Starting a polyphasic sleep schedule

Previously, I maintained a polyphasic "Everyman" sleep schedule, where I slept for three hours at night, from 1-4am, and then took three 20 minute naps scattered throughout the day as needed, for a total of 4 hours of sleep. My nap times were fairly flexible, although there was some criticism from friends of my odd sleep habit.

I had to abandon that cycle during a cross country relocation. The trip took a month, and we stopped numerous times to visit friends and family over the holidays, which meant numerous social engagements that I could not politely escape to take a nap.

Once set up in my new home, I quickly and naturally fell into a biphasic pattern, sleeping from 1-5 am, and then taking a 1 hour nap around 5pm, for a total of 5 hours of sleep.

I am now about to attempt to go polyphasic again, with an attempt at the "Uberman Sleep Schedule." This entails 6 naps a day, 4 hours apart, for 20-30 minutes each, and no core chunk of sleep at all. I tried to start yesterday, turning my one hour nap into two twenty minute naps at 5 and 9pm. When I went to bed at 1am, though, I slept through my alarm and woke up on my own at 5am. Interesting because normally I need the alarm to get up at five, but disappointing because I failed to get up again at one. Although it isn't quite correct to say I slept through it. I set my cell phone alarm, which is much quieter, and in the interests of not disturbing my wife as I got up, I was getting up slowly and fell back asleep. Not quite the same thing, and I just need to be more assertive about getting out of bed when I try tonight.

Why do we sleep? Because we have nothing better to do.

An interesting article on the purpose of sleep has just been published. According to the article, lots of reasons for sleep have been proposed, but when looking at the animal kingdom as a whole, none of them holds up as a reason for why we do it. The article proposes that instead of evolving for the purpose of immunological function, hormonal regulation, or memory synthesis, sleep exists to optimize energy conservation.

The example of the brown bat is used, which sleeps for 20 hours a day. Why does it sleep so much? Because its prey is only available during a short window of time, and to be active outside of that window would be using energy with no ability to catch food to offset the expenditure. Being more active would also leave the bat more vulnerable to predation from birds. So if there is no benefit to being awake and active, why not sleep? I think we can all relate to this idea. How many lazy summers as a kid did we spend sleeping excessively solely because we had nothing else to do?

This has interesting implications for those of us interested in polyphasic sleep. There is very little real science that has been done so far on the topic, but there are quite a few blogs out there by people who have tried it. One theme that crops up again and again is people struggling with or giving up on the polyphasic lifestyle due to having "nothing to do" with those extra hours. I maintained a polyphasic sleep cycle for a few months in Seattle, and a common question by friends was "Why would you do that? What would you do with the extra time?"

If we sleep because we have nothing better to do, the answer seems intuitively obvious: find something better to do.

Purpose of the Blog

The future is mercurial; always in flux and beyond the ability of any of us to control with any degree of certainty. There are, however, ways of nudging the course of history in one direction or another. We can make plans, we can set research goals, we can discuss and theorize, and we can ban or forbid lines of research and thought, or at least try to. The priorities we set and decisions we make help to design the future we live in.

I intend to use this blog to document interesting avenues of thought and research, and to comment on their implications and how we can plan for the changes in our world they might create. No one foresaw the computer revolution, and I don't expect to foresee the next great change, but it is an interesting exercise to try.

I will also be identifying and highlighting areas where the human design is inherently flawed, and where we can, and should, be looking to improve the design. In this, my leanings towards Transhumanism will be quite apparent, although I do try to approach it with a good deal more skepticism than many, and with an eye to what is scientifically possible.

And because the politics of today sets the policy of tomorrow, I will be posting relevant political commentary as well. What defines relevant? I'll know it when I see it.