Experiments with Polyphasic Sleep

Last Updated: 2 Oct 2024

As the weeks go by, I will keep updating this note on my learnings and experience. So this is always be in progress.

But wait, whats polyphasic sleep?

*need to write this section yet, but you can go to https://polyphasic.net to learn more

I started this experiment in the last week of September 2024. This post is a way for me to document and publicly share what I learn.

I chose Everyman 1, or E1 for short, as it seemed to be fairly forgiving with caffeine (oh I am a coffee addict), alcohol, and recovery from workouts.

Right now I am in the second week of trying to adapt E1 polyphasic sleep schedule. Which is getting 6 hours of core sleep from 23:00 to 05:00 and then topping it up with a 20 minute nap in the afternoon.

One more reason to choose this schedule is because I like mornings. I like to get stuff done early in the day so I can spend the rest of the day with the feeling of accomplishment.

I have the ability to nap whenever I want as I work remotely. On the days I go out in the afternoons, which I haven't done from the time I have started this, I will try car naps which seem highly popular in the polyphasic community.

I feel its good. As much as I would like to say I am adapted to this, people say that it takes 4-6 weeks to properly adapt. So I am looking forward.

I have researched a lot. About affects of caffeine, workout recovery etc. Alcohol in general doesn't seem to be a problem on Everyman schedules.

Drink coffee or not

There is mixed advice here.

Some say you need to completely avoid when you are adapting. And that you won't need it after you are adapted as you will feel energetic all the time.

But I like to drink it.

Some say if you are caffeine adapted, which happens if you are a long time drinker, then its fine to drink it at a time which doesn't affect your sleep or nap.

I am experimenting with this as well and so far its good. One cup of my delicious pour over at somewhere before 09:00. Considering the half life of caffeine, it would me with ~26mg of caffeine in my body by the time I sleep. Under 50 seems to be the standard but I am gradually check this permissible limit for me.

I built myself a nifty tool to check the caffeine levels. This helped a lot.