Polyphasic Sleeping, which is sometimes referred to as the Uberman Sleep Schedule, is a drastically different sleeping routine that aims to maximize the amount of time you spend awake each day. To put it briefly, the technique involves napping for 20 to 30 minutes every 4 hours, rather than sleeping for a number of straight hours once per day. While the adjustment period is apparently quite torturous, I’m told that once you adapt, it’s no less demanding than adhering to a normal sleep schedule. You end up getting approximately three hours of sleep per day, without feeling tired or exhausted. And perhaps the biggest surprise, you dream more each day than you would by sleeping normally. This is because each nap (once you become adapted to the routine) consists entirely of REM sleep.
Recently, a friend of mine has decided to give this unusual sleeping schedule a try (due to a severely twisted ankle, he’s been granted a couple of weeks off work). As I write this, he’s on day 7, and appears to be well on his way to fully adapting. It’s unusual having to accommodate his nap times when we spend time together, but he’s eager to see how long he can last, and he even has plans for continuing the routine after returning to work next week.
I was just curious to hear if anyone was familiar with Polyphasic Sleeping, or if you’ve had any experience with it yourself. I’ve been reading an interesting blog written by an individual who managed to keep it up for six months, claiming that the only real downside was the fact that nobody else is the same way. He reports a strengthened ability to solve logical problems, better recall dreams (due to experiencing more REM sleep than we normally do, I would guess), a heightened sense of awareness in general, and improved fitness. The additional 5 hours of waking time each day would probably come in rather handy as well.
If you want to read more about it, the detailed blog can be found here. (There’s also a Wikipedia article here, but it seems to be offline at this time.)
I’m not intending to try this myself, but I’m fascinated by the idea, and I’d love to hear anything you may have heard about this unusual sleeping pattern. 