New polyphasic sleep pattern

Okay, so I've only been on the uberman schedule for a few weeks now, but I've had issues with having to nap every four hours.

The Dymaxion schedule looked nice (at least more manageable) because it only involves clocking out every six hours, but I've not heard of many people having a lot of success with it, and 6pm still has me at work sometimes.

So, as of this morning, I've been on an as-yet-unnamed schedule of my own.

In short, I sleep 40 minutes at 4am, 12pm, and 8pm (every 8 hours in other words). Neither the 4am or 8pm interferes with a typical 9-5 cubicle job, and napping for 40 minutes at 12pm isn't difficult to manage at all (and still leaves a few minutes for lunch).

The last few weeks that I've been on the uberman schedule, I noticed that 25 minutes of actual sleep felt MUCH more refreshing than 20 minutes of actual sleep, so I'm theorizing that 40 minutes of sleep MIGHT be enough to sustain a person for 7.333 hours when 30 minutes might not.

Also while on the uberman schedule, I noticed that it was very easy to skip one nap cycle (as long as you didn't miss the next one), so that was basically sleeping a half an hour every 8 hours (just not mandated) anyway.

As I write this, it's 5pm my time, and I've only slept 80 minutes today (4am and 12pm). Aside from a slight headache, I don't feel overwhelmingly tired.

Has anyone else tried a schedule like this? I'd welcome any input anyone might have.

If you're interested, I've been tracking my entire polyphasic sleep experiment in greater detail on my project blog at http://tendomentis.blogspot.com.

I'm skeptical of a 40 minute nap .. in my experience it doesn't leave you feeling particularly better and you run the risk of waking up from sleep inertia (grogginess from deep sleep)

In fact, I just tried a 60 minute lunch nap, that I've binned in favour of my usual 20 minute nap and a lie in (I don't oversleep at lunch times when at work, thankfully)

As for 20 min versus 25 min, this really depends on the person. I used to do 26 minutes, which was initially better.
But as I got better at falling asleep fast, I dropped that to 23 then 20 minutes.
Keeping in mind that I have an extra min or two fade in/out on my mp3

It's really about how well you get to sleep, IMO
But that means that 40 is not necessarily better ;)

EDIT:
As to your problem of fitting the uberman schedule to your life, that's a common problem. In fact the biggest reason why people stop - the inconvenience of it.
This is why a lot of people end up with an everyman schedule, or a biphasic (siesta) schedule

Myself, I'm doing this:
04:00-07:00 core
12:00-12:20 nap followed by 20 to 30 minutes listening to the birds
18:00-18:20 (optional/interchangeable with a 22:00 nap)
00:00-00:20 nap (optional/interchangeable with a 22:00 nap)

I prefer to avoid the midnight nap if possible, as it's the most dangerous one, so I tend to do a 10pm nap instead and stay up till 4am
Or I get my wife to make sure I wake up - but not always do-able

Oh I totally allow for the possibility that this might completely fail, but I feel the need to find my own limitations.

If worse comes to worst, I'll simply switch back to uberman.

Fair enough :D

EDIT: BTW, I'm doing my schedule with a new baby involved as well

I definately do NOT want to use an everyman-variant sleep schedule. If I'm sleeping that much, I might as well be mono/biphasic.

If I can make this schedule work, this would be ideal, but if it isn't sustainable I'll simply go back to the uberman schedule.

I'm keeping my blog updated on the progress of this new variant, but I'll come back and post an update here in two weeks in case anyone else is interested.

Please do! :D
I'd love to see somebody show it to be possible to have a flexible schedule involving 2 hours
But I remain incredibly skeptical. I've only done that with uberman.

Well, I'll give it my best shot anyway :)

I'm eagerly awaiting my 4am flirtation with unconsciousness (it's 3am where I am as I type this). I love how much more I get done during a day now.

My one regret is that I didn't do this earlier in life...when I consider how much more I would be capable of now if I had started this at age 18...

Interestingly, I'm finding the biggest problem at the moment is actually not blacking out before the 8 hour cycle is up. I blacked out between 7:50pm and 8pm last night, and as such didn't set my alarm to wake me up at 8:40pm. My body still woke me up a little after 9pm, but it's frustrating to have to worry about actually making it to the next sleep cycle without blacking out first to ensure that I'm only asleep as long as I'm scheduled to be.

This is where having a personal robotic assistant would be handy (adds that to list of things to invent with all my extra free time).

hey, this is very similar to my sleeping pattern. I named it LUCID-MAN because it was good at inducing dreams, i havent yet had actual lucids but it is only a matter of time.
Anyway, I sleep every 8 hours for 40 minutes although I split the 40 min block into two seperate 20 minute blocks. That is, I sleep for 20 minutes, wake for 5 minutes, then sleep again for another 20. I do this 3 times a day with a total of 2 hours. I'm not sure if it worked because my alarm fucked up so somebody should try it for me. I found this was a lot more refreshing than a continuous 40 minute sleep because you are having 2 power naps.

