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Comment by FirefoxIsSlow | Hacker News Reader

Does biphasic sleep count as polyphasic? I've been doing it for years following the 6 hr core and 20 minute nap. (Basically this https://efficiencyiseverything.com/sleep/)

It's been extremely doable for over a year. Sure I sleep in when I'm hungover or on a lazy Saturday, but it's closer to a regular 8 hour sleep rather than 10 hours.

I'm not in agreement of this overly simple article.

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How do you keep your nap to just 20 minutes though? I literally can’t sleep for that short amount of time. I’ll either stay awake for the full 20 minutes or I’ll fall so dead asleep that I don’t wake up again until morning.

For me, I tense all of my muscles for 5 seconds, then relax, close my eyes and let my mind go blank. I don't "try" to sleep, I just try to enjoy relaxing. 9/10 times, I'm waking up to the 21 minute alarm I set before I even notice I had fallen asleep. Every once in awhile, I don't fall asleep, and then I assume that my body didn't need it. Very rarely, my alarm goes off and I decide that I'm going to nap longer. In those cases, I lose the rest of my day, but it's usually because my body really needed it.

Falling asleep quickly when you're tired I think is something that can be trained; I probably learned it in boot camp, where most days we got only 6 hours of sleep, unless you had watch duty, in which case you got 5 hours; and near the end there was a week where we only got 4 hours. Your body just learns to grab whatever sleep it can.

Re taking short naps: When I was at university, if I needed a power nap, I'd set the timer on my watch for 7 minutes and set it on my forehead; then I'd normally do two of these in a row (so 14 minutes of nap total). Once I got used to it, 1) as soon as I closed my eyes I'd start dreaming 2) I'd frequently have the experience of slowly coming to consciousness seconds before the alarm went off.

But that only works if you're only moderately tired. If you're really sleep deprived, there's nothing you can do but actually take a longer rest.

That’s awesome! I guess I’ve been doing that for a year or two now too, although without naming it. I started getting up early to get stuff done before the rest of the world wakes up, but found myself getting sleepy around lunch time. 25min naps ended up being my sweet spot: 20min feel like they end right when it’s getting good, 30+ make me groggy.

Thanks for the feedback. I can see the argument that polyphasic sleep is anything more than one monophasic block of sleep. In practice though, I'd say most people differentiate between a biphasic schedule and a polyphasic one.

Napping is absolutely sustainable. Trying to reduce total sleep time by sleeping in small bursts throughout the day and night does not appear to be sustainable over long periods.

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