Biphasic Sleep: An Overview

August 31, 2009

I hear it all the time, “There just aren't enough hours in the day!” Most people aren't willing to do anything about this realization, but I'm willing to at least attempt to remedy the issue. It seems as though the largest block of 'unproductive' time is when we are sleeping. We have all heard that 8 hours is the perfect amount of sleep, but is this really true? Are there other ways of sleeping that are more efficient?

After doing a little bit of internet research, I decided to try biphasic sleeping, which is basically sleeping a twice during the day. My goal is to sleep for 4.5 hours a day and improve my productivity while being alert and staying in good condition.  

The 4.5 hour sleeping total is derived from the notion that our sleep cycle lasts 90 minutes. Waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle is bad and will supposedly cause drowsiness and general tiredness throughout the day. With biphasic sleeping, the goal is to make our sleeping more efficient and get the most out of our sleep cycles. Because it seems beneficial to sleep for a larger block of time, and then take a nap, the 4.5 hours seems like the minimum amount of sleep to aim for with this style of sleeping. I'll break the sleeping up between a 1.5 hour nap, and a longer 3 hour sleep period.

I am aiming to carry out this experiment for at least 30 days to see if it is worth the trouble.  I have made some notes during most days of the experiment, which can be read using the links to the right.
 

Tags: Biphasic Sleep