Polyphasic vs. Monophasic Deathmatch

Ok, I just added the “Deathmatch” to make this seem a little sexier. It’s been 4 nights or so on monophasic sleep and I feel like I have a good basis to compare them.

Overall, there are some pretty big surprises. The most significant is that I’m back to sleeping a full 8 hours. The first night I slept only 5 hours, but from there it ramped up. What? I was totally expecting raw food to pull through for me here. I also feel more tired during the day! It’s only been a few days, so maybe I need more time to adjust, but so far I feel like I’m less alert.

The best part about monophasic sleep, not surprisingly, is that my day is uninterrupted. This gives me a lot of freedom to do whatever I want during the day without worrying about a nap. I still occasionally think “Wait… when’s my next nap?”. Right now I live about 15-25 minutes North of most activities. If I want to take a nap at home and come back, that’s 1 hour to 1:40 of driving time I have to factor in. Because of this I would often have dinner with friends but then go home instead of going out. I would also schedule things at strange times to avoid messing up my naps. Occasionally I would throw caution to the wind and skip naps or push them around, which would inevitably mess up the schedule.

Another surprise is that I don’t have enough time anymore. The days seem to fly by and often times at night I get frustrated knowing I have to sleep and stop whatever I’m doing. When I was polyphasic I felt like I had too much time, but if the alternative is too little time, I’ll take too much.

The quality of my sleep is also far inferior to polyphasic sleep. My naps felt like several hours at a time, involved detailed dreams, and just felt like really deep sleep. Now I feel like I’m bumbling through the night.

Overall, I like polyphasic sleep a lot better. I think I’m going to make plans to move downtown so that it is always convenient for me to leave to take my naps. I also take naps in my car occasionally, but 30% of the time I can’t fall asleep or don’t sleep as much as I would have liked to.

I’m glad that I’ve given monophasic sleep another try, because my motivation to stay on poly was waning. However, now I am pretty convinced that polyphasic is far superior. I’m pretty sure that I can easily switch back to poly, although I wish I had someone to do it with me. It will be interesting to see how hard it is to transition back.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

11 responses to “Polyphasic vs. Monophasic Deathmatch”

  1. jlaix Avatar
    jlaix

    I found the Tony Robbins Time of Your Life program quite effective as far as time management goes, you should check it out if you haven’t already.

    -jlaix

  2. Phi Avatar
    Phi

    Naps are always inconvenient, so I developed my own polyphasic sleeping schedule with only 3 naps and 4 hours of sleep per day.

    Check it out here

  3. Phi Avatar
    Phi

    Oops, something went wrong with the link:

    Try again here…

  4. Pentarix Avatar
    Pentarix

    I went through the same thing recently Tynan, I posted it in my last sleep update. My transition back went fine, I didn’t sleep for a couple naps during the transition back and my eyes were almost completely shut although the rest of me felt fine, but I’m back on baby and feeling great about it!

  5. Stewen Wright Avatar
    Stewen Wright

    I will try this poly thing first cahnce im outa work for a moth…or 2.

  6. Manish Avatar
    Manish

    Sounds like you’re going through a similar transition back to monophasic as me. I had the urge to nap every 4-6 hours for about a week after switching back to monophasic. I miss all the extra time too.

  7. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    try getting an SUV where you can properly lay out a flat area to nap on for 20 minutes. Or learn to take a nap anywhere.

  8. Kirk Avatar
    Kirk

    You could also get this power nap kit which I just ordered since I sometimes have trouble falling asleep. I’m still in the middle of transition, and I’m convinced that in order to complete it, I need to tackle the problem from both ends. 1) I need to make the naps more restful and 2) I need to stop the oversleeps. One contributes to the other in a vicious cycle. Hopefully it will help me to fall asleep faster. I also ordered a couple other ones, so I’ll compare all three.

  9. Tynan Avatar
    Tynan

    I’ve tried something similar. It was ok, but doesn’t put you to sleep instantly, doesn’t offer better sleep, and the alarm built in didn’t wake me up. The one benefit was that it will get you to sleep even if you’re not too tired.

  10. Sean Oliver Avatar
    Sean Oliver

    Are you currently sleeping in the polyphasic style?

  11. John Williford Avatar
    John Williford

    Hey man,
    I am a polyphaser. I’d love to talk with you about Uberman. We should talk about the various interesting facets of polyphasic sleep. Check out my website also.

    best of luck,
    John

Leave a Reply to Phi Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *