Make Your Game Twice as Fast with Polyphasic (Uberman) Sleep
by Noah Dyer · 03/27/2006 (2:12 pm) · 7 comments
If you're like me, you wish you had more time to work on your game. If you're lucky you can work at it 8 hours a day, but most of us probably only get a couple hours a day, or maybe as little as the occasional weekend. Polyphasic sleep is a sleep schedule that allows you to be awake for 22 hours a day with the same or better functioning than sleeping for 6-10 hours at night like most of us do. For most people that's an extra 5 hours a day or so. So take a few of those extra hours and allocate them for your project, then use the rest to play other people's games that you never get around too ;) After reading up on the topic I decided to give it a try, and so far it is going great! You can find out more about what polyphasic sleep is, see how it's affected me so far, and keep up to date on my progress by visiting my blog at www.noahdyer.com.
#2
03/27/2006 (4:34 pm)
@Jason- Thanks for the well wishes. Interesting read. While the author argues that there is research that shows that polyphasic sleep is suboptimal at best, he doesn't provide any links or references to academic research on the subject. So I won't be relying on this any more than the subjective positive reports in blogsand other sources. The link to free running sleep has more of the trappings of academia (graphs and jargon), but still lacks references. I'll post that link on my blog so that visitors can get the other side of the story. Maybe I'll make a whole blog out of arguing the contrary view. Fortunately for me, I will be able to decide with personal experience. If it feels natural I'll keep doing it. If it is a struggle I'll stop.
#3
03/27/2006 (4:35 pm)
Personally, I practice polyphasic awake. This allows me to sleep for 22 hours a day. It's very relaxing.
#4
03/27/2006 (4:53 pm)
Never heard of it. This style of sleeping might go well if your single. Im married and I can tell you that losing an hour or more on the computer a night is bad enough, but to tell her I wont be sleeping with her would be suicide (for my computer). I like my gadgets, so Ill stick to normal sleeping. ;)
#5
One note: Most of your blog mentions non-brain intensive activities, such as exercise, movies, and gamming. I wonder how effective you would be performing game development tasks such as coding, creative art design, or designing elegant solutions to complex game related problems.
The reason I mention that is I've found when I run into a complex problem, I almost always have the answer after 7 hours of restful sleep. Who knows, ought to be interesting to read about your first "crash"! :)
03/27/2006 (9:06 pm)
Very unusual idea you have there, blog was interesting though, so good luck with your experiment!One note: Most of your blog mentions non-brain intensive activities, such as exercise, movies, and gamming. I wonder how effective you would be performing game development tasks such as coding, creative art design, or designing elegant solutions to complex game related problems.
The reason I mention that is I've found when I run into a complex problem, I almost always have the answer after 7 hours of restful sleep. Who knows, ought to be interesting to read about your first "crash"! :)
#6
@John- I'm married so I share your concern about the relationship effect. Just offer to set aside one of your new hours for a honey do list ;)
@Brandon- This week I am intentionally doing non-brain intensive activities. I am never effective at designing elegent solutions to complex problems, but as of right now I can assure you I would be even worse ;) If I can't program with the new found hours, I'd abandon the experiment as a failure. Hopefully you won't have the pleasure of reading about a crash, but I wouldn't put it past me.
03/27/2006 (10:19 pm)
@Mark- lol.@John- I'm married so I share your concern about the relationship effect. Just offer to set aside one of your new hours for a honey do list ;)
@Brandon- This week I am intentionally doing non-brain intensive activities. I am never effective at designing elegent solutions to complex problems, but as of right now I can assure you I would be even worse ;) If I can't program with the new found hours, I'd abandon the experiment as a failure. Hopefully you won't have the pleasure of reading about a crash, but I wouldn't put it past me.
#7
you can read about his experiment and log that he wrote here:
www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/02/polyphasic-sleep-20/
03/28/2006 (2:46 am)
this guy (a famous game designer) has been runing it for more then 4-5 months and reported that it's his way of living now and that he would not change back to the old way:you can read about his experiment and log that he wrote here:
www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/02/polyphasic-sleep-20/
Torque Owner Jason McIntosh