2005-10-16

Maximizing wakefulness and minimizing sleep during Ramadan

During this holy month, your regular sleeping schedule has been changed completely with night becoming awake time.

Well no worries, you can try polyphasic sleep. What this means is that rather than having an extended 8 hour night time sleep, you divide your sleep into 30 minute naps 6 times a day at regular intervals.

People that need to stay awake do polyphasic sleep such as sailors, astronauts, boat racers, inventors, etc.

Quite a few famous people did it also such as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Napoleon, and Winston Churchill. This method was also popularized on Seinfeld, where the character Cosmo Kramer attempted to adapt to a polyphasic sleeping pattern.

During Ramadan I do not have my sleep neatly divided for polyphasic sleep but I am sleeping 3 times a day rather than the full 8 hour stretch and it is working out very well, with lots of help from my friend Mr. Coffee. How are you sleeping?

More about polyphasic sleep from Wikipedia and Kuro5hin.

4 comments:

  1. You brought up the comment that was right on my mind, cuz its 9.30 and I just woke up from my nap. Since Ramadan started I have been sleeping at 2 and waking up at 8-9. No sleeping in between. I was so happy and proud of myself, because I hate nomat ilthehur. But since yesterday I have been sleeping after f6or for 2 hours. :(
    Pray for me I get it back to normal.

    That polyphasic sleep sounds abnormal. A person will feel sleepy all day long like that, since a person should get more than 4hours of good quality sleep at a time. And waking up and sleeping 6 times a day sounds like bad quality to me.

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  2. Well polyphasic might not be right for everyone but it seems to work when you need more time during the week (or month) like during study, crunch time in a project, or even vacations where you want to enjoy every moment.

    Ramadan mixes up our sleep schedule so instead of sleeping for 3 hours at night and going for work the next day, distributing your sleep might be better or if you want to be really disciplined try polyphase sleep. Just an idea and sweet dreams :-)

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  3. Mc : you should see my library at home

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  4. Ok, this ide sounds good but it is hard to be done. You.know you have to get used to it after a long time and not just like that.

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