I don’t know about this in specific, but do you know anything about polyphasic sleep? I did Everyman for a while, it was pretty awesome. I should get back into it…

AntiRules187 Posted:

don’t know anything about that, but my friend google might.

ok, so I just checked it up, and no, I don’t have little bits of sleep, just during the night.

Well, a lot of it depends on what you’re eating and how active you are.

Then again, 6 hours is just for the “average adult”, so perhaps you’re one of the extreme cases who can do with less sleep.

Gene Hackman Posted:

Do you mean just taking naps?

In basic terms, yea. But it’s structured and efficient insomnia.

With no college or exams I simply go to sleep at 4am and wake up at 2pm.

Its fantastic and you should all try it.

It might not, as well. When I was working as a financial security advisor, that meant a lot of late nights poring over securities and equities trying to find best-fits, which meant a surprising amount of Adderall for me. I blamed that for changing my sleep schedule, and when I went off, I expected the withdrawal symptoms, like fatigue and excessive sleeping, to take care of fixing my sleep schedule. Lately, however, with the onset of summer, I’ve been waking up with the dawn anyway. It could be related to photosensitivity, or just your internal clock setting and resetting. I’d suggest making sure you wake up somewhere dark – tape folded cereal boxes to your window-bottom and put dark towels over your drapes/blinds – and if that doesn’t help you sleep in after three or four days, work from there.

edit – omg my height and 115 lbs i would eat you alive.

If you don’t feel tired there’s probably no problem… if you were sleep deprived you’d know about it fairly quickly from how crappy you’d feel. Natural rhythms vary from person to person, change as you age, I’ve also heard that teenage hormonal changes put your natural ‘clock’ out by a couple of hours, thus explaining the 4am to 2pm sleep schedule that Chawin and myself seem to share.

Amount of sleep needed and when you’re predisposed to take it are pretty much down to individual happenstance, so long as you’re sleeping when you’re sleepy and waking up of your own accord (try blocking out the light from your room, see if it makes any difference) then there’s no problem – your body knows what it needs.

One factor, if your naturally a lazy guy and you’re now on a summer break, I’m guessing you’re not doing a whole lot? Maybe spend a few days in a row mostly just kicking around on the internet? (I know I have), if so then it’s no wonder you’re not tired – you’ve not done anything to tire yourself out. You still need a little sleep to keep your mental health in order, but your body doesn’t really need the rest, so you don’t sleep much.

Adapt Posted:

Ooo, I’ve always wanted to try that. Going with the 20 minute nap every four hours routine.

I’ve always preferred the idea of the 28-hour day. You stay up for 20 hours, then sleep for 8, your sleep/wake times shift by 4 hours each day and come full circle once a week (effectively the 7th day of the week is cut into 6 blocks of 4 hours, and one is added to each of the other 6 days).

According to science, people who are naturally late-risers tend to have more stamina than the early birds, and will stay awake and alert for longer periods, if they’re allowed to sleep to their own schedule – forcing them to wake up at early o’ clock for work throws them off their game. So I figure take that to it’s logical extension by staying up as long as you can each day, and sleeping when you feel like it.

There would be days when I’d only get 4 or 6 hours of sleep and I feel great (different cirgreat timesstances now). But normally I sleep longer. Sometimes I’d get to bed around 2 or 3 and wake up at 11.

I run on 3-5 hours of sleep a night and function just fine. Some people are just built for less sleep than others.