OxBowBusiness

Timetabling Sleep

Timetabling Sleep
I have been thinking about Polyphasic sleep According to Wikipedia: “Polyphasic sleep is a sleep pattern specification intended to reduce sleep time to 2–5 hours daily. This is achieved by spreading out sleep into short naps of around 20–45 minutes throughout the day. This is supposed to allow for more waking hours with relatively high alertness. The method uses natural human sleep mechanisms to maximize alertness when sleep time needs to be minimized.”
Now, don’t get me wrong, I like sleep. I like being in bed . I like waking up on a cold morning and reminding myself that as I am a Director of OSL, with the magic of phone diverts and email I can usually just roll over and have another couple of hours of sleep. Let someone else do the work. Surprisingly this sleep is often the most pleasurable – and I have the most lucid dreams – of all the hours I am asleep.
But what if I kept the sleeping time down and yet maximised its benefits?
Supporters of polyphasic sleep claim just that. Steve Pavlina writes in his blog that: “I’ve been delighted by the productivity boost this extra time has given me.  I’ve added much more content to the site this month than in previous months, and traffic and ad revenue are higher than ever.  In fact, I’ve been getting complaints that I’m outpacing people’s ability to keep up, which I can certainly understand. “
Now what if we could apply that to work and/or the classroom?  According to Steve, you sleep 20-30 minutes six times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock. So in the teaching day you could sleep at lunch-time and at 4pm. Perhaps also at 8 am if you came to work early. Of course the school would have to supply ‘sleep rooms’ which might be a little impractical (but independent schools being run as businesses might see it as an investment) but the benefits would be measurable because, as all teachers know, it’s a physically demanding job. Not only the stress and strain of trying to control/educate/manage a group of non-volunteers but also cope with management diktats, Government policies, parental persuasions etc.
Some of you may be old enough to remember TM or transcendental meditation which was very popular in the 1980s. That’s seemed to be a way of maximising your time, improving your health and increasing productivity – all in one go. Perhaps it works for you; perhaps you’ve never tried it.
The reason polyphasic sleep occurred to me, though, is that I have been looking at the timing of posts and emails between Duncan and myself. Duncan’s latest blog was at 4.33 am so either he is a very early riser or goes to bed very late or is a practitioner of polyphasic sleep.
Alternatively he may just consume large amounts of coffee – let’s hope he asks the right questions and gets it cheaply!  In my own case I tend to sleep at odd hours – sometimes I am up very late, occasionally all night – but then sometimes I sleep until mid-day. It all depends on what the schedule is for the next day. If I have a conference in Newcastle I’ll leave Oxford at about 1 am in order to start at 9.30 am. I then finish at about 6pm and have a sleep for about 1 hour before the long drive back. When I am writing books  - tonight I have to finish Lifestyle Plan  -  I guess that when you like what you are doing, sleep can (short-term) take a back-seat.
But then, as I said, I like sleep provided it’s sleep when I want it not when ‘it’s time for bed’. Which reminds me, I could do with a kip now before East Enders starts….
Chris Sivewright

posted by Duncan Williamson @ 5:45 PM