My Mortal Enemy

As it sometimes happens when you're sitting around having a few drinks with friends, the conversation moves to a hypothetical one of "what superpower do you wish you had?"

My answer has always been quick and easy: the ability to fly. That's easy and a somewhat expected answer from me. But what I don't say is my followup. What I'd really like to be able to do (that is somewhat more realistic) is never have to sleep.

I've always hated sleep. It steals 1/3 of my life and that seems unfair. But sleep is just part of being a member of the animal kingdom, and I don't really expect to get out of it.

But I found a way that I might be able to "tweak" it a bit. I ran across a mention of polyphasic sleep the other day and I've been doing some reading.

The basic version is this: sleep in much smaller, but more frequent intervals. The assumption is that you can train your body to slip into REM sleep faster and time how long you sleep as to maximize the amount of time in REM sleep and minimize the time spent in other sleep phases.

I've read a few blogs where people have successfully made the switch. (including one guy who successfully lived for about 6 months on ~2.5 hours of sleep per night and loved it) Everyone who succeeded seemed very happy with the results. The assumption is that because you are forcing your body into quickly reaching REM sleep, you are getting the same amount of "restorative" sleep, so you feel just as rested as if you'd had a full 8 hours of sleep.

So, I'm trying a variation of the "Everyman" schedule--3 hours of sleep at night and 3-25 minute naps equally spaced throughout the day. That means a total of 4 hours of sleep per day. That's literally half of the usual 8 I try to get.

There are a couple of obvious potential problems with this. First, the adjustment period is supposed to be pretty rough. Until your body learns how to enter REM sleep quickly, you are a bit sleep deprived. (that should last about a week or so)

Secondly, that means that I have to interrupt my day to fit in some naps every day. Right now, that's not a problem. But if/when I get another regular job, I'll have to find a way to get in a 25 minute nap around lunchtime. I'm not sure how realistic that is.

But I'm very excited about the prospect of getting 4 more hours every single day. I started today, so that means that I went to bed at 11PM and woke up at 2AM. I had 2 naps today (6AM and 11:30AM). My last nap will be at around 6PM.

I gotta admit that I'm pretty darn tired. But that's to be expected. If I can get through the adjustment period, this could be a sweet setup. It's currently 4PM and my internal clock says that it should be about 9PM. (based on my wake time) Having 4 extra hours make a heck of a difference.

P.S. I took my "extra" time today to read the new Dan Brown book. Meh. I don't read a lot of fiction, so I need to focus on stuff better than this.