Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

I have a full time job as head of IT at a startup hedgefund, in my final year of University(comp sci), have a massive independent project, and other things to worry about. no time t play 6-8hours of online cards daily which i need to be doing. so 99% gonna give polyphasic sleeping a shot.

It's where you sleep 2hours a day in 20 minute naps every 4 hours. Supposedly it works and the health risks are currently non existent (havnt been found). After an adjustment period you don't feel tired anymore, just a need for a quick nap and just ridiculous amounts of time! Definately gonna try some pt in October once I have my schedule for this year sorted...The biggest reason for failure is boredom so people sleep during the adjustment period, so they fall asleep but i definately won't have this problem.

was wondering if any1 has any advice / experience with this? thoughts?

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

i found this sleep pattern very useful over quite a prolongued period of time.

However my sleep was closer to 4-5 hours so nothing as extreme as you are going to be attempting.

Reason I had to sleep in those patterns was work was 24/7.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

u want to be a uberman aye!

Im been wanting to do this for awhile (no reason)
GL would love to hear updates... or maybe we could get a group of 2p2's to do it... might be fun

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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u want to be a uberman aye!

Im been wanting to do this for awhile (no reason)
GL would love to hear updates... or maybe we could get a group of 2p2's to do it... might be fun

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sounds awesome, could get a group of people to do it, swap msn/aol and help each other through the hellish first couple of weeks. I am thinking of taking a shot oct7th+, will keep updates on here for skeptics (to hopefully prove them wrong). pm me uf ur interested in trying it with me

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Humans are not machines that can just shut themselves off every 4 hours. Do you plan to take an alarm clock with you everywhere you go?

If the human body was set up to sleep in a series of 20 minute naps why are there no cultures in which this practice has taken shape? I predict a 5 hour nap at work or school in your near future. If it was a matter of life and death perhaps you could pull it off for a short term, but it's not and you'll likely succumb to the snooze bar in a few days at most.

Wikipedia has a nice entry on this. Paul Erdos is the only one who supposedly pulled this off over long periods (he used amphetamines).

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

i think you'd be better off sleeping in two 4hr(or half of your usual sleep time) shifts. its pretty easy to adjust to, as opposed to the 20 min naps which takes weeks and may not even work for you.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Dude, this is going to f_ck you up and may screw up your future. And it looks like you have a promising future. If I were you then I would commit one way of the other, now. Don't try both poker and career. Career can fund poker anyway.

But, I once had the same idea as you when I was younger. Sometimes the thought crosses my mind. I would seriously research the following:

If you ever saw the movie Altered States then you know about sensory depravation. Now you can find sensory depravation tanks for sale. You should try this, they have places in big Cities where you pay some money to go into one. It is claimed that 15 minutes in the tank is like two hours of sleep. I tried one a few times and the experience was truly relaxing. So there may be merit to it. What I doubt about this approach is that I think your actual physical body needs a set amount of down-time to repair stuff. Your brain also needs downtime to kind-of-reset. I think the Dep Chamber allows your brain to get a rest, but maybe not your body.

The biggest issue I have had during my life is a lack of time to do all of the learning I want to do. Whatever you do, please post your results as I am very curious to any edge that may exist to increase up-time.

Good luck.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

I think you guys are wacked, seriously wacked. I will be extremely sadened to hear of you demise. I can see the news ticker across the bottom of CNN. Local youth dies in a single vehicle accident or falls off a building because he fell asleep because he believed sleep was a waste of time. You will have plenty of time to sleep after you are dead.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

You are not Martha Stewart. You will never be Martha Stewart. She was born that way, as was, apparently, Thomas Edison. Their ability to get by with little or no sleep and just the catnaps is very, very rare.

I looked into changing my sleep cycle as well, and apparently it's genetically programmed that you need a certain number of hours of sleep each night. It has been many years since I investigated this problem, so I can't give you any up-to-date literature to read, but my findings were in agreement with the poster upthread who pointed out that the only people who had significant success were people who were willing to use amphetamines. In my case, these drugs had other side effects. And they are much more difficult to get by prescription now, so you could have legal and cost issues to boot.

I think you are probably going to have set priorities like everyone else.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

I know I would not be able to fall asleep once every four hours, at least it would take a while. Do you plan to sleep at work btw?

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Check out Neil Strauss' Book The Game. In the book he attempts to do what you re talking about. It's a very entertaining book. He only writes a little bit about trying to become a polyphaisc sleeper, and is unsuccessful at it. He just ended getting too tired and went back to regualr sleeping.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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Check out Neil Strauss' Book The Game. In the book he attempts to do what you re talking about. It's a very entertaining book. He only writes a little bit about trying to become a polyphaisc sleeper, and is unsuccessful at it. He just ended getting too tired and went back to regualr sleeping.

