I heard about polyphasic sleep — such as sleeping 20 minutes every 3 hours — many years ago. But now I can learn about it in much more detail — and with much more suspense. For example:
[Before starting] Having always been a night-owl, and never having a sleep pattern that fits with others, I feel drawn to try it. I foresee a problem in that I have always felt that I need 8 hours of sleep per day, but on the other hand I can stay up until 5 am without a problem when I am mentally engaged, so it has seemed to me for quite some time that a 28 or 29 hour day is what my system is tuned for. . . . I can feel it energizing me already. [Day 15] Yesterady was a disaster. Sleep is a funny thing – sleep deprivation had been accumulating and I wasn’t really noticing it. I was just happy to be awake and productive so many hours in a day that I ignored the weird feeling in my head, just going with it, thinking I would adjust and it would be all ok. Well yesterday morning I blew up at my SO for a ridiculous reason. . . . What went wrong? I was following all the sleep patterns pretty much to the letter.
More examples listed here.
Have you seen Steve Pavlina’s experiments with polyphasic sleep? There’s an index of his experiment here:
https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/
Here’s a comment that sums up duration/type of polyphasic sleep pursued by Pavlina from one of the last days he did it:
Hello,
Regarding “Polyphasic Sleep” you might find my new app I just made for the iPhone called SNOOZEBOT. It’s a snooze button whenever you need one. Here’s the link to the iTunes store if you’re interested. https://bit.ly/snoozebot
or just search the iTunes store for: Snoozebot
You can basically set up various sleep sessions. The custom button can only go up to 60 minutes, but that seems to fit well for 20-30 sessions.
I have a blog documenting how polyphasic sleep fits into my lifestyle, I have done it for nearly three years, and do not view it as a short term experiment as many of the blogs on the net are about. Feel free to come by and send me a message, good luck if you decide to give it a go!