I think it's cool to study the lives of very successful people from throughout history. I don't think that's very unique of me
It seems like a very common thing actually for us to try and understand what made you know exceptional people
Exceptional I think it's a deep-seated human desire to want to leave an impact that far out
Lasts our time on this earth
However, this whole concept of studying people's lives and trying to emulate them can be a very slippery slope
But we will come back to that a little bit later
I'm currently living in Milan right now
And this year marks?
500 years since Leonardo da Vinci was doing his thing in Italy and so I'm seeing his face and his name absolutely everywhere
And so it occurred to me it might be interesting to try his daily routine
I mean the guy was a genius clearly he was doing something right. So I think there's a good chance
I'll learn something from this whole experience but here's the thing
I was doing some research about this and it turns out his daily routine was
Ridiculous and so I'm telling you right now I'm giving this a very low probability chance of actually being successful
And I think you're gonna understand why in a second a lot of famous people throughout history have had kind of strange sleep habits
Charles Dickens was famous for
always sleeping with his head facing north because he believed that if he aligned himself with
The Earth's magnetic fields, it would boost creativity
But what Leonardo da Vinci did was a lot more extreme than that
He's well known for doing what is known as polyphasic sleep more specifically the uberman sleep cycle
Which is basically a 20-minute nap every four hours which equates to a grand total of two hours per day
Two hours of sleep per day this cannot possibly go
Well, okay the main benefits to this seem to be that first of all, you have way more time awake
Let's say for example
You live to the age of 72 and you sleep eight hours at night that would turn out to be 24 years of your life
sleeping
But if you do this boob in sleep cycle and only sleep 2 hours a day
You win back 18 of those years or 3/4 of the time
Assuming you started from the day you were born, which would not be the case
But anyway, you get the idea another one of the major benefits that I was reading about
Is that human beings seem to go through a short?
Boosted phase after sleep of productivity and creativity in focus. So in theory if you're taking six naps
Throughout the day you're maximizing the amount of time that you're in this state in theory
The Vinci is said to have done something very similar to this about 15 or 20 minutes
Every 4 hours and he did this apparently four years of his life, believe it or not
Let me be clear
There is really not a lot of research showing that polyphasic sleep is better than monophasic sleep, which is basically just sleeping at night
So do not try this at home
Or if you do do not blame me instead allow yourself to be entertained by my probable descent into hell
Without further ado. This is my best attempt at Leonardo. Da Vinci's daily routine. Oh
My god, here we go
Morning it is 10:35 a.m
I spent most of this morning so far doing boring morning stuff that nobody cares about but I am going to do some journaling now
So as many of us know the anar da da Vinci would write backwards
I think it's kind of funny that nobody really knows why he did it
Some people think it was to keep his hand clean cuz he was left-handed
Or to make it more difficult for other people to read what he was writing
Whatever the case
He wrote backwards. So I'm gonna write backwards. I am an idiot
So I had to look up how to do this because I I don't know how to do this
I'm gonna do a couple of tests and see if I can get a hang of it
She is how the passes are so difficult, okay
the first attempt
Leonardo da Vinci seems to be a huge proponent of journaling which I think is fantastic
I've spoken about how important it is for me to get my ideas out of my brain and onto paper or on to some other
Medium doing this allowed his work too far out last tip
I mean think about it if he didn't write down his thoughts then we wouldn't even know about it
I have spent like half an hour on this one damn sentence
Let's see how this looks in a mirror, but this is what it looks like
I had to use this website where I could to kind of type in my message and it would give it to me backwards
That's what I just copied down. Oh my god
It's kind of creepy actually to look back at it like this and it makes perfect sense and it looks normal ish
I'm gonna do more journaling like this
Wow if you look at another way like a journal is if I just write
Like this but this is gonna be very complicated. Oh, this is harder. Oh
Okay, that's worse. That is considerably worse. All right
So let's talk for a second about what my schedule is going to look like. My focus here is to be as productive
Creatively as possible. It seemed like art was a huge motivator for Leonardo da Vinci. So beyond my periodic naps
I'm going to be spending as much of the rest of my time as possible video editing writing reading and painting
I'm gonna pretend I'm working on masterpieces and that fart jokes. Don't still make me laugh
All right, it is time for my first nap
I'm not much of a Napper so we'll have to see how this goes. The schedule just makes me laugh
I just feel like I'm three years old again 20 minutes is super quick
I'm gonna have to learn how to fall asleep super fast to just make it happen take advantage of that time
Otherwise you just miss those 20 minutes. You know, I'm it takes me a while to fall asleep. So
There is definitely a community of people out there that do this I was doing some research on the adaptation
Period that is required to kind of incorporate this into your life and it's pretty intense
I
Was just I feel like starting to fall asleep when the alarm went off or maybe I slept for five or ten minutes
I actually feel good. It was kind of rejuvenating. Yeah, I
read that it can take weeks to fully adapt and that you have to pass through this kind of zombie phase where your
Cognitive ability is just not optimal. Okay?
