[lcall]

Years ago I tried this, after having read a lot about it, trying multiple times, hard, as I was determined to get more done on things that were important to me. I can be very self-disciplined and almost fell asleep dropping to the floor while standing at one point. For a while I thought it helped me get more done. Today I have health problems (CFS), and these attempts at the polyphasic or "uberman" sleep cycle (~28 min of sleep per 4-hour period) is one of the two leading possible causes I think of (don't bother asking me the other one).

Out of general experiences and lessons learned over the years I have tried to write things at my simple, hopefully-skimmable web site to hopefully help someone else avoid learning some things the hard way: http://lukecall.net . (Anyway, I get things off my chest there.)

ps: prior HN discussions (which I have not reviewed): https://duckduckgo.com/?q=polyphasic+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fne...

[sjf]

I think alternative sleep schedules are like alternative medicine. If they were actually feasible and beneficial, they would be commonplace, and even recommended. Especially considering how often posts like this come up here, there is obviously a high level of interest.

[bccdee]

I think what normally happens is people see the unbelievable claim of "6 20-minute naps" and think "wow that's incredible." Then they try it, fail horribly and never try a less extreme schedule. In my experience, Uberman requires a superhuman constitution, but some of the less-extreme schedules are perfectly viable.

I figured social distancing would be a great opportunity to give some polyphasic sleep schedules a try. I started with Uberman (6x20-minute naps), but that was awful. It was just a long slow crash, and it was totally unsustainable.

I recovered my lost sleep and then started Everyman 2 (4.5 hours at night + 2x20-minute naps) at the start of May, and I've really been enjoying it. I feel just as awake as I did before, but I'm waking up at 3:30am now. Only time will tell if my 2pm nap survives the end of social distancing, but for the moment it's going great.

Under normal circumstances, the failure of my first attempt would have totally ended the experiment, because I can't normally afford to tamper with my sleep for months on end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But once I swallowed my pride and set some reasonable goals, I managed to have a really good experience with the whole thing. I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot if you're curious, with the caveat that anyone interested should start with a moderate plan like Everyman 2 rather than gambling on one of the extreme schedules.

https://polyphasic.net/ is a good resource for prospective polyphasic sleepers.