This is something I have heard references to before. It has always fascinated me, although it has never occured to me that I could use the internet to learn more about it:
Polyphasic Sleep is a technique for changing your sleep pattern into a series of short snoozes every 4 hours, instead of the normal continuous sleep of 8 hours or so every night. The benefits are supposedly a compressed sleep cycle of only 2-5 hours a day, as well as a feeling of higher alertness. According to the followers of this technique, the brain will, after a difficult adjustment period, use these short naps for pure REM sleep, which does the brain a world of good. And just think of how much longer your life will be if every waking day is a couple of hours longer.
The technique has apparently been used by several inventors and brainy people such as Tesla, Edison and daVinci. I’m sure it has been used by a few idiots as well. My problem with this is that I think life is basically a long boring wait until you die and your worries are finally over. Who wants to be awake more than necessary? Not me.
Should you however be in the lucky position of working with something that actually makes your career seem worthwhile, this may be worth looking into. Also see the 28 hour day.
More info: Kuro5hin, UberSleep.com and Polyphasic Sleep.
Discovered through Cynical-C Blog