It is essentially uberman but you dont have to nap every 4 hours (one of the main critiques).

Someone try it please.

EDIT: I'm an ex-bi-phasic sleeper but I am thinking of going back to bi-phasic until I get a new alarm.

Interesting. But you need to make sure you don't just fall straight into deep sleep on the second nap (ie. make sure to get up for those 5 mins)
Tempting to try... it's fairly convenient...

Yeah, like I said, I wake for 5 minutes, I usually walk around, go toilet if I have to, read a couple of pages of my bedside book, and then back to bed.

If someone does try mine, please post here your results.

I am pretty sceptic, too. But if this works it would be pretty great. I am routing for you.
And also the second one with the 5 min break, sounds pretty good. Please post how it works out.

I'm just going to stick to the basic triphasic schedule for now. I want to stick to this for at least two weeks before deciding if it's sustainable or not.

The lucidman schedule sounds interesting, but I don't want to mix my schedule up anymore than I already have...yet.

I triphasicked for about a month, highly recommended...

Okay, hit a wall. I can't stay awake the 8 hours between cycles, at least long enough to get within a half hour of the next sleep cycle, which means no alarm gets set and I oversleep. My body won't let me oversleep by more than an hour (thanks to previously having been on the uberman schedule), but the prospect of this simply not being workable is frustrating.

As of this morning, I switched back to the uberman using 20 minute naps. To be honest, coming off a failed triphasic attempt, the uberman schedule feels downright luxurious.

I may try going triphasic again at some point (hey I couldn't handle the uberman on my first attempt either), but for now I'm going to stay with the uberman schedule.

Not sure if you do not want to sleep any longer than 2 hours, but you if you try the triphasic sleep again you could see how 1 hour sleeping periods would work instead of 40 minutes sleep cycles. This way you would be up 7 hours at a time and would get more rest during your sleeps. The convenience of triphasic may be worth the extra hour of sleep you would need as opposed to uberman.

Another thing to consider between these two sleeping schedules is the time it takes to prepare for your nap and the time it takes to wake up. I found that when I wake up from a good nap it takes about 5 minutes to become fully coherent. And to fall asleep, I generally take about 5 minutes to warm up the bed and slow my breathing down before I can attempt to sleep.

So at least in my case...Total time sleeping, falling asleep and waking up on uberman vs triphasic would be:

uberman
Time asleep 6 x 20 min naps: 2 hr
Time preparing to sleep 6 x 5 min: .5 hr
Time spent waking up 6 x 5 min: .5 hr
Total = 3 hr of time out of my day for uberman

triphasic
Time asleep 3 x 1hr: 3 hr
Time preparing to sleep 3 x 5 min: .25 hr
Time spent waking up 3 x 5 min: .25 hr
Total = 3.5 hr of time out of my day for triphasic

This may obviously be different for others but for me I think the convenience of triphasic will be well worth the extra half an hour it takes out of my day. Do you wear contacts? If so, you should also consider the time it takes to take them off and put them back in for every nap. Unless of course, you will be taking your naps with them in.

I was on Everyman for a month and a week and that was taking about 5.33 hrs out of my day. I plan to get back on a polyphasic schedule when finals are done with in a week and triphasic looks very tempting. I'll definitely update this thread with results if I decide to go triphasic.

5.3 hours? Sheesh. It works out a lot better for me.
At complete worst, I was getting 4.5 hours (closer to 4)
That was until things got really stuffed up the last 2 days :/
Now I'm planning on trying this lucidman schedule

I'm so glad I joined this forum.

I've been so frustrated with having failed my first attempt at going triphasic, but I was also devastated when I failed in my first attempt to go to the uberman schedule a few months ago.

I'm inspired by the people in this thread who recommend and encourage going triphasic. As much as I want to knock my total sleep down to two hours, I have to scale back and shoot for three.

So, I'll sleep for an hour at 12, and again at 8, and again at 4 the next morning and see if sleeping an hour every seven is any more achievable.

Like going to the uberman schedule, I'm convinced that achieving triphasic mostly boils down to a test of personal will, not just total sleep.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Placebo

5.3 hours? Sheesh. It works out a lot better for me.
At complete worst, I was getting 4.5 hours (closer to 4)
That was until things got really stuffed up the last 2 days :/
Now I'm planning on trying this lucidman schedule

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Yeah, I started with a 4.5 hr core with 2 20-25 minute naps, and worked my way down to a 4 hr core with the 2 20-25 minute naps. I didnt want to push my core down to 3 hours because I couldnt evenly spread out 3 naps and have it work with my class/work schedule.

