So I’ve always been a little on the loony side of things, it’s true. However, I’m about to dial it up a notch. I’ve been reading into polyphasic sleep schedules, and I’m about to start trying out the “Everyman”.
Most people I’ve run this past (including my friend Matt, who has declared me a “crazy bugger”) aren’t really sold on the idea, but I was sold on “cut your sleep in half”. I’ve never been a fan of sleeping taking up a third of my life… there’s always so much to do! So a sleep schedule that allows me to cut that down and still be able to operate is immediately appealing to me. Besides, I’ll be keeping a log (details forthcoming). That means that it’s FOR SCIENCE.
The schedule I’m going to attempt involves a core sleep of 3 hours, with three 20 minutes naps throughout the day. The idea is that the body adapts to more quickly fall into REM sleep, especially in those 20 minute naps. A more extreme version (the “Uberman”) is a 20 minute nap every four hours, though that schedule makes you completely out of line with everyone else and is very vulnerable to even slight disruption. The everyman, in contrast, gives you about an hours flexibility in either direction on the timing of any given nap, which seems like a more reasonable way to manage it and still not characterize yourself overmuch as a crazy anti-social nut.
Not saying that it wouldn’t be accurate, but let’s try to keep up appearances here! 
So the schedule I’m going to try to manage goes like this:
- Sleep from 12:00am – 3:00am. Go to bed late, get up early.
- Nap around 8:00am. This coincides with the lengthier bus ride in my transit schedule.
- Nap around 1:00pm. This coincides with my lunch break.
- Nap again at 8:00pm. The one hour of flexibility I have means that if I have Taekwondo practice from 6:30-7:45, I can delay the nap. If I’m heading out to meet friends at 8:00, I can have the nap early.
This appears to be minimally disruptive. The main question is whether Bioware will accept me messing about with my sleep schedule like this. It’s a pretty permissive workplace, so I’m not too worried, but if my boss isn’t up for the idea of me adjusting to my new, crazy sleep schedule, or napping midday during my lunch break, then I’ll back off. If the sleep deprivation ends up being too severe and impairs my functioning normally, then I might stop it myself.
Otherwise, FOR SCIENCE.
