Prediction: Since you are making this significantly harder than what it needs to be most people will give up before they even do Everyman for a week. And nobody will sustain Uberman since you aren’t even committing to trying to keep it up.
Unrelated: Bay Area rationalists seem to rely a lot on arguments from authority over everything else(I don’t have any data but I just see comments like the one about Matt relatively often). I wonder if seeing awesome people that are right a lot of the time might be coming with a cost.
Since you are making this significantly harder than what it needs to be
The initial week of uberman (with extra naps) is actually a lot easier that transitioning straight to everyman 3. The point is to learn to get REM sleep with 20 minute naps without interference from a 3 hour core providing REM. By attempting a nap every 2 hours, you make failed attempts at napping less frustrating because there are more opportunities to try, and even a failed attempt can be quite refreshing (but not a sustainable replacement for sleep) if you practice mindfulness meditation. In comparison, waking from a 3 hour core when you are not getting good naps just leaves you wanting to go back to sleep.
The initial week of just napping without cores may sound more ambitious than going straight to everyman 3, but it really is an easier adaption.
I understood the rationale behind it but the question is do you have any evidence to back this up? Sounds like armchair theorizing to me. For example, when I used to do everyman I would want to go back to sleep after a nap almost as much as after the core (and quite quickly I would actually start feeling somewhat refreshed from the core). However, I wouldn’t generalize from my experience too much.
Also you are adding a no-sleep (not too much) and fasting on the 22nd but doing 12 naps a day and all kinds of stuff like that—no strict schedule for the transition from the 12 naps a day to 6 naps a day for example.Which is not necessarily counter-productive but it is at least questionable as it is unusual. And I am not even mentioning how you are giving yourself way more options to fail and other such potential drawbacks to your ‘study’.
I understood the rationale behind it but the question is do you have any evidence to back this up? Sounds like armchair theorizing to me.
You’re completely right; I don’t have solid evidence to back this up. In fact, that’s why I’m doing this. I have various anecdotes and largely irrelevant sleep studies. This is preliminary exploratory research, to see whether it’s worth my time to look into it further. It’s whatever the opposite of ‘armchair theorizing’ is.
I have actually tried this method of adapting and it worked. I don’t have a large amount of data, that is why people are organizing to keep track of it. This adaption method is based on the observation that people can adapt straight to uberman faster than they can adapt straight to everyman 3.
Then why aren’t the people doing this by going straight to Uberman? Also did you do straight to uberman or straight to 12*20mins naps—there is a decent difference between the two
There are several phases to the everyman adaptation.
1: Get tired. The body needs REM sleep a lot. Like, within days. It’s like water. This means that once you’ve spent a few days without REM, the body will try sneak it in during tiny naps. 2a: Learn to REM nap. Reason #1 why to do 12 naps/day is to give yourself twice as many chances to practice. 2b: Get tired… again? During phase 2, you’re also depriving yourself of deep sleep. Your body can last a bit longer without deep sleep, which is why this phase takes awhile. However, you want to be getting as much REM sleep as possible, so that you aren’t also REM-deprived. 3: Compressed deep sleep. Finally, when you can’t take it any longer, you give yourself several hours to sleep in the early night, when the body most wants to deep sleep.
The 12-nap method is also recommended for uberman. If you go straight into uberman, then even if you’re ultimately getting enough sleep, you probably aren’t getting extra, which means that since you started sleep deprived then you’re going to stay sleep deprived. Extra naps help overcome this.
I did exactly this back in April, and the first few nights of deep sleep (phase 3) were incredible. Here’s a photo of my Zeo showing that I had nearly a solid block of deep sleep for 2.5 hours. This isn’t desirable long-term (cycles are healthy) but it’s cool to see. Most people would get more like 1h of deep sleep in the first 3 hours of sleep, and maybe 1.5h total.
