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Has anyone tried polyphasic sleep cycles as a way to get less sleep without losing cognitive function?

• bryanlarsen 12y ago
  Yes, I tried it for about 3 months 8 years ago. You stay surprisingly functional for somebody who's only getting ~2 hours total sleep a day, but you definitely lose cognitive function. I didn't realize it at the time -- like a drunk or anybody functioning in a sleep debt it doesn't feel like you've lost cognitive function, but it's readily apparent to anybody who knows you well. The worst time is the half hour or so before your next scheduled nap. Perhaps the biggest thing I gained from the experiment was the ability to take a power nap any time, any where.
  • philh 12y ago
    > Perhaps the biggest thing I gained from the experiment was the ability to take a power nap any time, any where. If this can be reliably learned, it actually seems really valuable. Now I wonder if there's a way to learn it that doesn't cost significant IQ for three months.
• tbrownaw 12y ago
  Lots of people try it, and some of them post articles here about how it feels starting out. I've never heard of anyone actually sticking to it. I also haven't seen any of these reports that give actual objective measures of before/after cognitive function (they don't even have to be that rigorous, maybe a log of scores/times at tetris or dual-n-back or sudoku or 2048 or something), just subjective reports which as TFA says aren't exactly reliable.
  • orand 12y ago
    The author of the Ubersleep book is an example of someone actually sticking with it. http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/the-ubersleep-book/ http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/the-ubersleep-book/ Another well-documented example is Steve Pavlina. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/