Becoming a polyphasic sleeper...

[nextgenneo]

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?

[Poker Fool]

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.

[fourkingbs]

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

[nextgenneo]

[ QUOTE ]
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

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[dragon14]

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).

[Unabridged]

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.

[Poker_Hoar]

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.

[steamboatin]

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.

[goodgrief]

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.

[tomtemor]

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?