Polyphasic sleep is the practice of taking multiple naps throughout the day and/or night instead of a single period of nightly sleep. There are two popular variations:
- Uberman sleep (a term coined by blogger PureDoxyk in 1999 and popularized by Steve Pavlina in 2006) consists of taking 6 naps of 20-25 duration spaced evently apart throughout the day and night (ie at 4 hour intervals), for a total of about 2 to 2 1/2 hours of sleep per day.
- Everyman sleep consists of one period of “core sleep” of 3 hours, and 3 naps of about 20 minutes spaced at approximately 5 hour intervals throughout the day, for a total of about 4 hours of sleep per day.
Both of these schedules are claimed to greatly reduce total sleep time while increasing overall alertness and the amount of time available for pursuing hobbies, relationships and business activities. For some people (including Steve Pavlina and PureDoxyk) Uberman also has profound consciousness-changing effects including euphoria, feeling of enhanced perception, feeling that the whole world is moving in slow motion and you are not, etc. Both schedules are extremely hard to adapt to, initial adaptation typically takes a week in the case of Uberman and 2 weeks in the case of Everyman, and it is hell (although the schedule I am experimenting with has the potential to totally eliminate the pain of Everyman adaptation).
These practices are all very “cutting-edge” – all the information currently available is anecdotal and there have been no controlled studies. There are many more documented cases of failure than success with either of these schedules. Very strict discipline in the nap times and duration is essential, as is having a schedule that permits it.
Despite the number of failures there are many documented success cases for these sleep schedules, It is rare for someone to stay on Uberman for over a year as few people are able to adhere to the schedule while being engaged in the “real world”, but there are many people who have been on Everyman 1+ years and love it. It seems that people start to feel lonely on Uberman due to all the time on their hands and the inability to share it with people, along with the required rigidity of the schedule interfering with social life.
More information in the Resources page of this site and the Wikipedia article.
