Polyphasic Vlog Day: 1
Not too bad. Found it hard to nap in the day. I hope I don’t crack.
The schedule:
7:40-8:00am - sleep
12:00-12:20pm - sleep
4:30-4:50pm - sleep
Midnight-3:00am - core sleep
TOTAL: 4 hours sleep.
Polyphasic Sleep
So I have decided to do an experiment.
The subject: me.
The question: Can I successfully adapt to a modified sleep pattern to maximize my waking day?
The process that I will attempt to adapt to is called Polyphasic Sleep. This type of sleep is defined as ” the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period—usually more than two, in contrast to biphasic sleep..”
The reason that I am interested in polyphasic sleep is that practioners say that once you adapt to it you can skip the 8 hour sleep schedule in favor of any where from 3-5 hours total sleep. This is attractive to me because as a dad and an entrepreneur I find that I have too few hours in the day. I am never quite able to complete all the things I want to in the course of my day and I need more time with family, friends and on my own projects.
But you’re probably thinking that this is bad for a person health afterall we are raised to think that you need a solid 8 hours of sleep. I thought so too so I investigated this weird trend. What I found is that this method of sleep goes back into history much farther than expected. Many point to documented polyphasic sleepers like da Vinci, Edison, Tesla, Churchill and Bruce Lee as the innovators of it but this is actually a prehistoric method of rest and waking.
Imagine the circumstances that early man found him/her self in: exhaustive hunting and foraging, long stretches of vulnerability in the night and a non-industrial perception of time. This would actually necessitate shorter periods of sleep staggered throughout the day for protection and opportunity.
The reason that polyphasic sleep should and does work is illustrated by a successful practictioner Dustin Curtis:
One of the ways to force your brain into REM sleep and skip the other phases is to make it feel exhausted. If you’ve gone 24 hours without sleep, you might notice that you drift away into dreams straight from being awake. This because your body goes instantly into REM sleep as a protection mechanism. The way to hack yourself into entering REM sleep without being exhausted is to trick your body into thinking you’re going to get a tiny amount of sleep. You can train it to enter REM for short periods of time throughout the day in 20-minute naps rather than in one lump at night. This is how polyphasic sleep works.
So there are a couple different ways to do this. One is to take one or two 20-30 minute naps a day and a big block of sleep from midnight to around 4am. The other methods require less overall sleep (3-4 hours) but several (5-6) naps in the day.
For me its important to have longer stretches of wake time even if that means that I cannot get my total sleep to 3 hours. The schedule that I will be using is as follows:
7:40-8:00am - sleep
12:00-12:20pm - sleep
4:30-4:50pm - sleep
Midnight-3:00am - core sleep
For a grand total of 4 hours of sleep a day. Now what I have read is that initially the first week of so it is rough adapting. But that once you are adjusted the naps are refreshing and more than enough to meet your daily requirements. So tomorrow will be the first full day of the experiment.
I will be posting my progress here and tweeting every few days to keep myself honest and to show to anyone interested in following along. Here we go!
As above, so below, as within, so without, so that the miracle of the one can be established.
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| — | Alchemist’s axiom |
All roads lead to Chuck Norris. And by the transitive property, a roundhouse kick to the face.
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| — | Chuck Norris Facts (via chucknorrisfacts) |
![thedailywhat:
Barney Frank-Inspired Macro of the Day: “Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”
[via.]](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kon1m8J3sR1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
Barney Frank-Inspired Macro of the Day: “Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”
[via.]
A man’s beard grows fastest when he anticipates sex.
submitted by: sourient
A chicken and the egg sort of thing. I guess making beards hip is a reaction to the paradox.
