Uberman

From Polyphasic Sleep

The Uberman Sleep Schedule (AKA "Uberman's sleep schedule" ^[1][2]) is an equihexaphasic polyphasic sleep schedule that consists of six naps of about 20 minutes each (possibly as little as 15 minutes after sufficient adaptation, and possibly as much as 30 minutes, depending on the individual). These six naps are spaced evenly throughout the day -- i.e., every four hours.

The term "Uberman" was coined by Puredoxyk and first appeared on the Web in her post to everything2.com. PureDoxyK reports having pursued this schedule with a partner, after which she recruited a group of friends into the practice. However, it's unclear whether they called it "Uberman" at the time (1998-99) or whether she came up with the term afterward; the everything2 post was made in December 2000, some time after a full-time job had forced her to end the practice.

To date, probably the most well-known successful practitioner of Uberman as such (i.e., using the term "Uberman") was on-line self-help guru Steve Pavlina, who stayed on the schedule for 5-1/2 months in 2005-6. Probably the most well-known failure with the practice under any name (in this case, "da Vinci") is entirely fictional: Kramer, on the sitcom Seinfeld, in the 1996 episode, The Friar's Club. ^[3]

The first laboratory studies of this sort of schedule predated the PureDoxyK account, and were conducted by Claudio Stampi, who used Francesco Jost as a test subject. The experiments allowed 15 minute naps in the first study, and 30 minute naps in a second one. In his reporting on the sleep architectures induced by these schedules, Stampi noted that overall ratios of times spent in various sleep stages were roughly the same as for monophasic sleep, even though individual naps had a distinctly different architecture from that seen in ordinary sleep.^[4]

The first significant anecdotal report of this sort of equihexaphasic schedule was from Giancarlo Sbragia, decades before Stampi's experiments. Sbragia wrote that he had 15-minute naps after full adjustment. Although both Stampi and Sbragia name the pattern after Leonardo da Vinci, even Stampi admits (in Why We Nap) that there is no known foundation for the frequent claim that da Vinci used this sort of schedule.

References

1. ↑ "Uberman's Sleep Schedule" on Wikipedia
2. ↑ "Polyphasic Sleep" on Wikipedia
3. ↑ In the episode, Kramer describes the schedule as 20 minutes every three hours, so strictly speaking, he wasn't attempting Uberman.
4. ↑ "Contrary to usual findings from sleep reduction studies, in which only part of REM and stage 2, but not SWS total amounts, are lost, in the Stampi et al. (1990a) and Stampi and Davis (1991) studies all sleep stages were proportionately reduced. That is, sleep-stage percentages were remarkably similar to baseline monophasic sleep . . . . it appears that the organization of sleep within a nap under polyphasic schedules is quite different from that occurring in monophasic nocturnal sleep. Naps are indeed "not miniatures of the normal 8-h sleep pattern" (Weitzman et al., 1974), and only rarely are they replicas of the first part of a normal nightly uninterrupted sleep. For example, REM sleep onset episodes are quite frequent during polyphasic schedules, and it is interesting to note that REM sleep and SWS appear to be mutually exclusive under such conditions." Why We Nap, p.172