There are no double-blind studies. All evidence so far is largely anecdotal, because it’s extremely challenging to get a statistically significant number of people to do this to themselves at the same time. In addition to being painful, it’s also disruptive to everyday life for awhile. There is a myriad of statistical evidence about how sleep deprivation works, but by and large most people just report “if you don’t get X hours of sleep per night, then things suck”.
Based on many anecdotes (which are spread around in personal correspondence, forums, listservs, etc) the instructions above make sense. It is the best data available and the point of this pilot study is to build momentum towards doing a more in-depth study. But we have to start with a hypothesis, and based on the anecdotes, this is that hypothesis.
I’ve spent somewhere between 20 and 50 hours reading about polyphasic sleep, and have tried two adaptations, one with each method. My uberman adaptation using the 6nap one (with sometimes 1 extra) failed, but years later I successfully adapted to everyman using the 12nap method. So this collective experience means that I have evidence that this adaptation plan is a solid one, it’s just not easy to impart to you.
ETA: My point here is that if we insist on having evidence before we do experiments, we will not do a lot of science today.
There are no double-blind studies. All evidence so far is largely anecdotal, because it’s extremely challenging to get a statistically significant number of people to do this to themselves at the same time.
I didn’t ask for double-blind studies. I was saying that I understand the rationale behind it ( so no need to repeat it it again) but am not convinced unless there is some evidence.
There is a myriad of statistical evidence about how sleep deprivation works, but by and large most people just report “if you don’t get X hours of sleep per night, then things suck”.
How is this related? We are talking about this method versus more ‘traditional’ methods of adapting to everyman.
Based on many anecdotes (which are spread around in personal correspondence, forums, listservs, etc) the instructions above make sense. It is the best data available …
Granted, I have not been heavily involved in the related communities for the last ~5 years but I have seen significantly more people adapting everyman through the standard method of just jumping in (or jumping in and making some slight alterations at least). Fwiw, if you can provide the information that you are talking about here it would’ve sufficed to some extent as evidence (or at least data).
But we have to start with a hypothesis, and based on the anecdotes, this is that hypothesis.
You are assuming that based on the anectodes this is the optimal(ish) hypothesis but you have not provided them. If you wish I can link you (after some googling) to a lot of people who claim to have achieved everyman through more traditional methods for example.
My uberman adaptation using the 6nap one (with sometimes 1 extra) failed, but years I later successfully adapted to everyman using the 12nap method. So this collective experience means that I have evidence that this adaptation plan is a solid one, it’s just not easy to impart to you.
The biggest difference between the two attempts is that in one you were going for uberman and in the second you were going for everyman. This, I suspect makes a bigger difference than the use of 6 versus 12 naps.
ETA: My point here is that if we insist on having evidence before we do experiments, we will not do a lot of science today.
Yeah, and I’m basically done with it. The double-blind studies remark was sarcasm, which I was hoping would be apparent given the impracticality of deceiving people about whether they were doing 6 or 12 naps :P
I really don’t have the energy to respond to all of this, but I’ll point out that the main reason that you probably haven’t heard of many people doing the exaptation/naptation method in general is that it’s a recent (~2y) innovation.
ETA: To elaborate, Bayesically, the question we want to be asking is not “of the successful adapters, how many used which method?” but “of the people who attempt each method, what proportion are successful?” Not that we can hope to get an accurate answer to either by googling. What we do have is the advice of Matt Fallshaw (who has coached a number of people through successful adaptations (myself and JGWeissman included) and he recommends this method. We could ask him how many of his coachees have been successful.
There are 2 main methods of adaptation to the Everyman 3 schedule.
One of these methods, and often considered the most effective method, is attempting to do Uberman for as long as you can, then falling back on E3 when you can do Uberman no longer.
The biggest difference between the two attempts is that in one you were going for uberman and in the second you were going for everyman. This, I suspect makes a bigger difference than the use of 6 versus 12 naps.
