Polyphasic Sleep

[Rob]

This has been of great interest to me lately and am planning on trying it out later this week. Polyphasic Sleep is where instead of getting all your sleep in one large block, it is broken down into smaller chunks, the sum of which is less than that of the consolidated block one would typically get in a night. In attempting to read up on the subject I have found many first hand accounts of success in attempting various polyphasic sleep schedules. However, I can find no studies carried out under reasonable experimental conditions to test the veracity of the claims. So I'm a little skeptical as to how accurate they are. As this site typically attracts skeptically minded individuates, I'm interested in the various opinions you all might have on the subject.

I'm at a point in my life where I am able to experiment with this sort of thing quite freely, So from next week, I'm thinking of trying what they call the everyman schedule. If I fail to adjust to the pattern then I will resume my normal sleeping pattern and little if any detrimental effects will occur to my studies. If I succeed, I will have much more time to work on my dissertation. Of course if any evidence is found that I will be seriously endangering my health then the experiment will be called off immediately.

If you want to read up on the subject, here is a link to its wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_Sleep

Thoughts?

EDIT: POST 200! XD

[Tiberius]

Good luck with that.

[Rob]

Thanks.

I really don't think this will work. A lot of the material for this stuff is on pro-newageist websites which are in favour of several things that are likely false.

[fr0d0]

Sounds great. Can't wait to hear what you find out.

I seem to have natural sleep windows every 3 hours: at 1am, 4am, 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm when If tired I can more easily sleep than at other times. In fact if I'm really tired it's at these times I find it most difficult to stay awake.

[amw79]

I sleep the untroubled sleep of the just.

[Retorth]

Do let us know of your progress in this thread. It does sound fascinating.

[leo-rcc]

I've tried something like that when I was working continuous night shifts at the Philip Morris cigarette plant in Bergen op Zoom. I was always used to go to bed after my shift, get up at 14:00, and start working again at 23:00. For a while I thought I'd try going to bed at 09:00, sleep until 12:00, go back to bed at 19:00, go to work at 22:00 do my shift from 23:00 to 07:00.

I kept that up for a week and then I was exhausted. I need to sleep in one long block or I am a wreck.

[theblindferrengi]

Polyphasic sleep is nice when you have a large workload, i usually get 3-4 hrs in 2 blocks, but lately only one 3-4 hr block per day. Changing from monophasic sleep is the most dificult part, but thats why caffine pills are awsome.

[Violet]

'Awesome'? More like 'Hugely detrimental to one's health'...

But enjoy that alarm-clock, rjh

[theblindferrengi]

Detrimental in the future, but if you can't pay the bills, how detrimental do you suppose starving, or freezing will be?