Steve Pavlina did a series of experiments on this: https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/
Googling it I was surprised to find that he did it 15 years ago. Times go by fast...
Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
101–110 of 132 posts
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#102I did a month of polyphasic sleep about 15 years ago. It's doable and was an interesting experiment but is not sustainable.
Mentally I felt 80-90%. I couldn't concentrate or think as well. I felt cold all the time as if my hormones were out of wack.
Towards the end of the month I was very sleep deprived. I would fall asleep and go into REM almost instantly. I slept through alarms, something I otherwise never do. A few times I shut the alarm off and went back to sleep with no memory of doing so.
An interesting side effect was that after going back to a normal schedule I needed less sleep. For months afterwards I only slept 7-7.5h a night instead of 8h.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody's situation is different but in our case we did sleep training around 4 months and we had whole night sleep from then on - with a few minor regressions and a bit more training. My wife found letting the baby cry out very difficult so I did have to be quite firm about it... But my daughter is 8 now and doesn't seem the worse for it ... As far as I can tell. Edit: only mentioning this in case anyone is in des…
Sleep training, so that's what they call it now. My mom tells me it was standard practice back when I was born, they used to say it was good for their lungs as well, but she couldn't do it either. They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents. All I can say is it doesn't sound like a very good idea to me, no matter how convenient.
Yeah, I respect other people's decisions in this kind of subjects because not enough is known to be very sure.
But my feeling is that if nature makes babies cry (and do so in such a way that arises feelings of urgency, as every parent will know from experience) it's because it wants us to attend to them.
Of course, sometimes overriding nature's defaults can be a good idea, especially if one knows what they're doing. But it's not the case, so I'd rather err on the side of caution.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#104Everyman sleep schedule is much more sustainable than the uberman schedule. It basically involves doing 3 hour core sleep and three roughly equidistant 25 minute naps. It's fairly easy to move the naps around as needed, once you're used to this. There's also a variant of sleeping 4.5 hours, and then having two 25 minute naps. The idea here is that each 25 minutes nap is essentially "replacing" the ~1.5 hour sleep you…
I am not convinced you can force your body to get more efficient at sleeping.
Not sure about entering deep sleep more quickly, but you definitely get faster at falling asleep when you make napping a habit.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody's situation is different but in our case we did sleep training around 4 months and we had whole night sleep from then on - with a few minor regressions and a bit more training. My wife found letting the baby cry out very difficult so I did have to be quite firm about it... But my daughter is 8 now and doesn't seem the worse for it ... As far as I can tell. Edit: only mentioning this in case anyone is in des…
Sleep training, so that's what they call it now. My mom tells me it was standard practice back when I was born, they used to say it was good for their lungs as well, but she couldn't do it either. They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents. All I can say is it doesn't sound like a very good idea to me, no matter how convenient.
I think "convenient" may be a mild understatement. Many parents are enduring serious mental health issues because of their inability to sleep. I should say that was not our case.
> They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents
Perhaps. I don't think we actually know what's going on in a baby's mind. Children appear to be amazingly resilient and also quite logical.
But as with all such advice you have to respect your own instincts as a parent and take cognizance of what the child's temperament is like. It's always different.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sleep training, so that's what they call it now. My mom tells me it was standard practice back when I was born, they used to say it was good for their lungs as well, but she couldn't do it either. They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents. All I can say is it doesn't sound like a very good idea to me, no matter how convenient.
We've attempted this with our daughter several times from 6 to almost 10 months now. Just can't do it, it feels wrong. Obviously not science-based, but we haven't been able to do it for more than a few days at a time.
We used the methods in this book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345497791/donhosek
(there's a non-twin version as well) with good results. We didn't just let the kids cry it out, and we had kids sleeping through the night by three months and a regular sleep schedule at four months. It's worth noting that most young kids are sleep deprived and making sure that they get enough sleep makes a big difference in their overall behavior.
It's also worth noting with kids that once you figure out how to deal with them, they enter a new developmental phase and all the rules change.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#107Having recently experienced raising an infant, let me tell you, getting all my sleep in I was getting what this article suggests would be a viable polyphasic sleep schedule (total of 8 hours per 24 hour period, in chunks of 1-2 hours throughout the day and night whenever the baby slept), but I started hallucinating, got deeply depressed, and felt like I was losing touch with reality. All the symptoms vanished as soon…
I've heard more than one woman observe something to the effect of: "oh, so this is why I was able to party 48 hours straight in college without sleep!"
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody's situation is different but in our case we did sleep training around 4 months and we had whole night sleep from then on - with a few minor regressions and a bit more training. My wife found letting the baby cry out very difficult so I did have to be quite firm about it... But my daughter is 8 now and doesn't seem the worse for it ... As far as I can tell. Edit: only mentioning this in case anyone is in des…
Sleep training, so that's what they call it now. My mom tells me it was standard practice back when I was born, they used to say it was good for their lungs as well, but she couldn't do it either. They will eventually shut down in self-defense to escape the terror of being abandoned by their parents. All I can say is it doesn't sound like a very good idea to me, no matter how convenient.
Nothing about this is convenient. Letting a baby cry and not providing comfort is emotionally shattering. Spending hours trying get a baby to sleep without abandoning them is exhausting. Caring for a sleep deprived baby is exhausting, physically and emotionally. Doing any of this without having enough sleep yourself makes it 10x worse.
The fact is, parents and babies both need to sleep to be healthy and happy. Most parents are trying to achieve that, and have to try a bunch of things before they figure out what works for their situation. Try not to judge.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've attempted this with our daughter several times from 6 to almost 10 months now. Just can't do it, it feels wrong. Obviously not science-based, but we haven't been able to do it for more than a few days at a time.
We used the methods in this book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345497791/donhosek (there's a non-twin version as well) with good results. We didn't just let the kids cry it out, and we had kids sleeping through the night by three months and a regular sleep schedule at four months. It's worth noting that most young kids are sleep deprived and making sure that they get enough sleep makes a big difference in t…
I used the non-twin version, and recommend it to all my friends when they become parents. It changed our lives. Having a well-rested child makes a world of difference.
Re: Polyphasic sleep takes napping to the extreme
#110Years ago I tried this, after having read a lot about it, trying multiple times, hard, as I was determined to get more done on things that were important to me. I can be very self-disciplined and almost fell asleep dropping to the floor while standing at one point. For a while I thought it helped me get more done. Today I have health problems (CFS), and these attempts at the polyphasic or "uberman" sleep cycle (~28 min of sleep per 4-hour period) is one of the two leading possible causes I think of (don't bother asking me the other one).
Out of general experiences and lessons learned over the years I have tried to write things at my simple, hopefully-skimmable web site to hopefully help someone else avoid learning some things the hard way: http://lukecall.net . (Anyway, I get things off my chest there.)
ps: prior HN discussions (which I have not reviewed): https://duckduckgo.com/?q=polyphasic+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fne...