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yea thats where i read about it... lol about the part where he has a 3sum but needs to sleep rofl "do u mind having a qiuck nap with me girls"

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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I know I would not be able to fall asleep once every four hours, at least it would take a while. Do you plan to sleep at work btw?

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Yeah, I work at a startup so its a young company and I am the 4th member of the team so I get to set my own hours, have a lot of freedom as long as I get work done. Also one of the guys I work with is gonna join me in my quest.

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I think you guys are wacked, seriously wacked. I will be extremely sadened to hear of you demise. I can see the news ticker across the bottom of CNN. Local youth dies in a single vehicle accident or falls off a building because he fell asleep because he believed sleep was a waste of time. You will have plenty of time to sleep after you are dead.

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What's wrong with trying? Obviously it might not work out, after I give it my best shot for a couple weeks (including changing my diet so its more engergy / no meat etc) if it doesn't work out then I will look into even better time management and 6hours + a nap or something. If you don't try then you will never know.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Read this:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...yphasic-sleep/

This is someone who was a polyphasic sleeper for nearly 6 months. After the first few weeks, he said that he felt better and was more alert than when he was a monophasic sleeper. He had little problems with being tired or oversleeping. He did not take drugs and actually had to give up caffeine in order to be able to fall asleep during his nap time. It's an interesting read.

The reason he quit polyphasic sleep wasn't due to any health reasons. He quit due to social reasons. He didn't like being out of sync with the rest of the world.

For those unaware, your body adjusts to enter REM sleep (the important part of sleep) almost immediately when you fall asleep. This is how people can survive sleeping only two hours of sleep. Most of that sleep is REM sleep.

I've given thought of trying this. I'm not sure I will though, because I enjoy having a definite beginning and a definite end to the day.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

If you're going to attempt the Uberman, then you need to schedule it so the next 10 to 14 days are not going to be important in getting things done. If you have a SO, friends, roommates, co-workers, anyone to help you stay on schedule, then use them. If you're like most people, it will be extremely difficult to get by the adjustment period. Do not ever oversleep. Keep a strict schedule during the adjustment period. Do not drink caffeine &/or alcohol. Do not use any drugs. Becareful about sex, heavy exercise, and heavy meals, which may knock you out for a prolong period of time. Eat light & healthy. Also it helps to do activities like go for a walk, and stand up & work if possible during those times you are really tired. The 2hr/day is the strictest, but most energizing schedule. It's been done by quite a few people for 4+ months. If you make it past the adjustment period, you will experience lucid dreams, and you will notice that you are much more mentally sharp then if you were accustomed to monophasic or biphasic sleep.

I personally think it's possible to do, with no really harmful effects if done for less than a year. However, there may be negative side effects (like death, haha jk, but not really), but these aren't well known. I'd highly recommend seeing a doctor during this time. Better advice would be to cut things out like poker that are basically a waste of time.

It's highly unlikely that our ancestors slept in a monophasic pattern, which is how most of civilization sleeps today. Also, the idea the your in REM sleep during those 20minute naps is just an idea. It's quite possible that you're body is getting different parts of each sleep phase.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Health risks are non-existent? What the heck have you been reading (or better yet, not reading)?

It sure seems like the goal of this sleep regimine is to put your system into continual REM Rebound, which by just about any definition from sleep research equates to "dumb."

All the best research I've read on the topic says that the gold standard is getting whatever your body would require if you allowed yourself a proper night's sleep, which for most people averages a total of 7-8 hours.

REM Rebound aside, shorting your total sleep time by half just puts you into "sleep deprivation." You probably won't notice the effects, since one of the major effects of sleep deprivation is an IQ drop of about 15 points, which will put you into the "too clueless to recognize your confidence for the foolhardiness that it is."

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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"dumb."

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"sleep deprivation."

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"too clueless to recognize your confidence for the foolhardiness that it is."

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Who are you quoting? Do you have a link?

Anyways, I'd like to read about any studies on on PPSleep, and it's side effects, so if you have links, please link them. Thx.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Do I have links handy? Sadly, no, not immediately. Mostly, it's stuff I remember from (recent) grad school on sleep research.

And I probably should offer links before going off like that, but the whole idea of PP Sleep so badly flies in the face of everything that I've learned about sleep that it just shocked me that people even take it as a goal.