And technically time spent sleeping for me was 4.66 hrs and the 5.33 hrs included that time it takes to prepare for sleep and wake up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tendomentis

I'm so glad I joined this forum.

I've been so frustrated with having failed my first attempt at going triphasic, but I was also devastated when I failed in my first attempt to go to the uberman schedule a few months ago.

I'm inspired by the people in this thread who recommend and encourage going triphasic. As much as I want to knock my total sleep down to two hours, I have to scale back and shoot for three.

So, I'll sleep for an hour at 12, and again at 8, and again at 4 the next morning and see if sleeping an hour every seven is any more achievable.

Like going to the uberman schedule, I'm convinced that achieving triphasic mostly boils down to a test of personal will, not just total sleep.

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Hey, good luck with it! and definitely let us know how it goes and/or update your blog.

I've only done everyman (3h core + 3 naps) before, and this is what I've just started few days ago, if any triphasic schedule works I will probably try to start it, too.

Okay, I'd like to report that the 1 hour nap at 12pm went extremely well. Awoke fully rested and barrell-chested and even got some dreaming done (not lucid yet).

If no one has named this particular schedule yet (1 hour down for every 7 up, three times a day), I'd like to call it the trinity schedule. 1 hour asleep for every 7 awake, 3 times a day...just seems to have a lot of numbers typically associated with judeochristianity. I've posted additional thoughts on my blog, and I'll update here and there over the next two weeks.

It's just a triphasic schedule.
But if you want to name it specifically for the 1 hours version, be my guest :)

I've pretty much crashed this weekend .. it was inevitable since I've been experimenting a bit too harshly. And I ended up spending the whole day driving around in the heat ... nowhere to nap :/

I'll try the 'lucidman' schedule next

Only to keep it distinct (as there is more than one type of triphasic schedule), in the same way that uberman and everyman are both polyphasic schedules.

I just didn't want to throw a name at it if someone else already had.

Back on topic though...at 3:30am, I'm still pretty alert (though tired obviously). Finished more of my Christmas wrapping and most of my daily chores (which I've been saving for this middle of the night cycle).

So far, it looks like moving up to an hour every seven did the trick.

Does anyone else want to try?

I tried the hour lunch thing for a few days, and I wasn't feeling that great after.
But hey, YMMV (and it does seem to)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Placebo

I'll try the 'lucidman' schedule next

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Thanks!!!! Thank-you so much. I'm so thrilled somebody is giving my schedule a go. Please post your results.
And guess what?.......
I GOT A NEW ALARM! I'm so excited. Now it won't fuck up. I have decided to put renewed interest into lucidman schedule and give it a go with my new non-screwed-up alarm. Although I'm going away to tasmania in two days time to return on new years eve, so i won't be able to trial it for long because I will be monophasicking (I know, poor me) for that time.
But I will get into it completely when I come back in 09. I hope this thread is still active by then.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tendomentis

If no one has named this particular schedule yet (1 hour down for every 7 up, three times a day), I'd like to call it the trinity schedule. 1 hour asleep for every 7 awake, 3 times a day...just seems to have a lot of numbers typically associated with judeochristianity. I've posted additional thoughts on my blog, and I'll update here and there over the next two weeks.

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Tendomentis, it's great that you're tracking your progress although what you have got yourself into is just tri-phasic sleeping with a shorter time for an REM cycle (1 hour as opposed to the normal 1.5 hour). It will work once you have conditioned your body to get to REm stage time quicker, although you haven't invented a new schedule by any stretch.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by luke

Tendomentis, it's great that you're tracking your progress although what you have got yourself into is just tri-phasic sleeping with a shorter time for an REM cycle (1 hour as opposed to the normal 1.5 hour). It will work once you have conditioned your body to get to REm stage time quicker, although you haven't invented a new schedule by any stretch.

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I must have presented myself wrong. I'm not trying to claim I've invented some daring new schedule. Polyphasic sleep patterns have existed long before little ol' me, and will long after I'm gone, so I'm sure that almost any and every variation of sleep schedule any of us could come up with has already been tried and tested.

If I offended anyone by asking if I could name the variant I'm using, I apologize. Aside from the lucidman variant, I hadn't seen anyone else name any other triphasic sleep schedules, and as almost every other sleep schedule has a "proper" name, I felt it only "proper" that this variant have a name too. I won't mention it again though on this forum.

As far as REM conditioning, I guess I got off lucky as my last two 1 hour sleep cycles did involve dreaming (just not the lucid variety yet).

I know this forum is mainly for lucid dreaming conversation (which I'm obviously also very much involved/interested in), so I'll refrain from taking up anyone's time with my thoughts on alternative sleep schedules.

Again, sorry to have offended.