Sometimes, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get through everything you have
planned.
If you’re the type of person that likes every day to be hyper-productive, or you simply
have too much on your plate at once, then maybe you could afford to lose some sleep.
Sleeping replenishes energy though, so you do it anyway, even if it does seriously cut
down your work time.
But what if you could only spend two hours a day sleeping, leaving much more time to
get through those important tasks?
Is such a thing even possible?
Today, we’re taking a look at the Uberman sleep cycle, and how you can use this technique
to sleep for as little as an insane two hours per day.
Most scientists agree that we need an average of between seven and nine hours a night.
Maybe you get less than this, and that’s okay; every person’s sleep requirements
are different.
In fact, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health, on average most adults
get much less than seven hours of sleep per night; that’s just the minimum that most
people need to function.
This isn’t to say that getting seven or even six hours a night is a recipe for maximum
productivity.
Getting that exact amount of sleep every single night is likely to lead to serious sleep deprivation.
If you’re someone who can usually get by on fewer hours of sleep, then perhaps the
Uberman sleep cycle might be for you.
After all, imagine what you could get done with an extra four to six hours of extra time
spent awake!
So, how does it work?
Named after Friedrich Nietzche's concept of the ‘Ubermensch’ – or superman – the
Uberman Sleep Schedule is pretty simple to follow, in theory.
It consists of taking a series of six naps throughout the day, each one lasting only
twenty minutes, which adds up to two hours of sleep a day.
Sounds pretty easy, right?
And if you were to follow this regime and consistently only have two hours of sleep,
you could even end up adding around twenty years-worth of time spent awake to your lifetime!
Well, before you jump straight into the Uberman lifestyle, there’s a few things you should
consider first.
For starters, no-one has ever been able to successfully keep to this particular sleeping
schedule without help.
If you live alone, or far away from any of your family and friends, then you may find
the Uberman sleep cycle a little more challenging.
This is because one of the recommendations for those starting out with this technique
is to make use of a human alarm clock.
What’s a human alarm clock?
Well, as the name suggests, this involves relying on someone else to wake you up instead
of just setting a series of alarms on your phone or computer.
This might sound like a bit of a strange favour to ask someone to do for you, but believe
it or not this was actually a full-time profession.
In the time before the Industrial Revolution and the invention of actual, reliable alarm
clocks, human alarm clocks – or knocker-ups as they were known at the time – would wake
up their clients by knocking on their doors first thing in the morning, or use a long
stick with a light on one end if their client lived above the ground floor in order to reach
the windows.
A knocker-up wouldn’t leave until they were certain that their client was awake, and while
they might not have been their client’s favourite people for forcing them out of bed,
they were certainly effective – as human beings don’t have snooze buttons.
Some who have successfully maintained the Uberman sleep schedule attribute this to using
friends or family as rudimentary, modern-day human alarm clocks, who they entrust with
the job of making sure their naps are kept strictly to twenty minutes.
Of course, this means you’d need whoever you asked to be your human alarm clock to
be one hundred percent reliable, and they’d need to be someone who is present to wake
you.
The last thing you want is to ask your friend who lives across town and can easily get stuck
in traffic, leaving you to oversleep.
But surely it doesn’t matter if you oversleep one of your Uberman naps?
You can just knock the extra minutes off of the next one, or have your entire two hours
sleep all at once, right?
Wrong!
Another important factor to remember when putting yourself though this short-burst sleep
routine is that these naps aren’t just guidelines, they’re a strict, regimented pattern of
sleep that you’re going to need to stick with if you want those extra hours of productivity.
The traditional form of the Uberman schedule consists of taking six naps a day.
This should be spread throughout each day of your week at equidistant intervals, meaning
they have to be evenly spaced out, last the same amount of time, with an equal-length
period of ‘awakeness’ between each nap.
If you are planning to stick with the twenty-minute-long nap model, you’d need to have twenty minutes
of sleep, six times per day, meaning that you’ll need to take a nap once every four
hours.
Alternatively, if you wanted to try the eight-nap schedule – giving you a total of two hours
and forty minutes of sleep per day – you would still need to keep your naps to twenty
minutes in length, but take them every three hours.
So, those are the basic how-to’s of the Uberman sleep schedule.
But is it worth it?
What are the potential health risks of following a regiment like this, and is it even a practical
routine to follow?
Scientists have researched the potential risks of the Uberman sleep cycle, as well as other
similar patterns of sleep, and they definitely pose the risk of serious sleep deprivation.
This isn’t just a case of feeling a little tired, in some cases extreme sleep deprivation
can have similar effects to drinking too much alcohol.
Someone suffering from sleep deprivation may exhibit symptoms such as slurred speech, or
nystagmus, which are uncontrollable movements of the eye.
Some may experience tremors in their hands, or find their eyelids becoming heavy and drooping
more than normal.
