Do you consider sleep to be a holy, critical, much-anticipated nightly ritual that extends nearly to the afternoon on holidays? Well, da Vinci or Tesla considered that to be wasted time. Well apparently, the two stuck to a sleep schedule that’s so strict, you simply may get exhausted just thinking about it. You may thank me later if you liked it.

Dear Sleepy Cats

There’s nothing wrong in stating that sleep is critical. Sleep deprivation causes you to eat quite a lot, causes you to act quite a drunken fool, kills your ability to hunt out, and literally eats your brain. While sleep is critical for countless reasons, nobody ever said you’d wish to do it all up in one sitting — er, one laying?

While napping stations are all the craze in trendy millennial workspaces (naps work, people!), mid-day periods of sleep aren’t a replacement concept within the smallest amount. In fact, it had been common for people within the pre-Industrial age to interrupt up their night’s sleep into segments: “first sleep” and “second sleep.” But, as legend has it, sort of history’s greatest thinkers took that a step further.

Not Ecstasy or Caffeine overdose yet!

Apparently, Leonardo and Tesla stuck to an almost impossibly strenuous sleep cycle. While the pre-Industrial segmented sleepers had a biphasic routine (i.e hitting the pillow twice during a day), Both practised the foremost intense example of polyphasic sleeping (bedtime quite 3 times during a day). Their routine of choice, allegedly? Well, that’s “The Uberman cycle”.

This cycle consists of taking five to six 20-minute naps, equally or evenly distributed, throughout your day as a daily routine. According to the Polyphasic Society, you’ll adjust the system in a way to fit your needs. For da Vinci’s possible adoption of this practice, Claudio Stampi writes in his 1992 book, “Why We Nap“: “One of his secrets, approximately it has been claimed, was a singular sleep formula: he would sleep quarter-hour out of every 4 hours, for a daily total of only 45 minutes of sleep. Therefore, it appears that he was able to gain further six productive hours daily. By following this unique regimen, he ‘gained’ an extra 20 years of productivity during his 67 years of life.”

Tesla allegedly never slept for even two hours a day, believe it or not. But, please, never decide to mimic it. This might be the ticket that drove him to a mental breakdown at age 25. “Professors at the university warned Tesla’s father that the young scholar’s working and sleeping habits were killing him,” reports Smithsonian magazine.

The reason why people may submit themselves to this odd sleeping hours habit and shortened napping shifts is obvious: longer means — ideally — more productivity. A 1989 study published in Work & Stress found that polyphasic sleep strategies improve prolonged sustained performance. So, not only you got longer to undertake to what you’ve to undertaken to before, but you may even recover results once you are done with that work. Just do me a favour, and do not attain Tesla-like extremes with it.
Perhaps the most famous mention of polyphasic sleep is in “The 4-Hour Body” by Timothy Ferriss (also on Kindle), who talks about it and a wide variety of other body hacks that can help you make the most of your 24 hours.