[How to] Full Nights Sleep in 2 Hours – Case Study

I read up on this several years ago. I followed one persons log very closely. In the end it didn't turn out well for them, so I didn't bother trying.
 
Very cool! I may try this too because I hate the concept of sleep. It's literally wasting precious hours of the day and scientists have little to no reason of why we actually sleep.

I have the ZEO headband, which tracks brainwaves and different sleep cycles throughout the night too so I may try that and see how long it takes for me to fall directly into REM sleep.

Regardless, I'm going to keep following this thread because I'm interested in your results. Good luck!
 
I've done this a few years back and it is really difficult for the 1st 2 weeks. Good luck to you OP.
 
sleeping 2 hours a day? you guys are nuts... I would never torture myself like that...
 
sleeping 2 hours a day? you guys are nuts... I would never torture myself like that...

I am not finding it that torturous, i think that this may work for some people, and not for others, either or i am finding it a fun experiment with my self discipline.

Actually before i was an IM'er i was a fitness trainer, so i am in great shape and completely understand what sleeping repairs. Again, i work out everydays very hard, so i will look to see if there is an increase in muscle soreness etc.

Anyways, day 2 is going good, i find nights VERY HARD to stay up. My scheduled times are 1am 5am 9am 1pm 5pm 9pm. the hours between 5am and 9am are the hardest for me.

I find that if i fall asleep directly into REM, i wake up feeling very energized and awake. I often wake up before my alarm clock goes off. However if i do not hit REM i wake up very tired and groggy.

However it is still a bit early to tell, I will update again tomorrow!!
 
I looked into this but I began to see that it was fuckin stupid. They say that the first 2 hours is all we really need but how do we know that? Very little is known about sleep and to compare humans to Giraffes is bullshit. There is a reason humans have been sleeping like this since the beginning of time, if it were beneficial to sleep any other way evolution would have made us.
 
I heard of this like 3 years ago, and experimented a little. Admittedly, I didn't experiment enough to say definitively, but I don't think this is good.

There is another one that isn't as extreme as polyphasic, I think it was triphasic. The latter may be more promising.

Here is an article I think EVERYONE thinking of this should read.
Code:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783
We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

The article details how they used to break their sleep up into TWO chunks, but it disappeared in the late 19th century.

So instead of reading a book like they did, you may grab a legal pad and a pencil and write your ideas regarding your projects, meditate, have sex, whatever. Anything BUT use any device with a screen!!!

Looking forward to the journal!

KBC
 
I looked into this but I began to see that it was fuckin stupid. They say that the first 2 hours is all we really need but how do we know that? Very little is known about sleep and to compare humans to Giraffes is bullshit. There is a reason humans have been sleeping like this since the beginning of time, if it were beneficial to sleep any other way evolution would have made us.

Humans haven't been sleeping with alarm clocks and to please a 9 to 5 schedule each day since the beginning of time. Neither have we had so many drugs as we do today (caffeine is a drug by the way).

I agree that it is a little crazy, but hey what good is life without a little crazy :)
 
seriously? What's the use of all the money we make if we cant dedicate time for something as basic as sleep and food? I don't understand how money can take priority over something like sleep. Sleep for 8 hrs each day guys. Stop wanting to be robots working 24/7.
 
I looked into this but I began to see that it was fuckin stupid. They say that the first 2 hours is all we really need but how do we know that? Very little is known about sleep and to compare humans to Giraffes is bullshit. There is a reason humans have been sleeping like this since the beginning of time, if it were beneficial to sleep any other way evolution would have made us.

I dont believe that. what makes you think cavemen were sleeping for 8-10 hours per night in their little caves? nah, bullshit
 
I've read several articles and studies regarding sleep and how much you should really get (being in the healthcare field and all). I find it very hard for anyone to be fully "rejuvenated" when taking only naps totaling 2 hrs everyday. You are basically just tricking your body temporarily, but in the end, you'll just be messing yourself up. Sleep is essential, no matter how much some of us wish it wasn't. There are a lot more processes going on within the body when we are sleeping than just reaching the REM stage of sleep. There are only a very, very small percentage of people who can sleep 1-2 hours a day and not have any health issues, and it is based on genetics. But nonetheless, I've read articles and studies similar to this one before and it is still an interesting study. I don't see it being a problem being used short-term, but I'd stay away from long-term use.
 
