Hacking Your Brain To Sleep As Little As 2 Hours Per Day

Are you never getting enough sleep? Do you feel like you need more than 24 hours during a day to get your work done? Then you may possibly benefit from altering your sleep schedule.

A Little on Sleep

Adults need anywhere from 7 ½ to 9 hours of sleep a night. Throughout sleeping you go through different stages. Stage 4 REM (Rapid eye movement) only occurs for about 2 hours, and is the most beneficial for humans. The rest of the time spent sleeping is essentially wasted.

How to Sleep Less

Polyphasic sleep is another method of sleeping. Instead of sleeping once during the night (monophasic) you nap multiple times throughout the day. Although it is generally believed that polyphasic sleep makes you achieve REM sleep faster, it actually doesnâ??t; no one really knows how polyphasic sleep works or why it does. So thatâ??s not something I can really explain. On the other hand I can explain how to achieve a more efficient sleeping schedule.

Polyphasic Sleep

Some people actually use a polyphasic sleep schedule, and they probably donâ??t know it. The Siesta method involves sleeping 6 hours during the night, and taking a twenty minute nap after noon. This removes about an hour and forty minutes off of a monophasic sleep schedule, while you continue to feel just as rested.

Then thereâ??s the Everyman 2-nap. This involves sleeping a total of 4 ½ hours during the night, a nap at noon, and a nap at around 5 oâ?? clock; for a total of 5.2 hours of sleep. As you sleep less, you have to take more naps to recharge. Once you get into a certain napping schedule your body becomes more efficient at sleeping and thus you have to spend less time unconscious. One nap you go through a certain sleep stage, and the next nap you go through another, etc.

You can keep adding naps such as the Everyman 3-nap schedule requiring only 4 total hours of sleep, or the Everyman 4-nap requiring only 2.8 hours of sleep.

The craziest method out there is called the Uberman. It requires you to nap 20 minutes every 4 hours for a total of 2 hours a day. It was also believed that by using this sleeping technique your body will only use REM sleep. That has been proven incorrect, as your body still goes through all the stages, but is more efficient in each one. This is what adds to the mystery, because we still canâ??t find out why we need non-REM sleep.

Uberman

Uberman sleep schedule

At any rate these methods have been tried and proven to work without any negative side effects. Steve Pavlina tried this sleeping schedule for 5 ½ months and experienced no problems with it. He eventually chose to go back to monophasic sleep because of the social impact. The rest of the world runs on monophasic schedules and the extra naps cut time you can spend with other awake humans.

To incorporate something such as napping 20 minutes every 4 hours you would have to be an independent freelancer, or not bound by an 8 hour job. You would also get an extra 6 hours of waking time! I think if you aren’t productive with your extra time you will eventually end up bored, and going back to a monophasic sleep schedule. I doubt anyone is actually crazy enough to incorporate this sleeping schedule in their lives to do more work.

In Other Sleeping News

Margaret Thatcher, the ex-prime minister of England, only slept 3-4 hours a night!

Scientists have also discovered a gene that controls the amount of sleep we need to sleep. ABCC09 used to be associated with heart disease and diabetes, but is also responsible for our sleeping needs. Fruit flies have the same gene, and researchers were able to shorten their sleeping time by mutating ABCC09.

A biphasic sleep cycle involves sleeping 4-4.5 hours at night, and taking a 90 minute nap at around noon.

Article written by Octavian Ristea.

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Octavian is a technology enthusiast and blogger. He enjoys writing for App Comrade and keeping up with current trends. The last thing he would ever do is buy a pre-made computer from a store. He believes building your own computer is a great experience that everyone should try in their lifetime. On the side he likes experimenting with Linux, servers, and programming. He is not "l33t" or ever wishes to be, but he can manage well enough :) On top of running this site he also runs a web design service, an app marketing service and a web hosting service.

6 COMMENTS

  1. I couldn’t even keep up with a everyman 2-nap schedule. I didn’t have any physical or mental side effects when using this method, but napping so much gets annoying after a while.

  2. This subject was really interesting to me Octavian. I’m always taking naps and if you asked most friends about me they’d say that if I were a mobile phone I would have a permanent low battery. I am more efficient in work when taking naps however.

    I will try some of these methods out and let you know how I get on. I already use a polyhasic sleep schedule but didn’t know it as you said, but I still sleep 8-9 hours at night too lol. So, I will try the Everyman-2-nap today. :Zzzzzz:

    Before human beings harnessed farming methods they would have to have hunted animals at night and worked at different tasks during the day. This wouldn’t have been uniform, as you can’t arrange to stumble upon a mammoth strolling along at a set time for example. Plus if you had just speared a mammoth and were following it to wait for it to bleed to death, it wouldn’t have keeled over because you had to be in bed at a certain time.
    So, what I’m getting at is that maybe these sleep methods hark back to sleep patterns before humans started to farm and keep livestock. Maybe they are lying there dormant, waiting to be awakened – if you’ll excuse the unintended pun.

    I will let you know how I get on. Thanks for your advice and fascinating article on this 🙂 :Happy:

    • Yeah you can check out the graphics at http://www.dustincurtis.com/sleep.html

      I need around 8-9 of sleep every day, but during school I only get about 5-7 🙁 I was going to try the everyman 2-nap during school, but I’d have to sleep during lunch (I can eat in 5 minutes, then go to library), and a couple of hours after getting home. So I doubt that is doable :Pondering:

    • You need to be sleep deprived in order for this to start working 🙂 I’ve been doing a nap everyday at 3:00 instead of 1 because I can’t during school. Helps me out a great while and I’m surprised I actually fall asleep!

      Would love to do something like the Uberman if I were working at a 24/7 McDonalds, or was a freelancer.

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