Need More Hours in a Day? Here’s How to Get Them

January 17th, 2011 1 Comment

an empty bed

Those of you who read my other blog, rainy blue dawn, know that I’ve been experimenting with polyphasic sleep since the end of last year. The idea behind polyphasic sleep is that taking several short naps a day at regular intervals decreases the amount of sleep you need at night, giving you more waking hours in a day. I wanted to see if it really worked. So I tried it for three weeks. Although there do seem to be some limitations, by and large it was quite an effective experiment. In other words: I did manage to get more waking hours into a day, with only minimal decreases in alertness.

The nature of sleep

Our sleep can be divided into 4 stages. The first is known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. This is when we dream, and when our minds sort out what we’ve seen and experienced throughout the day. We get about 2 (yes, only 2) hours of this a night.

The other 3 stages are collectively known as NREM (non rapid eye movement) sleep. We don’t know much about them, though the hypothesis is that they are somehow physically restorative.

When we sleep, we go through each of these 4 stages in cycles lasting about 90 minutes each. So each sleep cycle is roughly about 1.5 hours long. We take about 5 of these on a normal night, resulting in our usual 7-8 hours of nightly sleep. (When you oversleep, you tend to take 6 or 7 of these cycles — so then you sleep about 9 hours, or about 10.5 hours.)

The theory

Polyphasic sleep simply means sleeping several times during both day and night, instead of sleeping in one long uninterrupted stretch at night (monophasic sleep).

Here’s the thing. If we get enough (2 hours or more) of REM sleep in a 24-hour period, we feel rested and able to carry on. And this can be done efficiently by taking multiple short 20-minute naps during the day to supplement a shortened amount of core (nightly) sleep.

For example, a single 20-minute nap in the afternoon can shorten your nightly sleep requirement to 4 sleep cycles (meaning 6 hours of sleep). My own mother does exactly this.

Two 20-minute naps can cut your core sleep time to 3 cycles (4.5 hours).

Three naps can cut core sleep to 2 cycles (3 hours).

And so on. During my experimentation, I generally took 4-5 naps and slept between 1.5 and 3 hours a night (meaning 1-2 sleep cycles).

I noticed slightly decreased alertness (akin to life without coffee) and, after two weeks, declines in immune function and ability to cope with stress. Those problems went away after I increased sleep to 4.5 hours a night, switched to a high-protein/high-carbohydrate diet, and started taking occasional full nights of sleep (after exercise or alcohol). I recommend always having a full, solid breakfast at the same time each day; it aids waking, and enhances mood.

Based on this, I’ve designed a schedule for regular people to leverage polyphasic sleep to their own benefit. This system creates waking time during the week, when you need it most, and allows for targeted recovery periods in midweek and weekend. Result: a sustainable cycle that delivers additional waking time when you need it without leaving you feeling tired.

The system

Here’s how a week looks, based around a wake time of 7:30 a.m.:

Sunday

Take a lazy 20-minute Sunday afternoon nap, and sleep 6 hours at night (4 cycles, making bedtime 1:30 a.m.) Total sleep: 6 hours 20 minutes. The additional late-night hours can be used to plan for the week ahead.

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday

Option A: Take a 20-minute nap at lunchtime and one more in the evening. Sleep 4.5 hours at night (3 cycles, making bedtime 3 a.m.). Total sleep: 5 hours 10 minutes.

Option B: Take a nap at lunchtime, one more in the evening, and one more around midnight. Sleep 3 hours at night (2 cycles, making bedtime 4.30 a.m.). Total sleep: 4 hours.

Option C (not recommended): If under severe deadline pressure, take four or five naps and sleep 1.5 hours at night (1 cycle, making bedtime 6 a.m.). Total sleep: from 2 hours 50 minutes to 3 hours 10 minutes. Don’t do this for more that a couple of days in a row — I noticed significant impairment beginning after about ten days of this.

Wednesday

Midweek recovery time. Take a lunchtime or dinnertime nap and sleep 6 hours at night (4 cycles, making bedtime 1:30 a.m.) or take a full 7.5 hours of core sleep (5 cycles, making bedtime at 12:00 a.m.). Wednesday might be a good day to get some solid exercise.

Friday

Weekend recovery time. No naps. Take a full 7.5 hours of sleep at night, and allow yourself to oversleep if you want to (6 or 7 cycles, meaning 9-10.5 hours of sleep). This appears to help with physical recovery. Happy Friday night partying!

Saturday

No naps. Get a full 7.5 hours of sleep at night. Enjoy all of Saturday — it’s the weekend!

Your turn

So that’s the system, based on my own experience. Ready to give it a go? Let me know.

One Comment

[...] But then recently on my quest to beat sleep yet again, I found this thing called “polyphasic sleep” . . . basically you don’t rely on one long chunk of sleep (usually 6 to 8 hours or wateva . . . this is known as “monophasic sleep”) . . . but instead you nap at certain intervals during the day and cut your big sleep time down with doing too much damage to yourself or something like that. I’m no expert, I just found it. But read the blog post that got me into it –> here. [...]

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