Am I "man" enough?
Im thinking of starting a different sleep cycle for myself. There are a number of people out there who sleep a whole lot less than the rest of the world. They are known as Poly Phasers, or those who sleep with a polyphasic sleep cycle. Now, there are a couple of different types of polyphasic sleepers. There are those who use the “uberman” pattern, and those who use the “everyman” pattern. Let’s take a look at the two main styles of the polyphasic sleeper.
Differentiated by the amount of naps and “core sleep” periods are used, the everyman style uses a single core sleep period of 1.5 to 3 hours of straight sleep on average, while the uberman style relies solely on the nap periods, of which there are 6. These methods of sleep are not for every person, no matter what the name of them is, and the uberman is even less acceptable by most people.
From what I’ve looked into so far there seems to be no medical problems with this lifestyle so long as you adhere to it well. Making sure to get your naps on time and getting your full REM sleep cycles is enough to sustain you, and from what I read, provide you with not only more time awake but also a more refreshing awake period.
I am curious as to whether or not this would be the type of thing I could or should do. I already dont go to sleep until about 2a.m. as it is, and get up around 5:30a.m. to get ready for work. Usually I end up napping on the ride to and from work (I am part of a carpool) and get about 30 minutes of decent napping time that way already. From there its staying up until about 2 again and starting all over. I am basically doing an everyman 2 nap cycle already, the only difference is that the first of my naps is way to early at about 6:30 – 7a.m. and the second is also slightly early at around 5:10 – 5:40p.m. If I could push my first nap back a few hours and then the same with the second, or go on a 3 nap cycle, I feel that I would have more energy throughout the day and the week as a whole. Because of the way I have been going about my sleep cycle, I end up putting too many naps too early and then not getting enough useful REM sleep cycles and I end up becoming so tired at some point during the month that I overload and have to crash for almost an entire day. It has been this way for years, since the end of high school would be my guess, and cannot be good for me in the long run.
I think that I will try to go through with a polyphasic everyman 2 nap cycle (as it would be hard to be able to get time off from my work schedule to take multiple naps during the day) and see if it fits my lifestyle. I plan to document the process the first week every day and then, if I continue, with weekly updates as to the progress and condition of my quality of life. Please feel free to ask questions and check in on the progress if you so feel inclined.
–UPDATE–
As of right now, I have not attempted to start the Everyman polyphasic sleep cycle. I came to the conclusion that I don’t have a regular enough schedule with Audra being around at this point so I won’t be starting up yet, if at all, with this cycle.
Oops, nothing else quite matches this post.