Index

Sleep is wonderful, but there is so much else (jitsu, Mandarin, student politics, investing, writing code, drawing, my research, reading, dancing, thinking, writing fiction, writing for my website, etc.) and it's all so wonderful too, so sleeping's actually quite a low priority for me. A bit like house cleaning actually - it has to be done, but I don't want to spend more time on it than I have to. That's the goal then: To sleep as little as is sustainably possible.

This might sound absurd, like it's not worth the effort. What would you really gain by going from 8 hours sleep a night to 6? It's only 2 hours difference, and it sounds like a lot of work! But the maths is convincing. Sleeping 6 hours a night instead of 8 equates to 730 more conscious hours a year. Which is 30 full 24-hour days awake, and if you take off the 8 hours you used to spend sleeping and the 3-4+ hours you spend every day cooking, cleaning, picking up groceries, all the fixed costs of life, then those 730 hours work out to be more than 60 days. It might not sound like much, but cutting 2 hours of sleep means you get 14 months every single year, and whether you use it for work or play, that's worth having!

Now, come September, some friends and I are going to try polyphasic sleep in a serious, concerted and quite scientific fashion. For now I'm just playing around and working out how to sustainably sleep as little as possible while not cramping my social life or affecting anything else in a negative way. I'm not perfect, but this relatively unordered list of bullets seems to work pretty well when I keep to it:

• Get up early. Define early as you like. For a while I got up at 6, now I find deadlines keeping me up till 1 so I don't rise till 7:30 or 8. But that's me being stupid, so do as I say and not as I do. The easiest way to get up early is to:
• Get up at the same time every day. Or at least set an alarm and wake up. It's all about making it a habit, so that you naturally come to wakefulness at the same time every day, almost regardless of when you went to sleep. This has the added advantage of waking up feeling fresh and energised, not groggy and drained.
• Exercise. It's true. If you exercise more you'll sleep better, and need less of it. You'll also be healthier, fitter and better looking. It's win-win-win-win-win.
• Micro-nap. Sleeping less isn't just about staying awake for longer - it's about having more usable time. Whether you're trying to sleep less or not, a nap can be a wonderful thing if you find yourself drained and unproductive in the afternoon. It's important not to nap for too long though, grogginess is yuck (and a time waster). I like micro-naps so I set the count down timer for 3-5 minutes on my mobile and just lie down, relax, meditate, and chill out. More than 15 doesn't seem to help, and I don't have the discipline to meditate for longer than that yet, and to be honest even 3 minutes can be incredibly refreshing!
• Meditate. Nothing fancy, but relaxing in a focused way helps me so much - it makes the naps more restorative (never any grogginess, even if it's not a micro-nap but a mini-nap), and it helps me get to sleep faster. Which after all is the point - to minimise the time in bed. Minimising the time sleeping is no good if you spend all that saved time trying to get to sleep. Savasana is really helpful.
• Sugar. Caffeine is a horrible habit. This definitely means ditching coffee. I have a feeling it also means ditching soft drinks and normal tea, or at least making them a less regular part of your life. It's probably just a good idea in general to take alcohol in moderation. If you're feeling tired and need to something to perk you up then sugar is easily the best. It is exactly what your body needs (glucose), can be easily carried in a pocket, and comes in a variety of shapes, forms and flavours. It's the convenient picker-upper.1)
• The sleeping habit. You'll sleep as much as you let yourself. So don't let yourself. Pretty soon you'll be out of the habit of needing so much sleep. Six or seven years ago I went out with a girl who “needed” 10 or 12 hours of sleep a night, and several naps during the day. I get at an extra month each year. She loses several.

That's it, that's all I've got from my own personal experience so far, but it's helped and I definitely intend to keep pushing it. An 18 month year anyone?