I was not able to fall asleep this time
But you're still good to lie down for a bit and I guess now it's back to work
Not only that but it seems like the success of a system like this is very much based on
Being super strict and consistent with it. I'm feeling a little bit drowsy right now
So hopefully this nap will be the boost that I need to keep things going. Hi, Perry fall asleep a
Schedule that you create for yourself has to fit around
The things that are most important to you the things that you want to focus on
I mean, that's the whole point right and it's easy to get carried away by
obligations or other things people
impose on you and I think that's how many of us end up with kind of a schedule or a routine or a lifestyle that
Doesn't actually fit us
Each time I go to bed and they get back up. I'm a little bit more disoriented
It's kind of like dunking your consciousness in and out of water
I will say I am seeing the benefits of lying down for a little bit
It feels like it contributes to a bit of a boost of energy and creativity
right afterwards, but I'm a little bit afraid that this is gonna lead to
Diminishing returns. I got really hungry. So I'm eating a spinach frittata
How did we end up at this point my ability to get any meaningful work done and
More than anything stay focused has greatly decreased over the last few hours. So I'm gonna switch attacks and
I'm gonna be haen't
He's pretty well known for doing that so a few days ago I bought
some art materials and
I got a lot of time on my hands
That's what I'm gonna do now. So I wanted to paint a photo that I took once in Florence
It's not anything special really but I like it Florence is in a region of Italy called Tuscany
which is where the pitches from that's also where the Italian language is originally from although
Fun fact that accent from there. It's very strange. They don't pronounce seeds. So coca-cola is Cola
Basically with the local accent over there not like you needed to know that but I felt like sharing me and look
You're choosing to be here with me at this odd hour of the day
Let's get cracking. If you set aside how bizarre it would be to actually live like this
It was kind of cool to have all this extra time to work
Then the Sun came up and I realized it comes at a cost
When I'm really tired random stuff starts sounding a lot funnier, dude, I'll give you an example
The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering in a work of art
Leonardo da Vinci genius
With a thing for feet, I'm feeling pretty brain dead right now and just in general super scattered
Usually I have a lot of motivation to do stuff and I'm not feeling any of it right now
I figured I'd go to the supermarket
Get a few groceries get out of the apartment for a little bit my ability to speak Italian right now
Is that like a 1 point 5 out of 10? I?
Have just such a jumble of words come out of my mouth when I was at the register
Trying to pay I just feel sleep-deprived and honestly, that's exactly what's happening
I mean the the naps are not doing much who would want to live like this honestly, this is the opposite of
productive
This doesn't make any sense 15 minutes ago, I felt like crap but I threw onto mr
Bean movie and now us all of a sudden
I feel all this motivation to paint. So I'm on this sort of weird emotional rollercoaster right now, okay
He was becoming very apparent to me that I was no longer capable of any sort of high quality or deep work whatsoever
And so as a night approached once again, I decided to bring things to a close
I'm not sure what being art of them would say my man leo. Woo
In total I did this schedule for about 36 hours, you know two days
I would have liked to keep going and I think I could have kept going but at what cost?
it's been a week of so I've had some time to kind of reflect on things and I look back on those days that I
dedicated to doing this as a little bit emotionally turbulent and I read some of stuff that I wrote and it just doesn't feel like
It was written with clarity and huh?
If anything this gave me a lot of appreciation from a very boring very normal sleep cycle sleep schedule
I slept like a rock for at least 10 hours and woke up a new man. Just
Enthusiastic and positive and basically just myself again
It felt like I was able to glimpse the value that da Vinci placed on time his approach doesn't quite work for me
but I did see the power of
napping and how useful a tool it can be for if you're going through kind of a dip in energy by the way here is
Where I'm at with the painting I was working on it's not going done yet
If you want to see the final result, I might post it on Instagram
Like I said the beginning of this video I think many of us idolized
Famous or powerful people either now or from throughout history, and that's fine
I think there's a lot we can all learn from these people
but no matter how hard you try you'll just never get the same results because
Inevitably the circumstances are different the cultural context your access to resources even things like your physiology
Basically, what I'm trying to say here is that it's a beautiful thing to be curious and experiment with things but just don't force it
You know, okay, his sleep schedule doesn't work for me. But there's so many other things that we can hold on from this genius
I guess I'm advocating for cherry-picking, you know figuring out what works for you
He said learning never exhausts the mind and I've absolutely loved this mindset. I think that it's just true
I think learning things has given me so much energy
Let's not forget that the internet and everything that it has to offer didn't exist in his day. I
Think I'm happy to thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video and this channel and giving me the opportunity to do very strange
experiments like this one
I really like them as a company they offer tens of thousands of courses on a wide range of different topics and the
Skillshare originals are really really well made
there's a link in the description below to get a two month free trial to any of those classes and if you decide to go
Beyond that trial it costs less than $10 a month
There are few classes that I specifically wanted to mention that I personally enjoyed and I'll link to them down below as well
I like this class on developing skills in a pretty general sense
I feel like there's value here for literally anybody and also this class on creative writing or journaling and this one
I'm drawing if you're looking for an alternative to journaling. So yeah, consider using the link in the description below
Anyway, I'm thinking of making this into kind of like a little series
so let me know if you'd like to see more of this kind of video and
Yeah, thanks for watching. I'll see you soon