I could very much be wrong on this, and if I am, well, consider me a poopie head, but reading about PP Sleep sounds very much like someone claiming that shooting yourself in the foot is a good idea. I don't have any specific links to support the notion that it's a bad idea, but based on what I've learned, it seems to be in the same ballpark.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

The only thing that is holding me back is...
the 4 hour blocks of "life" you have... some things take more than 4 hrs.
and also trying to find somewhere to sleep in emergencies

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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The only thing that is holding me back is...
the 4 hour blocks of "life" you have... some things take more than 4 hrs.
and also trying to find somewhere to sleep in emergencies

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well once you get used to it, you can push back naps to 6 hours as long as u have 6 a day (so have another nap 2 hours later). i agree it sounds unhealthy/dangerous. It goes against everything we have learned about sleep, so at first it does sound shocking. This is why I am going to be monitoring my health closely and eating a very very controlled diet (almost vegan with occassional fish / eggs and some dairy).

in terms of work allowing it, my two "bosses" (more like collegues) are gonna try it with me and seem very psyched so having a good support network is there. and it will be a trail for a month or two, and then reasses / see if it works. when i start in a few weeks will definatly log the journey daily. will be interesting

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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The only thing that is holding me back is...
the 4 hour blocks of "life" you have... some things take more than 4 hrs.
and also trying to find somewhere to sleep in emergencies

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well once you get used to it, you can push back naps to 6 hours as long as u have 6 a day (so have another nap 2 hours later). i agree it sounds unhealthy/dangerous. It goes against everything we have learned about sleep, so at first it does sound shocking. This is why I am going to be monitoring my health closely and eating a very very controlled diet (almost vegan with occassional fish / eggs and some dairy).

in terms of work allowing it, my two "bosses" (more like collegues) are gonna try it with me and seem very psyched so having a good support network is there. and it will be a trail for a month or two, and then reasses / see if it works. when i start in a few weeks will definatly log the journey daily. will be interesting

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log in a blog. Post a link once you start!

edit: I just checked your profile, but this undertaking probably deserves its own medium.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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log in a blog. Post a link once you start!

edit: I just checked your profile, but this undertaking probably deserves its own medium.

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Yeah, will have its own blog. Completely seperate beast than poker (and will make a more interesting blog)

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Nice. When do you start?

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Wasn't there a Seinfeld episode where Kramer tried something similar to this? I think he ended up in the bottom of either the Hudson or East River after passing out on top of some chick who thought that he died.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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Nice. When do you start?

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Have some important work to do over the next week then I start classes in week so going to see what my schedule is like. Also converting to being almost vegan (from being a microwave/junk food eater) so not gonna start for another couple weeks. thinking about the 7th of october.

when i start will start up a blog, post a link in a new thread and enjoy getting flamed [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Ho-kay. So you're giving up food and sleep. Trust an older lady, friend, this ain't gonna work without amphetamines.

I shouldn't kid around, as I actually know a lady who died of sleep deprivation trying to drive home from work after a double shift. Certainly if you are denying yourself sufficient calories and sufficient sleep, I would count you as at very high risk of a serious accident.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

So, is the blog gonna be called "Operation Bullet/Foot?"

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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Ho-kay. So you're giving up food and sleep. Trust an older lady, friend, this ain't gonna work without amphetamines.

I shouldn't kid around, as I actually know a lady who died of sleep deprivation trying to drive home from work after a double shift. Certainly if you are denying yourself sufficient calories and sufficient sleep, I would count you as at very high risk of a serious accident.

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#1 won't be driving or doing anything that could lead to a deadly accident. #2 even tho I am changing my kind of diet I will be making sure i get more than regular calories (need to eat more if you're up 22 hours a day). And will be better quality / healthier food than eating random crap.

worst case scenario is after a week or so I fail and go back to regular sleep. most likely but nothing wrong with trying

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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Paul Erdos is the only one who supposedly pulled this off over long periods (he used amphetamines).

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I saw Paul Erdos nod out during lectures. It wasn't on purpose.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

Was there not a Next Generation Star Trek episode about this?
The crew sleeps for 8h, but gets no rem sleep due to some wierd alien effect. The crew slowly goes insane except for Data.

Are you trying to see if you can be Data?
I wonder what happens if your not Data?
hahahah
good luck

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

No, the general pattern of sleep regimes like this is that if your body has actually gotten enough slow wave/non-REM sleep (which is highly unlikely on 4 hours/day), you'll go into what's called "REM Rebound."

Someone who is not sleep deprived will generally need to sleep for about 40 minutes to an hour before experiencing their first REM cycle. But, wake someone every thirty minutes or so (preventing them from entering REM, while still allowing more physically restorative sleep), and REM Rebound sets in, wherein someone will be able to fall asleep and almost immediately pop into REM.

This is generally considered NOT A GOOD THING by most of the sleep researchers I've talked to, and in fact, REM Rebound is often of interest to psychiatrists looking for physical causes of problems.

Most often, a person will experience REM Rebound due to sleep apnea. Basically, your obstructed breathing wakes you briefly at close-intervals with the result that even if you do get enough sleep, you're not getting any REM.

I experience this when I fall asleep in the early-mid afternoon and almost immediately start dreaming. Really strange to have actual dreams from a 15 minute catnap.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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I experience this when I fall asleep in the early-mid afternoon and almost immediately start dreaming. Really strange to have actual dreams from a 15 minute catnap.

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This happens to me as well, especially if I nap in the morning.

Re: Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...
 

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