Polyphasic Sleep Experiment

[sladerunner69]

Lately I've just been swamped with school work and my couple of side jobs. My daily life now involves studying at the library to driving around on work assignments and then home to watch a little tv and fall asleep. I don't like not having enough time to read this forum, read my fun books, paint wargame miniatures, workout, clean my car... it's as if there are just not enough waking hours in the day. I know, what if I do what all men of immeasurable and legendary genius have done before me, and cutback on sleep! This is actually quite common among very succesful and accomplished people throughout history, from Marget Thatcher only sleeping 5 horus a night, to Leonardo Davinci who reportedly didn't sleep for many hours at a time and only took naps. Timothy Ferris in the 4-hour body claims that using the "uberman" sleep schedule you can take 6, 20 minute powernaps and achieve just as much deepwave REM sleep as a normal person. Sure you are missing out on all the low wave non-REM sleep but there is evidence to suggest that not much of this is necessary. And Ray Peat has even stated tha the primary function of sleep is to minimize the stress of darkness- I'm starting to become convinced that I am wasting hours of my life that could be spent being productive just to gain some sueless non-REM sleep hours.

Im going to start with 4.5 hours core sleep, with 2x20 minute naps spread evenly throughout the day.

Anyone have experience with this? Recommendations? Words of Warning?

 

[Art Vandelay]

Interested to see how this works out for you. I'm very jealous of those who claim to function well on 4-5 hours sleep.

Modulating light exposure will probably make things a bit easier(strong light at night).

My only concern is that cutting sleep might increase risk of Alzheimer's. Glymphatic waste removal increases while asleep, clearing out amyloid beta...and who knows what else.

 

[nikolabeacon]

If you have strong desire and motivation for exploring and finding some answers you will probablly not damage the system. I very often spontaneously read during whole nights and sleep very little and dont notice any lack ov energy. But sometimes when i forced myself to try and experiment for example buckminster dymaxion sleep it was total mess and exhaustion for me.



Buckminster FullerEdit
In order to gain more time awake in the day, Buckminster Fuller reportedly advocated a regimen consisting of 30-minute naps every six hours. The short article about Fuller's nap schedule in Time in 1943, which also refers to such a schedule as "intermittent sleeping," says that he maintained it for two years, and further notes "he had to quit because his schedule conflicted with that of his business associates, who insisted on sleeping like other men."[25]

However, it is not clear when Fuller practised any such sleep pattern and whether it was really as strictly periodic as claimed in that article; it has also been said that he ended this experiment because of his wife's objections