I have been reading Steve Pavlina’s account of his polyphasic sleep experiment with great interest. Polyphasic sleep has interested a number of people as a result of an article on the subject; you can find the wikipedia explanation here.
The gist of polyphasic sleeping is this: you “compress” your sleep to maximize REM phase sleep while minimizing the time spent sleeping. This is done by “napping” throughout the day instead of sleeping 8 hours one time a day (hence “polyphasic”—as opposed to “monophasic”). It sounds quirky, but Steve has been doing it for almost a month now and reports great results. By all accounts, the first week is absolutely miserable, but the people who stick it out seem to like it a lot after that point. When it’s working right, you can apparently get by on about 3 hours of sleep each day and still feel great, giving you extra time and constant energy.
I’m thinking of trying it (you had to know that was coming, right?), starting the week after Thanksgiving. I figure that will give me a while to adapt before Christmas but not keep me waiting until the new year. I can never predict what Daniel will think of my crazy schemes, but in this case, he likes the idea (I think he’s actually jealous). This is mostly because he wants me to use the extra hours to generate multiple streams of income so we don’t have to work very much after the house is payed off. 
Right now, I’m thinking through all of the logisitics. I think if I schedule my naps for 4, 8, 12, 4, 8, 12, that will work for most of my set activities. I have 5:30 a.m. exercise, a weekly business meeting at 7 a.m., a church seminar that goes through 8:30 p.m., and church from about 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. (it varies within those hours), so I’ll require a little flexibility from time to time. Mostly, though, my schedule is set by me, so it might work very well. I’m contemplating setting my hammock up in the office for my nighttime naps (don’t want to wake anyone else up, or they might not be too friendly to my plan).
Of course, you can expect me to document the whole process here, so watch for it in a few weeks. Any comments?
errr hair brained? okay that was my first reaction. but hey cats do that don’t they? oh wait no, they are awake for only 3 hrs.
well it should be interesting to read about at least =).
Hehe.
I expect I’ll get that reaction a lot.