This, and the fact that my body probably sort of remembered how to do the REM naps from last time. I accidentally suggested that the success itself was solid evidence. I don’t believe it is. What I meant to do was simply cite my own experience with this stuff (in addition to my research) which strongly suggests more naps (well-spaced) would not have any negative physiological effects, and would have a net positive psychological effect (because you really want to sleep, so it’s nice to let yourself sleep more often). Therefore a good idea.
I started out at 12 20 minute naps. This allowed more opportunities to practice napping, with less time in between forcing myself to stay awake. Once I started dreaming during naps, I reduced to strict uberman. During the transition, it was a nap every two hours at night, and every 3 or 4 hours during daylight, as needed.
I think there are strong arguments for extra naps initially. If we can get a large experimental group, it might make sense to randomly assign some to start with 12 naps and some to start with 6, to get some data about it. If this could be arranged, I would bet that 12 naps group would have an easier adaption.
I would bet that 12 naps group would have an easier adaption.
I would bet on the 6 nap group if this actually happens at some point (which I strongly doubt).
How long did it take you from the very start of taking up polyphasic to getting used to everyman?
Also have you tried the normal method (starting straight with everyman) or 6 naps from the start?
I switched to everyman 3 on the 9th night of my adaption (counting the initial sleepless night as the first night). I have only adapted once, and I don’t think it would be useful to do it again, because now I already know how to nap.
I would bet on the 6 nap group if this actually happens at some point (which I strongly doubt).
If an experiment is setup which defines a measurement of success, we should make a bet on it then.
How long did it take you from the very start of taking up polyphasic to getting used to everyman?
by this I mean how long did it take you from the first night of no sleep/naps only to being adapted to everyman and not feeling sleep deprived. Unless you are claiming that you were already adapted on the first day after the switch?
From my first day actually on everyman 3, I was getting more quality awake hours than on monophasic. I was actually doing really great initially, until I got the flu a week in, and then it took a while to reestablish the schedule. I don’t really remember the timeline very well.
From my first day actually on everyman 3, I was getting more quality awake hours than on monophasic.
I am skeptical as to whether you were immediately adjusted as opposed to feeling better because you added a lot of sleep to your prior schedule (uberman). Getting the flu (or just having flu-like symptoms) and falling out of schedule seems like further evidence for the second option
If I were in the study, I would pay to be in the 12 naps group (I realize this would be bad data wise). Sleep dep sucks, and taking extra naps can be such a relief.
So I’d bet that for both physiological and psychological reasons, the 12 naps group would be much more likely to succeed, and to enjoy it.
Of course, 12 naps means twice the opportunities to oversleep...
I’m fascinated by the idea of using extra naps during adaptation, since it is a natural response to want them, and the people I’ve known who took them deliberately didn’t find them harmful (unless they overslept, which is a definite risk if one is already exhausted). I never allowed for them myself.
Prediction: Since you are making this significantly harder than what it needs to be most people will give up before they even do Everyman for a week. And nobody will sustain Uberman since you aren’t even committing to trying to keep it up.
Unrelated: Bay Area rationalists seem to rely a lot on arguments from authority over everything else(I don’t have any data but I just see comments like the one about Matt relatively often). I wonder if seeing awesome people that are right a lot of the time might be coming with a cost.
The initial week of uberman (with extra naps) is actually a lot easier that transitioning straight to everyman 3. The point is to learn to get REM sleep with 20 minute naps without interference from a 3 hour core providing REM. By attempting a nap every 2 hours, you make failed attempts at napping less frustrating because there are more opportunities to try, and even a failed attempt can be quite refreshing (but not a sustainable replacement for sleep) if you practice mindfulness meditation. In comparison, waking from a 3 hour core when you are not getting good naps just leaves you wanting to go back to sleep.
The initial week of just napping without cores may sound more ambitious than going straight to everyman 3, but it really is an easier adaption.
I understood the rationale behind it but the question is do you have any evidence to back this up? Sounds like armchair theorizing to me. For example, when I used to do everyman I would want to go back to sleep after a nap almost as much as after the core (and quite quickly I would actually start feeling somewhat refreshed from the core). However, I wouldn’t generalize from my experience too much.
