Polyphasic Sleep

There’s a thread over at Twelvestone about Polyphasic Sleep. When I first saw it, I have to admit… I lost a lot of time just reading and following links. I’m tempted.

Basically, the idea behind Polyphasic Sleep is that you sleep with more frequency, but for less time. You train your body to nap once every four hours for 20 – 30 minutes at a time, six times a day. After the initial week or two, your body adjusts to this new schedule and you fall fairly immediately into REM sleep.

Why do this? Well, all told you’d come away with an extra 30-40 hours per week. Think of all that you could do in that time (or how much more time you could spend, just being lazy)!

I’m tempted, but only maybe 30% so. With a full-time job, I can’t imagine what it would be like to try to adapt to this sort of schedule. I’m wishing I was in college again, so I could give this a go.

A long time ago, back in high school, my friends and I had this hypothetical. I remember it fairly vividly, actually. We were all hanging out at the Perkins at Castleton Square, and one of us had some sort of “Book of Questions.” The question we threw to one another was this: if you could trade half of everything you own for a pill that allowed you to operate without sleep, would you make the trade?

Almost all of us said yes, our rationale being that you could buy/earn anything that you lost during all those gained hours. Now, some fifteen years after those talks, I find out about Polyphasic Sleep. The idea of gaining extra hours is seemingly attainable.

I’ve got lots of questions yet. For instance, what’s the come-down process like? Say you do this for six months successfully and want to stop. How do you stop? Do you lose a few days getting back to the regular sleep pattern that the rest of the world follows? Is there any actual physical or mental damage that happens, adopting this schedule?

Rest assured, I’ll be following the progress of the other folks on 12S who might try this out. All that extra time… damn! Tell me it’s not just slightly tempting!