Year 6 of Biphasic Sleep, ~4000 hours saved total. The purpose of this article is to talk about when we stopped doing our 6 hour night sleep, and when we got back to it. If you want to see how to start Biphasic Sleep, click here.
It should be no surprise that people expect to lose sleep and be tired upon the birth of a new baby. With Biphasic Sleep, we don’t lose out on sleep, instead we spend a total of ~7.5 hours trying to sleep. We easily hit the 6 hours we need for full energy.
The classic way we do Biphasic Sleep is a 6 hour night time sleep and a 20 minute nap during the day.
I may set my alarm for 6 hours and 15 minutes if I don’t feel tired, allowing a few minutes to fall asleep and get 4 REM Cycles. I may set my 20 minute nap alarm for 25 minutes if I’m not tired, or 30 minutes if I’m in an uncomfortable spot(like a car). However , I typically I set my 20 minute nap alarm for 20 minutes. Surprisingly, even ~5 minutes of sleep hits the spot.
There is a break-in period when you go from any sleep schedule to a new one, approx. 3 weeks. Do your best, sleeping-in happens.
Upon having a kid, we typically set our alarm for 7.5 hours of sleep at night. The idea being, when the baby woke up in the middle of the night, we would still get 6 hours of sleep. We continued taking our 20 minute nap(no interruptions on that in the last 6 years).
This went according to plan. Some nights when the baby didn’t wake up we slept all 7.5 hours.
The kid is now sleeping through the night, so it’s time to get back to saving time sleeping with 6 hours of sleep and 20 minute nap.
This has the break in period as mentioned above, but it took only 1 week to feel high energy all day.
Some tips, have some motivation to wake up and not hit snooze. This could be coffee, this could be a video games. I gave up these things to save time and money, so it was especially hard. Some other ideas, starting work early so you can finish early, food, exercise(with an interesting audiobook), a shower, urinating, or my most reliable:
Get your legs off the bed and onto the floor. That somehow takes over the brains desire to go back to sleep.
Regardless, even a week of attempting this will get you in the routine, making it easy to wake up after 6 hours despite the first week of struggle.
Staying up until Midnight gives us 4 hours while the kids are asleep. I spend 3 hours of this on productivity and 1 hour with my wife which is also productive in a different way.
I get up at 6am, giving me the chance to read, be productive, or start work early.
After an interview with BBC got me to get ridiculed for ‘cleaning’, let me give you something more appealing to the masses: You can spend time watching TV. (I’ll suggest nonfiction TV since that is somewhat productive.)
Personally I don’t clean, I read books and work on projects. In my weakest moments I’ll watch nonfiction Youtube, and typically related to the subject of a project.
I highly recommend Biphasic Sleep. Just survive those first few weeks of transition, it gets much easier.