Biphasic Sleeping Experiment
While making my rounds at SP Forums about a week ago, I came upon a quite intriguing thread on biphasic sleeping. Now, me being your typical teenager, the idea of being more refreshed out of less sleep is quite exciting. Staying up late, getting up early without being tired, and having no negative side-effects seems almost too good to be true. Well, it appears many people are doing it and are having positive results
What the hell, why not? It’s pretty much just adding a evening nap for me, as I don’t get much sleep as it is. So after asking about 309845 questions, I started on my journey into the biphasic abyss. That was Monday, so how am I faring 4 days later? Well let’s first take a look at my proposed schedule:
- Core Sleep: 2:00am - 6:30am : 4.5 hours
- Secondary Nap: 5:00pm - 6:30pm : 1.5 hours
- Total: 6 hours
I’ve been give-or-taking it about an hour everyday, so it’s not exact. Okay, so that’s 6 hours of sleep a ‘day’, broken into two parts. Previously, I would goto bed between 1-3am and wake up 7-8am on weekdays like noon on the weekends. So that’s still pretty much about the same amount of sleep as I’ve been getting anyways, so what’s the point?
Well, that’s a good question. I should figure that out now that I mention it. Albeit this is still the first week, so I’ve got awhile to go before the system’s full effects kick in and my body adapts to the schedule. But so far, I’ve experienced the following effects:
- Much less grogginess waking up
- Sometimes waking up before alarm goes off
- Getting tired around the same time each day
- Enough energy to make it through my activities
- Waking up is a bit more pleasant
There really hasn’t been any negative side effects besides the times where I slept in an extra 2 hours and was dead all morning. Apparently the key to this is that sleep-cycles are each 90 minutes long: 65 minutes of non-REM, 20 of REM, and 5 final non-REMs (read: lifehack.org). Interesting. So apparently your 8 hours asleep a night is worse than a 6 hourer. It explains why you feel so bad when you get woken up, compared to when you just wake up on your own. Personally, I feel that’s one of the biggest pros to polyphasic sleeping.
I’ll be sure to update my progress as the month progresses.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
I had originally heard this referred to as polyphasic sleeping. I guess there’s not really a huge difference, because if I remember correctly, polyphasic was sleeping every 4 or 5 hours for just 2 hours or something. So essentially it becomes a bunch of naps. Good luck m’dear!
December 8th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Yes, well it is polyphasic sleeping.
Poly = more than 1
Bi = 2
Mono =1
So it’s the same concept, except you sleep two times only, not multiple little naps.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Hey Michael,
I’ve been trying out biphasic sleep for nine days now, and it works nicely. I sleep just like you, except that my nap starts at 8 PM instead. I fully agree with the positive side-effects that you list, and I still haven’t met anything negative except not being awake in the evening.
February 9th, 2007 at 1:38 am
I’ve heard of this kind of sleep pattern. I actually knew a guy at university who followed this system. He slept in short bursts between some classes and during some classes. He also worked until all hours of the night. He found he had enough energy to do what he wished, but it complicated his social life because he didn’t know anyone else who slept this way. If it works for you, great. You may find it a challenge to organize your life around. Let us know how it goes. Cheers!