Polyphasic Sleep Scedule Help

[Yohojo]

My name is aakash and im 15 years old. . And heres my first post hoorah!
Iv always though that sleep was a pure waste of time
Yes its useful but the less you get the more you can do
Iv always thought of sleeping less i used to only need about 6 hours
now I'm at about 6.75. Your plyphasic sleep articles really amazed
me. They sod very interesting but not all people work at home =p.
I'm a school kid and go to school from 8- 3 (and 8-5 on Tuesdays
Wednesdays and Thursdays) i was wondering if there was any way i
could be "Semi polyphasic"

I don't want to be completely polyphaic because i will just be out
of sync with everything else. I'm not sure if i want to be
polyphasic at all. My goal is to just lower the amount of sleep i
need each night so i will be awake more.
Maybe take one nap after school or something of the sort?

Any suggestions on how to decrease my nightly sleep dosage? =). Or
is it all just discipline? I just want to ease into getting less
and less sleep.

Thanks,
Yohojo

[David Hausladen]

There are a good number of options, though I'm sure you already know that alternative sleep schedules are largely untested (we're working to change that). There are a lot of threads here on the Health and Fitness forum regarding biphasic and polyphasic sleep, with a lot of questions and answers that might help you to figure out what kind of schedule would work best for you.

That said, I'll give my own recommendation: since you're in school and almost certainly living at home, I would recommend biphasic sleep--it's fairly easy to adapt to, not too revolutionary (i.e. it won't freak out your family too badly), pretty well proven, and will almost certainly reduce your sleep time, possibly in the short-term and almost certainly in the long-term. As you say, "full" polyphasic sleep (such as the "Uberman" schedule that Steve Pavlina used) is unlikely to be compatible with your current schedule and living situation.

So for biphasic sleep, you have two sleep periods during the day, usually with one long "core sleep" during the night, and a shorter nap during the day. I highly recommend that the lengths of those sleep periods be multiples of 90 minutes, basically because 90 minutes is the length of the average person's sleep cycle, and it's best to wake at the beginning or end of a sleep cycle (for a full explanation, see this article). When you're just starting out with biphasic sleep, I would recommend a schedule that includes four or five sleep cycles. That's 6 or 7.5 hours of total sleep, usually in the form of a 4.5-hour or 6-hour "core sleep" at night and a 1.5-hour nap during the day. Later, you can try cutting down to less sleep cycles (I'm not sure if three sleep cycles is feasible long-term, but four cycles almost certainly is). Also, I've heard that as your body gets more used to the schedule, the length of each sleep cycle decreases slightly, so that you could eventually get four sleep cycles in 5 hours instead of 6.

One suggestion that will help you regardless of what sleep schedule you adopt is to be consistent with it--i.e. get the same hours of sleep every night, even on weekends. This helps with monophasic sleep, but with biphasic sleep it's much more important, and on polyphasic sleep it's practically essential. If your sleep is consistent, your body can work on optimizing it, at least improving your quality of sleep and maybe even reducing the amount needed. When you start waking a few minutes before your alarm goes off, you know that your body has become well-adapted to your current schedule.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you decide to do and how it works out. If you choose biphasic or polyphasic sleep, please write about your experiences in the polyphasic sleep logs thread so that others can learn from them. Good luck!

[Yohojo]

damn great information and fast
but why must i do for 90 minute multiples?
I know i should do at least 90 minutes.
but can i do like 120 minutes and wake up?

I think ill start next week. Ill just be a normal sleeper for a while and try out:
5.5 Hours at night and
1.5 In the evening (just a brainstorm)
idk if i can sleep with homework on my head

Im still very interested in this. Ill figure our a schedule soon and try it out in a few weeks.
Thanks for the help.

[David Hausladen]

Rather than explain the 90-minute thing in my own words, I'll quote from a quote in the Glen Rhodes article on it:

If we were to sleep completely naturally, with no alarm clocks or other sleep disturbances, we would wake up, on the average, after a multiple of 90 minutes--for example, after 4 1/2 hours, 6 hours, 7 1/2 hours, or 9 hours, but not after 7 or 8 hours, which are not multiples of 90 minutes. In the period between cycles we are not actually sleeping: it is a sort of twilight zone from which, if we are not disturbed (by light, cold, a full bladder, noise), we move into another 90-minute cycle. A person who sleeps only four cycles (6 hours) will feel more rested than someone who has slept for 8 to 10 hours but who has not been allowed to complete any one cycle because of being awakened before it was completed...

That's why I would say monophasic and biphasic sleepers should always use multiples of 90 minutes for their sleep. For very short naps, there's an exception: if you get 30 minutes or less of sleep, your body will not have time to get to the heavier stages of sleep (it will remain in Stages 1 and 2) and you won't have much trouble waking up. But in a schedule with three or less sleep blocks, I wouldn't use very short naps as part of a regular sleep schedule; they're good at staving off sleepiness temporarily but bad at dealing with overall sleep deprivation (very short naps work much differently in ultrashort polyphasic sleep schedules--like Steve's polyphasic sleep schedule--but only after adaptation is complete).

A tip that I picked up from practical experience and forgot to put down here: incorporate a 15- to 30-minute "winding down" time before each of the two periods of sleep where you lay in bed and do something low-key, such as reading or listening to relaxing music, to make it easy for you to fall asleep at the right time. On the off-chance that you fall asleep early, if your sleep periods are scheduled at multiples of 90 minutes, you'll still wake up in the early part of the sleep cycle and not have to deal with the tiredness associated with waking up from the deep stages of sleep.

[David Hausladen]

I forgot to mention that you should absolutely check out Scott Bird's recently-posted summary on biphasic sleep if you haven't already.

[Yohojo]

wonderfull thanks
ugh thers so much great stuff here idk where to start
the more i think about this bipahsic sleeping though the more im getting skeptical. ill just take some time to think about it.
Like in time, this will reduce my sleeping time?
It just seems awkward to sleep for 1.5 hours in the evening

if i do ill make a log or whatever on how it goes
Know any other tips for sleeping less?
I was wondering if diet could help
More food= More energy?

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by Yohojo

wonderfull thanks
ugh thers so much great stuff here idk where to start
the more i think about this bipahsic sleeping though the more im getting skeptical. ill just take some time to think about it.
Like in time, this will reduce my sleeping time?
It just seems awkward to sleep for 1.5 hours in the evening

if i do ill make a log or whatever on how it goes
Know any other tips for sleeping less?
I was wondering if diet could help
More food= More energy?

Yohojo,

That summary will tell you a lot more, but briefly:

Yes, this will most likely reduce your sleeping time. It will also increase your quality of sleep.

The 90 minute nap doesn't have to be in the evening (I just take mine then because it fits in with my current schedule). Whenever you have time. However, it probably just feels awkward because you're not used to it. That changes very quickly.

On diet, more food does not necessarily mean more energy. I'm afraid there's a lot more to it than that (the types of food, the frequency of meals and their timing for starters).