In addition, if you suffer from epilepsy, sleep deprivation can cause you to be at greater
risk of experiencing severe seizures.
However, you might get lucky and find that the Uberman schedule works for you, and doesn’t
lead to severe sleep deprivation.
Some of those who adhere to this routine – appropriately known as ‘Ubermen’ – have reported that
they feel more energetic, and obviously that comes in handy with having so much extra time
to get things done in.
However, there is something else that’s worth remembering: if you’re thinking of
taking up the Uberman sleep schedule, you may be looking into the benefits and risks,
trying to find out the pros and cons of this method.
During your searches, you may find that scientists haven’t found much in the way of long-term
health risks for those who follow this technique.
Great, so it must be safe, right?
We hate to burst your bubble, but this isn’t quite the case.
The reason scientists haven’t been able to gather much information on the Uberman
schedule’s long-term effects is simply because people don’t usually stick to it for long
enough.
Most fast-paced modern-day lifestyles don’t allow enough time for you to stop to have
an uninterrupted twenty-minute nap every four hours.
Imagine you were at work: Most people are at work from nine o’clock in the morning
to five o’clock in the evening.
If you’re at work for this long every weekday, then that’s eight hours, with maybe a half
hour break for lunch in between if you’re lucky.
This daily structure makes it incredibly difficult to take twenty-minute Uberman naps during
a time when you are supposed to be working, and there probably aren’t many bosses who
would be happy if they came across you napping at your desk.
With that being said, if your job involves a lot of working from home – like, say,
a freelance artist, or a writer for The Infographics Show – then maybe you’d be able to balance
your sleeping more evenly with your work.
So, with all that in mind, taking into account the potential side effects of the Uberman
schedule and assessing how compatible it is with your particular lifestyle, it’s time
to get yourself ready.
You may think that a new sleep pattern is something you could just start tomorrow, but
jumping from one sleep schedule to a dramatically different one is going to be quite a shock
to the system.
Your body first needs to acclimate, and you begin this process by spending between twenty-four
and thirty-six hours awake.
This might seem excessive even to someone looking to stay awake for longer, but what
you’re actually waiting for is that second wind: The sudden increase in energy you get
after being awake for so long.
When this happens, you then have to start taking naps every one and a half to two hours.
This process, ironically, doesn’t prepare you overnight and you won’t be ready to
start abiding by the Uberman schedule just yet.
You may find that your preparation lasts two to four days, until you are having regular
REM naps, or until you find that you’re no longer feeling sleep-deprived.
Hang on, REM?
What’s that?
REM stands for rapid eye movement, which is a phase of sleep wherein – as the name suggests
– your eyes move at rapid speeds under your eyelids in various directions.
Human beings tend to enter REM sleep within the first ninety minutes of sleep, but if
you are entering this phase during your preparatory naps, then you’re ready to move on to the
next stage of adapting to the Uberman sleep cycle.
This stage is more akin to fully practicing the Uberman schedule; start taking naps every
three or four hours regularly.
Do this on the hour, at the very dot, at whichever pattern suits you best.
You can, of course, skip the first stage of this adaptation, but you will run the risk
of entering what’s known as ‘zombie mode’.
No, you won’t exactly start craving brains, but you might suffer a temporary impairment
to your cognitive functions.
Making sure you begin with the first stage will help alleviate some of these symptoms,
and it is also worth remembering that an eight-nap schedule will potentially be less harsh on
your brain than a six-nap schedule.
After zombie mode, keep up this cycle of napping as your sleep cycles begin to repartition.
It can take between three weeks to a month to fully adapt to the Uberman schedule, after
which point your body will continually keep adapting to this new pattern of sleep, but
you should be able to encourage this the more you keep to it.
It will take a while for your old sleeping habits to subside, but as an Uberman you should
start to feel alert and energised for around twenty-two hours each day.
This won’t be the same for everyone though, but this is only because – as we mentioned
earlier – everyone’s sleeping habits and cycles are different, so don’t feel bad
if your Uberman friends are taking to this new pattern of sleep a lot quicker than you
are.
Remember, only about five per cent of people in the world feel able to get by on a six-hour
night of sleep, so if you find yourself taking a little longer to adapt to the Uberman way
of sleeping, then don’t fret!
You may be working against years of ingrained sleeping habits, so if at first you find you’re
having a lot of issues with this new method of short, regular naps, it might be worth
reconsidering if the Uberman sleep schedule is really right for you.
Protracted sleep deprivation has also been linked to higher blood pressure and neurological
conditions like dementia later in life, so perhaps for most people it’s just not worth
the risk.
After all, you’ll probably just spend the extra hours watching videos from The Infographics
Show, anyway.
Now for more sleep hacks go check out “How To Lucid Dream in Your Sleep In 3 Minutes”
or ‘What If You Stopped Sleeping?”