Also you are adding a no-sleep (not too much) and fasting on the 22nd but doing 12 naps a day and all kinds of stuff like that—no strict schedule for the transition from the 12 naps a day to 6 naps a day for example.Which is not necessarily counter-productive but it is at least questionable as it is unusual. And I am not even mentioning how you are giving yourself way more options to fail and other such potential drawbacks to your ‘study’.
You’re completely right; I don’t have solid evidence to back this up. In fact, that’s why I’m doing this. I have various anecdotes and largely irrelevant sleep studies. This is preliminary exploratory research, to see whether it’s worth my time to look into it further. It’s whatever the opposite of ‘armchair theorizing’ is.
I have actually tried this method of adapting and it worked. I don’t have a large amount of data, that is why people are organizing to keep track of it. This adaption method is based on the observation that people can adapt straight to uberman faster than they can adapt straight to everyman 3.
Then why aren’t the people doing this by going straight to Uberman? Also did you do straight to uberman or straight to 12*20mins naps—there is a decent difference between the two
There are several phases to the everyman adaptation.
1: Get tired. The body needs REM sleep a lot. Like, within days. It’s like water. This means that once you’ve spent a few days without REM, the body will try sneak it in during tiny naps.
2a: Learn to REM nap. Reason #1 why to do 12 naps/day is to give yourself twice as many chances to practice.
2b: Get tired… again? During phase 2, you’re also depriving yourself of deep sleep. Your body can last a bit longer without deep sleep, which is why this phase takes awhile. However, you want to be getting as much REM sleep as possible, so that you aren’t also REM-deprived.
3: Compressed deep sleep. Finally, when you can’t take it any longer, you give yourself several hours to sleep in the early night, when the body most wants to deep sleep.
The 12-nap method is also recommended for uberman. If you go straight into uberman, then even if you’re ultimately getting enough sleep, you probably aren’t getting extra, which means that since you started sleep deprived then you’re going to stay sleep deprived. Extra naps help overcome this.
I did exactly this back in April, and the first few nights of deep sleep (phase 3) were incredible. Here’s a photo of my Zeo showing that I had nearly a solid block of deep sleep for 2.5 hours. This isn’t desirable long-term (cycles are healthy) but it’s cool to see. Most people would get more like 1h of deep sleep in the first 3 hours of sleep, and maybe 1.5h total.
For more information, see this page about adaptation on Polyphasic Society.
There are no double-blind studies. All evidence so far is largely anecdotal, because it’s extremely challenging to get a statistically significant number of people to do this to themselves at the same time. In addition to being painful, it’s also disruptive to everyday life for awhile. There is a myriad of statistical evidence about how sleep deprivation works, but by and large most people just report “if you don’t get X hours of sleep per night, then things suck”.
Based on many anecdotes (which are spread around in personal correspondence, forums, listservs, etc) the instructions above make sense. It is the best data available and the point of this pilot study is to build momentum towards doing a more in-depth study. But we have to start with a hypothesis, and based on the anecdotes, this is that hypothesis.
I’ve spent somewhere between 20 and 50 hours reading about polyphasic sleep, and have tried two adaptations, one with each method. My uberman adaptation using the 6nap one (with sometimes 1 extra) failed, but years later I successfully adapted to everyman using the 12nap method. So this collective experience means that I have evidence that this adaptation plan is a solid one, it’s just not easy to impart to you.
ETA: My point here is that if we insist on having evidence before we do experiments, we will not do a lot of science today.
I didn’t ask for double-blind studies. I was saying that I understand the rationale behind it ( so no need to repeat it it again) but am not convinced unless there is some evidence.
How is this related? We are talking about this method versus more ‘traditional’ methods of adapting to everyman.
Granted, I have not been heavily involved in the related communities for the last ~5 years but I have seen significantly more people adapting everyman through the standard method of just jumping in (or jumping in and making some slight alterations at least). Fwiw, if you can provide the information that you are talking about here it would’ve sufficed to some extent as evidence (or at least data).
