March 24, 2008 – 10:45 pm

During my college years, I was able to get away with 3-4 hours of sleep a day during the week, but ended up sleeping 12+ hours during the weekend. Polyphasic sleep, a method of taking multiple short naps during the day, theoretically allows you to stay up 21 hours a day indefinitely.

Imagine being able to stay up 21-22 hours a day with no ill effect or degradation of your cognitive or physical functionality. The personal projects you would be able to start/finish, the quiet time you would have for yourself, the endless late night reruns you can watch, all things you can do with your extra time. Well, you can! by adopting an Polyphasic Sleep schedule.

“Polyphasic sleep is a sleep pattern specification intended to compress sleep time to 2-5 hours daily. This is achieved by spreading out sleep into short (around 20-45 minute) naps throughout the day. This allows for more waking hours with relatively high alertness.” – wikipedia

There are several variations of schedules for the Polyphasic sleep, Uberman, Everyman and Dymaxion, each having its own schedules and nap length. Blogger Steve Pavlina provides a detailed log of his foray into adopting a Polyphasic Sleep schedule.

Adopting a Polyphasic sleep schedule definitely seems possible, and appealing. Of course, you would have to have a lifestyle that would accommodate naps at scheduled points during the day, college schedules, or self employed or a being employed at a very liberal work environment could definitely would fit this mold.

Wikipedia cites several notable individuals who may have adopted some form of Polyphasic sleep: