So this year, is a year of action for me. Doing more and thinking less. I've been hearing about polyphasic sleep for a while now and I've decided to implement it into my schedule. I think it would be a good way to allow me to get more done.

What is Polyphasic Sleep?

The main benefit about polyphasic sleep is that it gives you "more" awake hours during the day to do as you please. Normal "monophasic" sleep cycles gives you on average 16-18 hours a day. In a polyphasic sleep cycle you can get that up to almost 22 hours a day! Imagine that? Being awake for 22 hours out of a day? Imagine what you could do with that extra time?

How to Do Polyphasic Sleep

There's really no right or wrong way to do polyphasic sleep. The idea is instead of taking one big sleep (monophasic) every day, you space out your sleep every 4-6 hours and take 20-30 minute naps instead. Apparently, it takes about a week to adjust, but once your body does, you should be able to enter REM (the most beneficial stage of sleep) in a few minutes, instead of the average hour or so.

Polyphasic Sleep Cycles

There's three main types of polyphasic sleep, but really anything can be considered polyphasic sleep as long as you're sleeping more than once a day. The following three cycles are based according to their level of "difficulty."

Everyman:  In this cycle, you sleep for one long "core" nap and take additional 20-30 minutes. So for example, you can do a 3 hour core nap with three additional 20 minute naps. Another example is a 1.5 hour core nap with four 20 minute naps. The longer core nap makes this polyphasic sleep cycle easier to adjust to.

Uberman:  This is the cycle I'll be doing. You sleep every 4 hours for 20-30 minutes. This cycle is a little tougher to implement because of the frequent naps. 

Dymaxion:  This is probably the toughest sleep cycle to do. You take only four naps throughout the day, spaced every 6 hours for 30 minutes at a time. Since you get the least overall sleep in this cycle, it's the most extreme.

Thoughts and expectations

It goes without speaking that you shouldn't skip any naps, so I'll be extra diligent and make sure I stay on schedule. The hardest thing for me that I can foresee while on polyphasic sleep is trying to fit it into the activities of the daily world. Regardless, if I find myself away from my bed during my nap time, I'll still take a nap - even in my car if I have to.

I've heard diet and exercise are important, but I feel healthy living is important for anything in life. I think I pretty much got this area of my life under control so I shouldn't have to worry too much about it. I'll make sure to note any unusual or tricky circumstances when it comes to maintain my diet and exercise routine.

I plan on maintaining polyphasic sleep for at least a 30 day trial. It'll take at least a week for me to acclimate to it, so I'm expecting three good weeks.

I'm thinking of journaling this experiment as it may be useful to my readers, but I don't want the entries to be boring so I'll update when I feel there's something of importance to say. If this polyphasic sleep trial works, then you'll be seeing a lot more posts here on this blog as well as on my photography blog.

Resources

Here are some links to useful resources regarding polyphasic sleep if you guys are interested in learning more.

StevePavlina.com - Personal development guru, Steve Pavlina chronicled an extensive journal of his polyphasic sleep trials.

Wikipedia - what more can I say?

Puredoxyk.com - A wealth of information from someone who has been on polyphasic sleep for almost seven years. He wrote an ebook on the subject too.