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64 lines
2.7 KiB
HTML
64 lines
2.7 KiB
HTML
I've lamented the amount of time dedicated to sleep for many years now. There's
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evidence of it as far back as 2001 where I included the following ["motto" on my
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home page][motto]:
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> "Sleep is the single biggest waste of time in life. Avoid it at all costs."
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[motto]: http://web.archive.org/web/20010428064609/yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au/~wmoore/cgi-bin/index.cgi
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I have lots of things that I'd like to do but due to the amount of time that
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work and sleep occupy only get an hour here and there.
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Around 2004 when I started working full-time I read about what is now known as
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the Uberman sleep schedule. Under this sleep schedule all sleep is replaced by
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six 20 minute naps across the 24 hour day. This sounded great but the schedule
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had to be strictly stuck to and I didn't have an employer at the time that
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would be ok with me taking naps through the work day.
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Fast forward to last week during our weekly Monday meeting. My current boss,
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[Matt][matt], announced he was going to start the Everyman 3 sleep schedule. In
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this modified variant of the Uberman schedule there is a 3 hour core sleep and
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three 20 minute naps distributed across the day. The inclusion of the core
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sleep seems to provide a bit of flexibility in the required nap times
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potentially allowing them to taken up to an hour either side of their scheduled
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time.
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[matt]: http://twitter.com/#!/matthewfallshaw
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So with Matt starting a sleep schedule and me now working for a [nap friendly
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company][trike] I've also decided to give the Everyman sleep schedule a try. My
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schedule is as follows:
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[trike]: http://trikeapps.com/
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<table class="left_headers">
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<tr>
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<th>Core Sleep</th><td>11pm - 2am</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<th>Nap 1</th><td>7am</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<th>Nap 2</th><td>12pm</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<th>Nap 3</th><td>5pm</td>
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</tr>
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</table>
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The way the sleep schedule is supposed to work as follows: Initially you become
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so sleep deprived that at each of the nap times your body decides it best make
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the most of the 20 minutes of sleep it has available to it. It skips the usual
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sleep phases and jumps directly to the R.E.M. phase. R.E.M. sleep is what is
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mainly responsible for recharging and fending off tiredness. Its also been
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reported that by getting R.E.M. sleep across the whole day you wake up feeling
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really switched on and alert and therefore potentially more productive.
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Wikipedia has a [good summary on polyphasic sleep][wikipedia].
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[wikipedia]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
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Of course there is an adaptation phase for the schedule, which can be a couple
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of weeks or more. As mentioned this basically involves driving yourself to
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exhaustion to trigger R.E.M sleep in naps. Tonight is my first night on the
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schedule so I'm in for some rough days ahead. I aim to post weekly updates on
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my progress.
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