - COMPENSATION FOR SKIPPED NAP#5

Nap#6 – 8pm – 20 Mins

Nap#nb6  - 10pm – 20 Mins – OPTIONAL

Total – 2 hours Sleep in 24 hours period

EverUberman : With Nap Balancers – Two Skipped Naps

Due to family outing today I have to skip  Nap#4 and Nap#5.  I can choose to sleep in two of seven available nap balancer to compensate for missed Nap#4 and $5.

In this example I choose Nap#nb3  - 10am and Nap#nb7 – 10 pm  to compensate for my skipped Nap#4 and #5

Nap#1 – 12Am –  20 Mins

Nap#nb1 – 2am – 20 Mins

Nap#2 - 4Am –  20 Mins

Nap#3 – 6am – 20 Mins

Nap#4  -  8Am  - 20 mins

Nap#nb2 – 10am – 20 Mins –  COMPENSATION FOR SKIPPED NAP#5

Nap#nb3 – 12am – 20 Mins

Nap#5 – 2pm – 20 Mins – Skipped

Nap#nb4 – 4pm – 20 Mins

Nap#nb5 – 6pm – 20 Mins

Nap#6  - 8pm – 20 Mins – Skipped

Nap#nb6  - 10pm – 20 Mins - COMPENSATION FOR SKIPPED NAP#6

Total – 2 Hours Sleep in 24 hours period

I will be still able to enjoy long continuous wake hours with the help of Nap Balancers. This is an experiment I am open to the results. I will practice this for next few weeks and update progress here.

Case Against Polyphasic Sleep

There is a strong criticism against polyphasic sleep. It is pointed out that humans are designed for monophasic sleep. Anybody doing polyphasic will have to cope up with constant sleep deprivation and need to have an iron-will to continue through polyphasic. Well that sounds convincing and true. I will confirm this once I complete the experiment.

Please note that I am not against monophasic sleep and I do not claim polyphasic sleep is best. I am just curious and want to experiment on this. I still love monophasic sleep and its benefits, especially sleepy mornings. I would like to try polyphasic as an experiment similar to my other diet experiments. I like Uberman because it sounds extreme and ambitious way of sleeping, but what I don’t like is the strict military style schedule of Uberman. I like to try this variation, EverUberMan and see if it breaks the strict regime and at the same time provides the time benefit as the uberman schedule does.

I will post my findings soon

Cheers

-Jag

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