Перевод "Polyphasic Sleep: The Return to Monophasic"

Polyphasic Sleep: The Return to Monophasic

After doing polyphasic sleep for about 5-1/2 months, I finally decided to switch back to monophasic. I made the decision about 10 days ago and have already returned to Bearsville. I went back to my previous pattern of being an early riser. So now I sleep about 6.5 hours a night and wake up with an alarm at 5am every morning.

Why the return to monophasic sleep?

First off, this definitely wasn’t a clear-cut decision either way. I could just as easily have kept going. As previously noted in my extensive log entries, there were many things I really liked about polyphasic sleep. Obviously the extra waking time was great. But there are some drawbacks to polyphasic sleep that ultimately led me to decide to discontinue this pattern. The drawbacks should be easy to understand even if you don’t try it personally, so I don’t think any of these will surprise you.

First off, let me say that I didn’t decide to stop for health reasons. To my recollection I didn’t get sick even once while sleeping polyphasically, not even a cold. My energy and alertness were excellent once I made it through the adaptation period. A lot of people asked me about weight training and exercise — I didn’t have any problems there either. My recovery after workouts was just fine. Perhaps the post-workout nap had a positive effect.

I also didn’t decide to stop because of the general weirdness of polyphasic sleep. It took me many weeks to psychologically adapt to this pattern of sleeping, but I did eventually adapt. It gave me a whole new perspective on the passage of time. I saw time as passing continuously rather than being chunked into individual days. That was such an interesting experience.

The #1 reason I decided to call it quits is simply that the rest of the world is monophasic. If most of the world was polyphasic, I probably would have stuck with it. Obviously when you go polyphasic, you fall out of sync with the way other people live. You’re awake most of the night while everyone is asleep. If you sleep like most people, then the hours you’ll gain from polyphasic sleep will come in the middle of the night. And as I gradually learned, nighttime hours are not the same as daytime hours when you live in a monophasic world.