You are assuming that based on the anectodes this is the optimal(ish) hypothesis but you have not provided them. If you wish I can link you (after some googling) to a lot of people who claim to have achieved everyman through more traditional methods for example.
The biggest difference between the two attempts is that in one you were going for uberman and in the second you were going for everyman. This, I suspect makes a bigger difference than the use of 6 versus 12 naps.
Who exactly is insisting on that??
I’m not sure what this argument is about. I don’t think you two actually disagree on any questions of fact.
Yeah, and I’m basically done with it. The double-blind studies remark was sarcasm, which I was hoping would be apparent given the impracticality of deceiving people about whether they were doing 6 or 12 naps :P
I really don’t have the energy to respond to all of this, but I’ll point out that the main reason that you probably haven’t heard of many people doing the exaptation/naptation method in general is that it’s a recent (~2y) innovation.
ETA: To elaborate, Bayesically, the question we want to be asking is not “of the successful adapters, how many used which method?” but “of the people who attempt each method, what proportion are successful?” Not that we can hope to get an accurate answer to either by googling. What we do have is the advice of Matt Fallshaw (who has coached a number of people through successful adaptations (myself and JGWeissman included) and he recommends this method. We could ask him how many of his coachees have been successful.
And then for more on going uberman=>everyman, see this page on Polyphasic Society:
This, and the fact that my body probably sort of remembered how to do the REM naps from last time. I accidentally suggested that the success itself was solid evidence. I don’t believe it is. What I meant to do was simply cite my own experience with this stuff (in addition to my research) which strongly suggests more naps (well-spaced) would not have any negative physiological effects, and would have a net positive psychological effect (because you really want to sleep, so it’s nice to let yourself sleep more often). Therefore a good idea.
I started out at 12 20 minute naps. This allowed more opportunities to practice napping, with less time in between forcing myself to stay awake. Once I started dreaming during naps, I reduced to strict uberman. During the transition, it was a nap every two hours at night, and every 3 or 4 hours during daylight, as needed.
I think there are strong arguments for extra naps initially. If we can get a large experimental group, it might make sense to randomly assign some to start with 12 naps and some to start with 6, to get some data about it. If this could be arranged, I would bet that 12 naps group would have an easier adaption.
I would bet on the 6 nap group if this actually happens at some point (which I strongly doubt).
How long did it take you from the very start of taking up polyphasic to getting used to everyman? Also have you tried the normal method (starting straight with everyman) or 6 naps from the start?
I switched to everyman 3 on the 9th night of my adaption (counting the initial sleepless night as the first night). I have only adapted once, and I don’t think it would be useful to do it again, because now I already know how to nap.
If an experiment is setup which defines a measurement of success, we should make a bet on it then.
I’m sorry but my question was:
by this I mean how long did it take you from the first night of no sleep/naps only to being adapted to everyman and not feeling sleep deprived. Unless you are claiming that you were already adapted on the first day after the switch?
From my first day actually on everyman 3, I was getting more quality awake hours than on monophasic. I was actually doing really great initially, until I got the flu a week in, and then it took a while to reestablish the schedule. I don’t really remember the timeline very well.
I am skeptical as to whether you were immediately adjusted as opposed to feeling better because you added a lot of sleep to your prior schedule (uberman). Getting the flu (or just having flu-like symptoms) and falling out of schedule seems like further evidence for the second option
If I were in the study, I would pay to be in the 12 naps group (I realize this would be bad data wise). Sleep dep sucks, and taking extra naps can be such a relief.
So I’d bet that for both physiological and psychological reasons, the 12 naps group would be much more likely to succeed, and to enjoy it.
Of course, 12 naps means twice the opportunities to oversleep...
I’m fascinated by the idea of using extra naps during adaptation, since it is a natural response to want them, and the people I’ve known who took them deliberately didn’t find them harmful (unless they overslept, which is a definite risk if one is already exhausted). I never allowed for them myself.