What is polyphasic sleep?

Polyphasic sleep is the kind of sleep where you sleep in different intervals throughout the day. There are various alternations of this type of sleep.

Below is an info graphic showing different type of sleep techniques. (Source : Wikipedia)

Now, I won’t go around explaining on each of them because it’s already pretty clear from the graphic. I got around testing with the Uberman Sleep schedule for 3 weeks. I had to stop as I had serious exams coming up.

What’s in it for you?

The most obvious answer is that you will get more time to do stuffs. You won’t be wasting a third of your life just sleeping like the others. You can get your assignments, works, etc. done in time. With practice, you’ll be able to directly go to REM sleep which is the most important part of the 5 cycles of sleeping. So, basically you won’t be wasting 3-5 hours to go to REM sleep. Now, I’ve not experienced it yet because I just started this too but it is said that polyphasic sleepers will see more lucid dreams than other people. For those of you who don’t know what a Lucid Dream is (just wiki it or) where a person becomes conscious in his/her dream and with practice will be able to control their dreams. And since, you dream in the REM cycle of your sleep, you’ll get 6 chances at REM in a day (considering you adopted the Uberman cycle) to lucid dream. People become fascinated by you, cause, why not.

What are the risks?

You’ll feel terribly weak for the first two weeks as your body adapts to a new sleeping cycle. The world will be sleeping while you’ll be awake. So, you’ll probably feel lonely and scared. There aren’t many researches conducted on sleep cycles. So, if you’re really skeptical, you probably should go with it.

What are the things I’ll need?

Willpower : The idea of sleeping less and doing more is so impressive that many people try moving to polyphasic sleep cycle right away. But, you need to have strong willpower to totally switch to another lifestyle (yes, this thing changes your lifestyle). Believe me, in my first attempt I failed miserably. So, you need to stay motivated and believe in yourself that you can do this. Speak to your doctor first. You may skip this part if you’re healthy and rarely get sick. And for those of you who often get sick, consult to your doctor first and understand the risks that come along with reduced sleep time. Pick what time that best suits your schedule. If you’re a 9-5 kind of guy, you need to set up time to sleep at your work (yea, good luck with that), or if you’re a student you need to take your naps during the recess or something. The point is, you need to pick a schedule and stick to it. Even if you oversleep or miss a single nap, you’ll blow all things. Get an alarm clock. If you’re a really deep sleeper like you, you’ll need an alarm clock that should be able to wake (even your) neighbors up. However, you’re fine if you ain’t Since it’ll be really hard to keep track of time when you’re doing it for the first time, you might even need to set different alarms in different devices/multiple alarms as it can be really hard to stick to during the initials. Take it slow. If you’re planning to switch directly to Uberman sleep schedule it’ll be hard and by hard I mean really hard. So, take your time and start with biphasic for a month then slowly reduce the time and then ultimately to Uberman or Everyman sleep schedule. Learn to nap. This is the main idea behind the whole polyphasic thing. Avoid bright screens before and after 10 minutes of the nap. If you’re having difficulty to nap drink some water. Don’t make excuses. After you’ve started the cycle, STICK TO IT> Believe me when I say this cause if you don’t, you’ll feel really weak for the next 24 hours. So, never skip a nap or oversleep. Find something to do with your time. This is the most important part, You’ll need to find new hobbies and skills that you can do with the extra time that you’ll gain. Since nighttime, most of the people will be asleep you’ll need to find something interesting to do so that you don’t get carried away and get asleep. Meditation helps too. Need I say more? -_-