You have to follow your rhythms, so I tiered my naps. I need more help in the mornings, so my first nap is 4 hours after waking from my core, my next nap is 5 hours from that, and my last nap is 7 from that. It seems to be much easier on my system than regularly spaced naps were.

There’s no formula for polyphasic sleep, really. There’s a starting point, and that’s all. You have to tweak it until it works for you. If you’re oversleeping, you need to change something: shift a nap, sleep with the light on, put the alarm next to your face, just try some things and see what works. It’s not a bad thing if you don’t adapt perfectly, it’s just a form of feedback you need to use.

Those are my two bits, as a long-term polyphasic sleeper. Hope it helps.

The swimming in jello reminded me of something that happened recently at like 4am or so. It was one of those tired days. I was sitting in my chair with my headphones on blasting loud music. Had a glass of ice water in my hand and was sipping on it. All of the sudden i hear this clonk noise…

Yes, i fell asleep and the noise was the water glass falling on the carpet spilling all the water. I then decided that i was just a little to tired to even bother and took a 30 min nap after which i felt pretty good.

My biggest issue with the polyphasia experiments I see on the internet is that they seem to advocate an overnight (pun intended) switch. My opinion is that this shocks people’s body undue stress. Really, I think that the adaption period should probably be around three weeks to a month, during which the mono sleep is slowly shortened and naps added during the day.

I’ve done uberman in college for about a month and after I graduated I did everyman 3.5 for around five months. Now, about a year and a half later, my schedule has gotten very busy and I’ve always been curious as to whether polyphasia is adaption to the periods of sleep or just an adaption to the amount. I also wanted to test the gradual adaption. Every day I dropped around 20-30 minutes off of my sleep and every three or four days, I added thirty minutes. I’m at 3.5 hours a night, my goal is to reach three. No naps.

I feel about as good now as I did when I was fully adapted to everyman in less than half the time. What’s more, I felt the same throughout the entire process, with the exception of a few days towards the beginning.

I would recommend feeling free to add a half an hour to the days where you feel exceptionally tired. After thirty days, I’m sure you recognize the difference between when you wake up a bit tired and those hell mornings where all light is painful and it feels like you’re swimming in jello. I personally try to remain awake for at least forty-five minutes before adding the half hour; I’m trying to train my body. When I wake up, I usually still feel pretty bad, but it seems to go away somewhere around 9 am, unlike in my previous attempts where it would be a constant battle to make it through the day. And after I drop back down the next day, I feel as if this amount of sleep is just normal.

Just my two cents. Good luck!