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Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

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Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#31

Post by vidarh »

Someone wrote: post #21
athenot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, newborn babies are on a 90 minute schedule. So are the parents... Though to be fair, that only lasts a few months until it's 2x90 min, 3x90 min, etc.

I haven't ever heard a parent say they felt like Superman on that schedule, though.

Most parents gets the bad side (waking up at night) without the good side (napping during the day), though.

I really loved the weekends when my son was younger and would still have an afternoon nap and we ended up napping at the same time.... But I did certainly not enjoy when he was a baby and woke up around 4:30am full of energy and I had to offload his mom and keep him busy until it was time for me to get ready for work just as he decided it was nap-time again.

If I got to go down for a nap again whenever he did I think I could have quite enjoyed it. Unfortunately I doubt work would have agreed.

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#32

Post by vidarh »

I vary my sleep schedule a lot. I'm 40. I've given up on any hope of reducing the amount of sleep I get without bad effects. I do believe you can manage when you sleep to maximize productivity, though.

I have a 6 year old son, and I lie down for a nap when he goes to bed between 8.30 and 9pm - it's convenient timing. I tend to aim for 90 minutes. If the alarm wakes me, it wakes me, and I'll stay up for 2-3 hours and if I feel I have the energy I load up on caffeine and stay up all night. The next couple of nights I'll probably sleep straight through from my nap time and never notice the alarms, or at most wake up briefly.

The end effect for me is that I regularly get 6-8 hour long concentrated periods at night where I feel rested and alert, and still have enough energy to last it through the work day and early evening afterwards.

With the caveat that any deficit accumulates. If I don't "pay for it" immediately I'll feel more and more tired as the days goes by and end up taking a week or so of going to bed early to recover. That part was easier to avoid when I was younger.

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#34

Post by baby »

albemuth wrote: post #30
DSMan195276 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entire true. Getting a full sleep cycle is important - More over, the reason you don't feel groggy after sleeping for 20 minutes is because you didn't actually enter into the deeper levels of sleep, which are important for actually being rested. If you sleep for aprox. 90 minutes, a full sleep cycle, then you also won't feel groggy.

Isn't the theory around the uberman that in those 20 min you go straight into deep sleep?

yup, parent is talking without knowledge of uberman

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#35

Post by pil4rin »

ffn wrote: post #13

I think my mileage experience with uberman is on the crappy end. I did it for 2 weeks, and toward the end, I felt I was unable to focus on anything for more than 30 seconds, and ultimately had to stop when I started seeing blood in the toilet. To this day, I have no idea if my uberman sleep schedule actually caused it or not, but seeing dark red in the water definitely scared me and correlation is one hell of a incen…

Dark red is an indicator of colorectal cancer- You should get that checked out

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#36

Post by fapjacks »

I long had sleep problems most of my life. Like 10 or 12 hours and I would not be rested. During tours with the Army overseas, a couple hours here and there. It was a nightmare waking up like an asshole every single day. It created a core component of the person I am. But after my 33rd birthday, I started forcing myself to nap for 90 minutes after work, and 5 hours during the night. It's not everyman or uberman, but it has been a miraculous change for me. Just a straight up miracle. I should mention too that I also hit the gym pretty hard six days a week, and so I don't think going any closer to every/uberman would be possible.

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#37

Post by jerf »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #22
bowlich wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did uberman for a month when I was first starting out and just doing freelance. I could set whatever schedule I wanted so, I decided to give it a shot. The big thing for me is, I really like the kind of concentration that the nigth brings, but I also like the early mornings. I've even been contemplating switching to a two-sleep cycle system again so I can enjoy both my mornings and nights. Back to the uberman: week…

I wonder if some people are just somehow (genetically?) more predisposed to functioning well on the Uberman sleep schedule.

I've posted this challenge a couple times here, so it's as good a time as any: Has anyone done the Uber sleep schedule for, say, at least a year, and preferably still doing it?

Last time I asked this was: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6258098 (thanks https://hn.algolia.com ) and, well, the score I have for this remains at "zero accounts I trust", even from this relatively interested forum.

(Caveats: I recognize there is significant sleep variation in humans. Science has confirmed this, even if it doesn't know why. I also believe in "bi-phasic" sleep of shorter nights and significant naps, again, this has been established reasonably well. This isn't generalized skepticism, it's specifically the Uber & other variants that I've never heard even solid anecdotal evidence for.)

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#38

Post by bsummer4 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8
DSMan195276 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entire true. Getting a full sleep cycle is important - More over, the reason you don't feel groggy after sleeping for 20 minutes is because you didn't actually enter into the deeper levels of sleep, which are important for actually being rested. If you sleep for aprox. 90 minutes, a full sleep cycle, then you also won't feel groggy.

I still feel groggy after a 90 minute sleep; it's not as bad as waking up in the middle of the cycle, but I still feel groggy. If I nap for 3-15 minutes, I wake up feeling as awake as I am during exercise.

Are you sure you're not still waking up in the middle of the cycle? 90 minutes is just a loose generalization. Different people have different sleep cycles and take different amounts of time to fall asleep.

Personally, 2 hours works well for me but 90 minutes does not.

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#39

Post by chisleu »

I tried the everyman sleep schedule and made my first B+, ruining my 3 year run of straight As as a result of a sleep-deprived test.

I was 3 weeks in and still having trouble waking, and feeling groggy most of the time. I might try it again now that I'm out of school, but my boss will be pissy if I'm sleepy all the time.

That said, I was amazed at how much more I got done. The sense of time dilation comes on really fast. It starts to feel like everyone else is lazy when you describe everything you accomplished in a day or two. I've heard that it gets better after you adjust. We will see.

Re: Is surviving on 20-minute naps bad for you?

#40

Post by zxcvvcxz »

I find a lot of irony in people's anecdotal "I did the uberman sleep schedule, it works."

Key word: did. As in, past tense. Clearly it does not work better than the alternatives, or you'd still be doing it. Don't mistake short-term survival for long-term viability.

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