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy
 
Friend of mine tried it. It worked for him, except it killed his social life.
 
This is utter bullshit. There have been experiments who prove this does not work. Absolutely no scientific experiment was able to confirm this method works.

US Army
Italian Air Force
NASA
... and many others

Have conducted tests and all got to the same conclusion - it does not work. They proved you can break up 8h of sleep into multiple segments and sleep in 2 hour segments several times a day. However you HAVE TO have a total of 8h/day of sleep of your mental abilities drop. You can stay without 8h/day of sleep but you will be a zombie and the whole purpose of you sleeping less is defeated - you will have several extra hours but you will struggle to perform the most basic tasks.

Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, used in interrogation by police and intelligence services. It negatively affects growth, healing and lots of other physiological aspects.

It has been proven however that sleep helps a lot with obtaining better focus, attention, healing, etc. As a matter of fact I remember a TED talk where the speaker described in detail how beneficial sleep is.

Only positive effect of sleep deprivation is regarding people who suffer from depression. 24 hours without sleep will counteract depression immediately, however they will always experience a relapse of depression the instance they get enough sleep. In other words after a night of sleep, they will be depressed again.

I have personally tried this uberman method. There are actually multiple multi-phase sleep methods - this being the one with least sleep. These are my findings:


  1. Impossible to have a social life - since you can't stay awake for many hours in a row.
  2. Extremely difficult to accommodate to. It will take you days to teach yourself to fall asleep immediately and by that time you will feel like a walking zombie because you will have to suffer serious sleep deprivation in order to reach the state where you fall asleep immediately so many times a day.
  3. You will not wake up. After the sleep time ended, you will fail to wake up. You will maybe at first but after a while you will not hear the alarm and if you will hear it, your brain will not identify it or just completely ignore it and you will sleep a lot more.
  4. You micro-sleep. Micro-sleep phases are periods of time between several seconds up to several minutes where your brain automatically shuts down. You can not control it. You will fall asleep regardless of what you are doing. You will fall asleep sitting up and you will not fall. But you will sleep. Micro-sleep doesn't occur a few times in a day. It occurs a few times in an hour. In other words the amount of micro-sleep you will get in a day will sum up to hours. And the rest of the time you will be a zombie. So you will go from 8h of sleep to 24h of being in a "coma".
  5. There is no way to work after a couple of days because:
    1. You can't focus
    2. You take the wrong decisions
    3. You "run in circles"
    4. You forget the most basic things. If now you were in the kitchen and thought "i should make that link red" by the time you get to your PC you will forget you ever had that thought or you were in the kitchen.
    5. Simple tasks will become impossible. A mathematical operation that is not as simple as 2+2 will seem to be impossible to solve. 17498*2496=? using pen and paper => you either can't do it, you do it but is wrong or you just feel mental pain from even trying. 12*9=? in your mind => impossible. You ill struggle to remember ho much 2*9 is and then you will struggle to decide if it really is 18. Your girlfriend called you to buy bread? By the time she gets home you will barely remember you even talked on the phone. No bread tonight.
You want to sleep less and work more in front of the PC? It's impossible. The only way to sleep less and have energy requires you to stay most of the day under natural sunlight. It works. If you stay 10h or more in natural sunlight (summer time) you will be able to sleep less and have energy. However you need the sunlight factor for it to work and you have no sunlight in front of the PC.


What you eat, what you drink and how you live has a major impact on the amount of sleep you need. If you have a very healthy life you will feel great. Otherwise you ill feel like shit and your body will need a lot of sleep to compensate for the abuse it is subjected to.


I am not saying it is impossible. I am saying the vast majority of people can't do it and those who can, do it because of other reasons - autosuggestion, sunlight, healthy lifestyle, a serious need (life-threatening situations) that produces a fight or flight response (Adrenaline rush), etc.


