Tuesday, January 4, 2011

You Snooze, You Lose

I've been reading up on polyphasic sleep, after stumbling upon a blogger who tried it for a year and not surprisingly reverted back to monophasic sleep after his experimentation phase.

The idea of multiple naps instead of one massive giant snooze sounds appealing. The idea of more waking hours in a day sounds very appealing. Going through the process of waking up 4-6 times a day does not however. I hate alarm clocks as it is.


Plus, ascribing to a different sleep schedule than the everybody else has its difficulties. I would imagine 6 naps a day would make it difficult to be successful both professionally and personally. Bosses and friends just wouldn't understand. Plus, once you gained a sustained concentration on any one task it'd constantly be broken by naptime, not allowing you to really focus or accomplish anything meaningful. I think I remember seeing a newscast once that a well-rested person should take 15 minutes to fall asleep once his or her head hits the pillow; otherwise you're sleep-deprived. So if you took that 15 minutes 6 times a day you'd spend all your time trying to sleep instead of actually sleeping. No thanks.

In my ideal world, I'd be a biphasic sleeper. Hello, mid-day siesta! Sometimes I think I ought to have been born Hispanic. Unfortunately the United States has not caught on to the glorious Spanish nap-time after lunch. I have to say, the time I spent in Spain were some of the most rejuvenating months of my life. Among a few other lifestyle differences, I would say sufficient sleep had a big part to do with that.

Right now, I love Sundays--because no Sunday is complete without a little nappy nap to get me ready for a week of being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

2 comments:

  1. I would agree with you, Sunday naps are wonderful! It seems that Sunday naps are "okay" to do compared to a nap during the week.

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  2. Yeah, Sunday naps are socially acceptable here. You don't have to feel guilty if you doze in the middle of the day. But sleeping at 2 in the afternoon on a Monday through Friday is definitely not acceptable by American standards. Our lifestyles don't really allow for it.

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