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| title | date | techne | episteme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polyphasic Sleep | 2010-05-06 | :done | :broken |
Definition
Polyphasic sleep means sleeping in multiple chunks per day instead of one big one. Monophasic sleep is the normal one, averaging in at about 7-9 hours per day. The most common form of polyphasic sleep is something like 5+2, i.e. 5 hours at night and a 2 hour nap around noon.
However, the really interesting ones are those where you only sleep about 2-5 hours in total per day. Yes, that's not a typo: 2 hours per day. They can generally be classified into Uberman sleep, which has 6 naps of 20 minutes each, and Everyman sleep, which has one core of 1-3 hours and up to 5 nap of 20 minutes. Both terms were coined by [puredoxyk][], who also has one of the best sites on how to adapt to them. I'm not gonna repeat all that here, nor address any of the common myths and criticisms (Like, "That's impossible!". It isn't.), but instead give my own criticism why I believe it's a Bad Thing. Also, a bit of personal experience with it because every site about polyphasic sleep needs to have anecdotes how bad the zombie phase was.
Why It's Bullshit
Let's start at the opposite end - what does work? Well, polyphasic sleep is the best (known) option you have when you can't have more than 2-4 hours per day of sleep. If you must sleep that little, for example because you are into solo sailing or your newborn child and 2 jobs keep you up all day, than polyphasic sleep is right for you. It minimizes the damage this kind of life will do, but you will still be worse off. You will still be sleep deprived. 1
Ok, having acknowledged that, let's start with the criticism. In fact, it's a very simple criticism because it only involves one point.
Polyphasic sleep destroys your memory.
Sure, you are awake more (if you are lucky; most people aren't and delude themselves to the fact), but you can't use the time in any meaningful way. You can't learn more; in fact, you'll learn less. All existing studies show that performance is slightly below normal levels, which means you have 4-6 more hours of waketime, but you are actually performing worse than if you had slept them all. Great job. That's like taking a shortcut, only to drive slower so that you arrive even later.
Why is there not a single polyphasic scientist? No, Tesla was not polyphasic, he crashed regularly. Edison lied about his schedule and, while being mostly polyphasic, didn't save any time (and he was not a scientist). Buckminster Fuller only slept polyphasically when touring, for the reason I mentioned above.
Why is there not a single polyphasic polyglot? You'd think that someone who is learning multiple languages at the same time would be glad over every single hour per day they can get. Yet, not a single one of them is documented to be polyphasic. Some have tried (mostly early polyglots), no one was happy with it.
Why does no military or space agency advocate polyphasic sleep? There are several studies researching it, but they all document a severe loss of performance and they all advise against it, except when external circumstances force you to be polyphasic, as mentioned earlier.
Why does all data collected via SRS, like for example Supermemo, show that sleeping in big chunks correlates with good performance? If there are working examples of polyphasic sleepers, no one of them has ever demonstrated this via their SRS statistics, and Supermemo captures a lot of those. There isn't a single example of someone sleeping 4 hours or less per day and still getting a normal retention rate for the same amount of data learned.
There is a simple answer to these questions: Because polyphasic sleep doesn't work. It's bullshit. For all the claims of "superhuman" feats, there hasn't been a single bit of evidence for it. Proponents have made all kinds of claims and assurances, yet have presented nothing. Most of them don't even seem to be capable of grasping the importance of empirical evidence. It is pseudoscience.
Alternatives
Alright, so polyphasic sleep sucks. But is there an alternative? As you can see in my blog posts below, I occasionally got really cool runs of 3-5 days where I worked like a madman for 20 hours a day, no problem. Sure, I crashed afterwards, but I still got all this stuff done. And if you sleep long enough afterwards, then your memory will catch up a lot.
If you don't care about your mental health and you don't care about being able to sustain your behaviour, go right ahead. If you also keep in mind that the majority of people drop out of polyphasic sleep after a month or less, I would recommend a better alternative: Amphetamines. It has exactly the same amount of advantages (awake at all costs), is easier to use and fucks you up just the same.
Or, a bit more seriously, if you are bipolar like me, you can simply embrace your manic side and fuel it every time it shows up. Every once in a while, I go on a megalomaniac caffeine spree, drinking over 3 liters of coffee (or cola, sometimes - I still like the added sugar high) per day. Sure, I can't maintain that and after about a week, I look like I just escaped Arkham Asylum, but man do I get stuff done in this week.
Being a Zombie
This is one of my old blog posts, written 8 months after my first adaptation in 2008.
I'm pissed. So very pissed.
Polyphasic sleep is getting on my nerves. Let me summarize the last 8 (8?!) months.
October. Yay, finally some Uberman! Oh god, this is hard! I may have only 2 hours of sleep, but I also only have 2 hours of not-feeling-like-a-zombie. Screw this shit.
November. Experimentation. More experimentation. Even more experimentation. It works! I feel ok! An unexpected event occurs. I'm screwed.
December. It's futile. Uberman is just not practical. Let's do everyman! 3 hour core, sleep galore! It works! The excitement wears off, I'm screwed.
January. Can't think, can't dream, can't move. Bang my head against the wall. Some days are perfect, others are hell. Experimentation.
February. Better times, stricter schedule, more experience. Results: underwhelming. I crash, can't get back up. This doesn't work.
March. Not enough time. The naps too infrequent, the core too short, the sleep-throughs too frequent. This is just an adaptation problem, it will go away.
April. It didn't. It's futile. What about a 90 minute core and 5 naps? It works! Excitement! Uberman-with-a-core works! I study like mad, finish 2/3 of the whole semester in 3 days.
May. Instability. It really is Uberman-with-a-core. Didn't eat right? Oversleep. Did some exercise? Oversleep. Didn't find a bug in your code? Oversleep. Made the tea a little too strong? Oversleep. Every one destabilizes the schedule. I have 3 in one week, that's it. Impractical, totally impractical. Better than Uberman, though.
Another one:
Impatience is really getting annoying. Except for the short core I can't skip any time at all anymore. If something takes 6 hours, like a download for example, I will be awake (almost) all the time and have to wait. Every. Minute. Of. It. You see everything pass. Someone just went to bed and you want to talk about something? Prepare to sit there, for 8 hours or more, fully awake. Wrote some email and await an answer? You'll have memorized 500 digits of π before you get it. You can't skip anything, can't just hibernate a few hours. Once the sun went down, you'll sit in darkness, for 14 hours and more right now. If you are not president by day, superhero by night and mad scientist on the side, you'll be bored right out of your skull. Your puny hobbies are not enough for The Night That Never Ends, mortal!
This was actually my main motivation to become polyphasic. I just had too many hobbies and needed way more time. And when polyphasic sleep works, you feel like on cocaine, finishing the work that takes your friends weeks during one 40 hour weekend. I even started picking up another language just to have something to do! But then, after a while, your brain is completely overloaded and you just crash. So it is just like cocaine, really.
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Well, as far as I can tell, you are not doing any permanent damage, so a week of good sleep will probably fix everything again. Also, many polyphasic sleepers will argue that they are not sleep deprived and I certainly accept that they don't feel that way. But try using your memory and see how fast you crash. ↩︎