Also there are people with medical issues that naturally sleep less. It is how they are built personally. There's a name for this but can't remember it. Old people sleep less too - my grandmother slept 4h/night but then again she didn't do much during the day either, wasn't overstressed, had no physical workout, etc.
 
Some great points here and a lot of truth in your post.

One of the things I notice is that people see sleep as the enemy that they have to conquer, but sleep should be something you love and relish each night. The difference with a healthy love of sleep and the lazy stressed out depressed people who 'love to sleep' is that the latter are so stressed/depressed that they just sleep 12-14 hours to avoid life.

Some of you say you want more time in front of the pc, but .. why.. Think about it.

If you want more time in front of the PC it means you're probably not satisfied with your current time in front of the PC. Ie, you're not making enough money or your LIFE in general isn't what you want it to be.

So instead of dealing with the real issues that come from within that are stopping you enjoying life to the fullest, you're wanting this imaginary "more time at the pc" thinking it'll help.

Trust me, if you could somehow sit at the PC 24 hours a day feeling as you do after sleep, you STILL wouldn't be happy.

Aim for more balance in life..

Enjoy sleep.

Enjoy working at your PC.

Enjoy taking a break.

Enjoy your meals.

Enjoy going for a walk.

Enjoy spending time with friends..

Etc etc.

Take each thing as it comes and relax into it. Appreciate each thing in your life without expectation or thinking about the past, future or what you think you *need* to be doing. If you can manage that it really does have quite a profound effect on eliminating your stress. In fact that's ALL you have to do to completely remove stress. Stress is simply thinking about one unsolved issue over and over and over and over instead of just letting things work themselves out.

It is interesting old people sleep less.. I wonder if it's to do with the fact that they're often not very stressed anymore.


This is utter bullshit. There have been experiments who prove this does not work. Absolutely no scientific experiment was able to confirm this method works.

US Army
Italian Air Force
NASA
... and many others

Have conducted tests and all got to the same conclusion - it does not work. They proved you can break up 8h of sleep into multiple segments and sleep in 2 hour segments several times a day. However you HAVE TO have a total of 8h/day of sleep of your mental abilities drop. You can stay without 8h/day of sleep but you will be a zombie and the whole purpose of you sleeping less is defeated - you will have several extra hours but you will struggle to perform the most basic tasks.

Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, used in interrogation by police and intelligence services. It negatively affects growth, healing and lots of other physiological aspects.

It has been proven however that sleep helps a lot with obtaining better focus, attention, healing, etc. As a matter of fact I remember a TED talk where the speaker described in detail how beneficial sleep is.

Only positive effect of sleep deprivation is regarding people who suffer from depression. 24 hours without sleep will counteract depression immediately, however they will always experience a relapse of depression the instance they get enough sleep. In other words after a night of sleep, they will be depressed again.

I have personally tried this uberman method. There are actually multiple multi-phase sleep methods - this being the one with least sleep. These are my findings:


  1. Impossible to have a social life - since you can't stay awake for many hours in a row.
  2. Extremely difficult to accommodate to. It will take you days to teach yourself to fall asleep immediately and by that time you will feel like a walking zombie because you will have to suffer serious sleep deprivation in order to reach the state where you fall asleep immediately so many times a day.
  3. You will not wake up. After the sleep time ended, you will fail to wake up. You will maybe at first but after a while you will not hear the alarm and if you will hear it, your brain will not identify it or just completely ignore it and you will sleep a lot more.
  4. You micro-sleep. Micro-sleep phases are periods of time between several seconds up to several minutes where your brain automatically shuts down. You can not control it. You will fall asleep regardless of what you are doing. You will fall asleep sitting up and you will not fall. But you will sleep. Micro-sleep doesn't occur a few times in a day. It occurs a few times in an hour. In other words the amount of micro-sleep you will get in a day will sum up to hours. And the rest of the time you will be a zombie. So you will go from 8h of sleep to 24h of being in a "coma".
  5. There is no way to work after a couple of days because:
    1. You can't focus
    2. You take the wrong decisions
    3. You "run in circles"
    4. You forget the most basic things. If now you were in the kitchen and thought "i should make that link red" by the time you get to your PC you will forget you ever had that thought or you were in the kitchen.
    5. Simple tasks will become impossible. A mathematical operation that is not as simple as 2+2 will seem to be impossible to solve. 17498*2496=? using pen and paper => you either can't do it, you do it but is wrong or you just feel mental pain from even trying. 12*9=? in your mind => impossible. You ill struggle to remember ho much 2*9 is and then you will struggle to decide if it really is 18. Your girlfriend called you to buy bread? By the time she gets home you will barely remember you even talked on the phone. No bread tonight.
You want to sleep less and work more in front of the PC? It's impossible. The only way to sleep less and have energy requires you to stay most of the day under natural sunlight. It works. If you stay 10h or more in natural sunlight (summer time) you will be able to sleep less and have energy. However you need the sunlight factor for it to work and you have no sunlight in front of the PC.


