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Comment by akshatrathi | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for your $0.02. I'm the author of the piece, and I know what you are talking about. I tried to cheat sleep for a year by sleeping approx 4.5 hours per day. More here: http://qz.com/430415 (slept 3.5 hours at night and took 3-4 naps of 20 mins in the day)

My experience was the same. I used to fall in REM very quickly, many times in the 20 min naps. Here I say REM but really I mean dreams and I'm taking dreams to be a proxy for REM.

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I did this for a year in high school (bi-phasic, 1.5h + 4.5h). Had to stop because I was disrupting my parents at night, but I had very good results overall. Felt like I had more energy during the day and enjoyed surreal relaxing times awake at night.

One thing though: I had a really hard time waking up from the short nap and had to have my girlfriend call me to wake me up every day. If you don't have a (girl/boy)friend to help you with this, or a very aggressive alarm clock, YMMV.

Another friend is doing a similar cycle right now and it's the same for him ... he has some friends ("accountability partners") who will call him to wake him up daily from his shorter nap and I think they talk about how their day went and then hang up.

But you ave it up so it was not what you thought it would be then?

How do you know you are in REM sleep by the way? Can you only dream during REM? I do often dream in the 9 min between my alarm snoozing, even if I do it a couple of times in a row. Does that mean I'm immediately back in REM sleep?

> "Though a tiny fraction of people can get away with much less."

Why is that?

This article describes such a person; might shed some light:

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/02/what-its-like-to-need-h...

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