It’s my fault, I suppose - I stupidly sent my boyfriend this link on “sleep hacks” - the most extreme is the “Uberman”, where you don’t sleep at night at all but take naps during the day. He decided to do the Three Nap Everyman, which is three hours of “core sleep” and three 20 minute naps. He needs more time in his day, I’m sure, but the time he’s gaining he’s mostly using to bore people to death talking about his sleep.
I’m giving the “Siesta” a try - six hours of sleep and an afternoon nap. I’m hoping it will get me up in the morning to run. I think he’s kind of crazy, myself - we don’t know so much as all that about other phases of sleep that he’s missing out on, and during this “adjustment period” he’s… variable. Better yesterday, but the day before yesterday he was a stone bitch.
So, has anybody else seriously monkeyed with their sleep schedule in an effort to sleep “more efficiently”?
I spent a month studying in Spain and I did the siesta thing, largely because there is nothing better to do at midday than eat lunch and take a nap. I love it. I wish it were more sensible to do in the US. I might adopt it again when I go to college in the fall, depending on whether my schedule accommodates it.
One of my friend sleeps like your “siesta” sleep, but not because he was looking to change it up. He works 7am-3pm and finds he likes his schedule better if he goes to bed around midnight and naps after work, before his friends get home. He’s been doing that about 6 months now.
He snores and is one of those people who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, so I’m convinced he has sleep apnea anyway and probably isn’t a good model for someone who has interesting sleep habits.
He is awake during the day and is still alive, so he’s got that going for him
After returning from a month backpacking in the rockies I can only seem to get 5 to 6 hours of sleep. I am nodding off at 3pm most days…but my body won’t naturally just sleep at the “normal” time anymore. Another side effect is that I can’t seem to get enough exercise either, after climbing all those peaks out there I am constantly looking for more to do to work my muscles in my legs and upper body. Very odd as I am not a runner…er, at least I wasn’t a runner prior.
I am going to try monkeying with my sleep cycle a little bit with melatonin, that ought to take care of some of what I am going through.
Obligatory Anecdote:
My uncle goes to bed at 8pm, sleeps until 11pm - gets up watches the late night talk-show guys then goes back to bed from 2-6 or 7. He’s been doing that since the early 80’s.
I’ve been trying the “eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m thirsty, sleep when I’m tired” routine, and have to say I love it. Wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t work from home, and there are times when I can’t just do what my body feels like, because I do, after all, have a life.
But most days, I end up taking a 2 hour nap around 3 or 4 pm, then get about 6 hours sleep during the night (usually hitting the sack around 3 or 4 am). I feel rested and bright-eyed when I get up in the morning, and I actually feel a lot more productive when I am awake. It makes pulling all-nighters easier too, when I have to do so.
The idea is that if you don’t allow yourself to sleep except on your “schedule” then you’ll fall asleep for your 20 minute nap. I just took mine early because I couldn’t hold my eyes open, and I’ve got this mp3 that some sleep-crazed internet person set up with white noise and wake up waves, and I feel incredible and think I actually slept. (The first two days I didn’t sleep at all on my naps, I think - 20 minutes is hard to fall asleep in.)
ETA - and when I say I slept, I mean I curled up in a chair in the staff room next to people taking their lunches and microwaving their nasty-ass food, and in an open level beneath the main level of a public library. So I think I’m starting to get kind of “trained”.
I read the Wikipedia article on Delayed Sleep-Phase Syndrome, and I think it just about perfectly describes my sleep habits. I’m a total night owl, and it’s hard for me to get out of bed many mornings, though some days I can wake up after only 4 or 5 hours of sleep and feel fine. A tactic I think I’ll try is to have a set wake-up time as opposed to a set bedtime (which I can never consistently follow).
I really wish society would recognize that people don’t all sleep the same, and that naps and working different shifts can make a lot of people more productive. Sometimes I feel like the world is run by a tiny percentage of cranky assholes who get by on 4 hours of sleep a night and has somehow convinced the rest of us that we should strive to emulate them.
I have to say, a lot of the links provided look to me to be full of confirmation bias, unfounded claims, and outright bullshit, including the Wikipedia link. The idea that one can get by on only 2 hours of sleep (broken up into 20 minute naps, no less) seems especially crazy, particularly when the “researchers” claim that only REM sleep is important and one can get significant REM sleep in a 20 or 30 minute nap. My understanding of sleep cycles (from freshman psych courses, but still) is that one doesn’t reach REM sleep for at least half an hour after falling asleep, and that REM isn’t necessarily the only or most important part of sleep.
That said, I feel more awake and alert during the day on 7 hours of sleep than I do on 8, even though it is hard to get up in the morning, and sleeping 6 hours a night with an hour or hour and a half daytime nap is a pretty steady way to operate for me when my schedule allows.
Yeah, the “polyphasic community” is full of nutjobs. Really annoying ones. A lot of people do claim to be able to live well on less sleep, though, and lord knows he needs more hours in the day, so he’s giving it a try.
A lot of the generally accepted wisdom about sleep is based upon studies that tested only the conventional ways of sleeping. I know people can get into REM sleep faster than half an hour because I’ve seen it happen much more quickly than that. In every case I’ve witnessed it’s been someone who hadn’t had a pattern of normal eight hour sleep recently, or anything close to it. Instead of assuming these people were freaks of nature who got into REM completely abnormally, it makes more sense to me to believe that people who are sleep deprived go more deeply into sleep more quickly. Sure, scientific studies would be more reliable than my educated guess from isolated instances of observation, but educated guesses beat unthinking adherence on factoids from introductory psychology texts.
Right, I’m challenging whether these are actually educated guesses or wild-ass guesses from people who are trying to prove themselves right and finding only the results they’re looking for.
I have no experience with this, but my understanding is yes. The first two or so weeks of polyphasic sleep are utter torture as you miss lots of REM. Your body eventually adjusts and you enter REM much quicker.
I am naturally a night owl, and I could definitely do with more hours in the day, so in theory this plan should be really tempting. I also know that at times in my life I have started dreaming while partially still awake, so I know I can go into REM sleep quickly. The trouble is, those times are when I was dead on my feet from exhaustion and totally addled as a result. Even under those conditions I wake up from naps feeling like death warmed up - I can’t picture myself functioning to a normal level and I know I’d be far better off functioning normally for the normal number of hours than awake for longer but too addled to function properly.