What you eat, what you drink and how you live has a major impact on the amount of sleep you need. If you have a very healthy life you will feel great. Otherwise you ill feel like shit and your body will need a lot of sleep to compensate for the abuse it is subjected to.


I am not saying it is impossible. I am saying the vast majority of people can't do it and those who can, do it because of other reasons - autosuggestion, sunlight, healthy lifestyle, a serious need (life-threatening situations) that produces a fight or flight response (Adrenaline rush), etc.


Also there are people with medical issues that naturally sleep less. It is how they are built personally. There's a name for this but can't remember it. Old people sleep less too - my grandmother slept 4h/night but then again she didn't do much during the day either, wasn't overstressed, had no physical workout, etc.
 
Did this Uberman thing once. Crazy thing though, I ended up SUPER HUNGRY all the time. Plus, in time, like Madoctopus said, you end up coming to a screeching halt. 7-8 hours + time management is way better in my opinion.
 
Here are some more alternative sleep habits:

Everyman Cycle:

One longer "core" nap that is supplemented with several 20-30 minute naps. The most successful variations that I have read about are either one 3 hour nap and three 20-minute naps or one 1.5 hour nap with 4-5 20 minute naps, all of which have equal amounts of time in between each nap. This cycle is much easier to adjust to than the Uberman and allows for more flexibity in nap times and in skipping naps when necessary. It is also still extremely efficient compared to monophasic with only 3-4 hours of sleep per day. Many bloggers have tried out this cycle and reported no negative

Dymaxion Cycle:

Bucky Fuller invented the cycle based on his belief that we have two energy tanks, the first is easy to replenish whereas the second tank (second wind) is much harder to replenish. So Bucky began sleeping for 30 minutes every 6 hours. That's 2 hours a day of sleep! He reported feeling, "the most vigorous and alert condition I have ever enjoyed." Doctors examined him after several years of using the cycle and pronounced him perfectly healthy. In fact, Fuller only stopped the cycle because his business associates were still stuck on monophasic cycles. This is by far the most extreme of the 4 alternate cycles, but also the most efficient.

Biphasic/Siesta Cycle:

the biphasic cycle is basically that of every college student in America. The biphasic cycle consists of sleeping for 4-4.5 hours at night, and then taking a 90 minute nap around noon. So not all that different, still more efficient than monophasic, but not by much.



p.s. If I could post links I would post the link of where I found this.
 
This could work in the short and maybe in long term, for those who don't exercise and go out for walks that are logner then 30 minutes.

I do not recomend anyone to follow this "Magic Polyhpasic Sleep", unless you are forced to work many hours just to keep the food on table every single day. But maybe it's worth a try. But it would still be hard to follow this schedule if you exercise just to stay in shape and have a healthy life.
 
I am missing the point, you want to be a workaholic? I thought you wanted to be rich. If you get X/hour and you get say 4 more hours of work, you 've only upped your income by 50% (assuming you worked 8 hours). So what?

The idea is to make your X/hour go to 100*X/hour etc.
 
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