I’ve been reading a lot about sleep during the last few years, ranging from polyphasic sleep enthusiasts to advocates of no-alarm-clock sleep. To be honest, I always end up with a sort of mixed feelings. From one side, the benefits advertised by those who only sleep 4-6 hours every day are hard to ignore, but also are then ones from those who say that you need to sleep as much as your body requires you to do.
During the last few days I’ve been thinking about this situation again. Do I want to finally try a polyphasic sleep schedule? Or do I want to throw away my alarm clock completely in order to experience free running sleep? Let’s see each of them in detail.
Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic sleep means sleeping multiple times per day. For example, one can choose an every-man schedule where they only sleep three hours per night and then have 3 small naps throughout the day. Even though it may seem difficult to adapt to a schedule like this, it’s certainly doable, as many have demonstrated.
There are many degrees of sleeping patterns that you can choose from, ranging from the siesta (6 hours of core sleep plus one nap in the afternoon), to the Uberman schedule (only 6 naps during the day, no core sleep).
The problem with these schedules, is that they are hard to fit into society. I was talking with my girlfriend about the option of giving biphasic sleep a try, which consists of a core sleep of 4.5 hours plus 1.5 hours during the day, and she was very supportive. However, we concluded that being obligated to break our day in two was something that in the long run would lower the quality of our lifestyle.
Free running sleep
Free running sleep is an experiment that one conduct in order to determine their circadian rhythm. In simple words, it consists on going to bed only when you are tired (when you are certain that you would fall asleep within 10 minutes or less), and then waking up naturally. If you keep track of what time you went to bed, and what time you wake up, after a few days or weeks you should be able to determine your natural rhythm.
Even here, the problem is that it’s very likely that your natural rhythm according to your body is more (or less) than 24 hours, so even if you would adapt to waking up without an alarm clock, which happens after a few days, chances are that you would go to bed later each night, resulting in yet another incompatibility with how the rest of the world works.
A problem of time?
Both of these solutions are appealing, but both of them are also hard to follow considering their social implications. However, if I had to choose between one of those, right now I would choose the free running sleep method. The reason is that the major advantage of polyphasic sleep is more time, while the advantage of free running sleep is sleeping according to your body needs.
The idea of more time available might sound appealing at first, as it did with me, but it’s only a trap. I’m confident that it’s not the amount of time that you have available each day that makes the difference, but rather how you spend it. You don’t need 20 hours a day to change the world, people have done it while still sleeping their 8-9 hours for centuries.
I agree that more time would give anyone more freedom, but I suspect it would also be like adding a bonus to a paycheck: you would end up spending it as soon as you get it, completely missing its value.
On the other hand, sleeping according to how our body works sounds more right to me. It doesn’t matter how many different schedules we can try, only our bodies know how much sleep we need.
30 Day Experiment
Based on those observations, I’ve decided to start a new 30-day experiment. Last year I did a similar experiment where I was waking up at 5 am every morning. That experiment ended up successfully, however for external reasons I had to quit waking up early as soon as I moved to Spain. Time for something else.
This time I want to try something that’s both simple and used by many people already. I simply want to wake up at a fixed time each day (with an alarm clock), and go to bed only when I am very tired.
This pattern is similar to the one presented in the free running system, except that I do use an alarm clock in the morning. The idea is that after a while, my body will learn and adapt anyway. It doesn’t matter if one day I’ll sleep 10 hours and the next day 5, as soon as I wake up at a fixed time my body should know what to do.
The time I’ll be waking up is 8 am, which I consider late in the morning by my standards. However, it will allow me to enjoy late nights in the weekends if needed, and it’ll also allow me to maintain this schedule 7 days a week. In fact, I’ll make no exceptions, not even during the weekends.
I’ll also introduce a small, 20 minutes afternoon nap, which is another thing that I missed after moving. Breaking our day with a small nap helps to stay focuses and improves productivity, and 20 minutes are small enough to fit in most lifestyles, certainly mine.
Goals of this experiment
The goal of this experiment is to see if, by going to bed only when I feel tired as opposed to when I think I should go in order to get enough sleep, my body will adapt. Will this be difficult? Will I increase or decrease the amount of sleep needed each night? How will I feel?
I have no idea yet, but I’m curious to find it out and post my results here. As usual, after 30 days I’ll decide wherever continuing with this new habit or not.