Sleep. We are doin it wrong. In possibly the least efficient way possible.. and in doing so, it’s robbing us of our true power and potential. But how is this? Why is this? Has this been by molevelant design? Possibly.. Or is it just a cruel twist of fate? Perhaps.. But whatever the reason, If you truly want to max out your potential, you are going to need to make some adjustments..
What did people like Nikola Tesla, Leonardo Da Vinci have in common? Well, for one, they got a lot more done in their lives than anyone in today’s modern society could possibly dream of… But how did they accomplish this? how can we accomplish this? It didn’t come from wasting a night getting a solid 8 hours of sleep through till morning. They did this through segmenting their sleep… and the power of naps. Many naps for that matter. That, and much less sleep as a whole.
As it turns out, the more often you rest, the less total time you need to spend recovering from being awake, that and the more mentally and physically refreshed you stay during the day. Less total hours spent recovering in sleep equals more time awake being productive, and staying constantly refreshed means you are always on your game.
What if rather then sleeping 8 hours a day and having 16h awake to live your life, you could add a couple extra hours to your day, how much more could you accomplish? What if you were never tired and always refreshed? what if, rather than having 16 waking hours in a day you had say 18? 20? even 22 hours? This is the ultimate time/productivity hack, allowing you the extra time you need to work on mastering your life and accomplishing your dreams. It’s not easy in today’s society, it breaks all the rules when it comes to sleep, but it could change your life.
“The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.” ― Aleister Crowley
So that being said, before we begin, and before we can learn to become super natural in our sleep and productivity, lets get back to our natural patterns and cycles and learn the rules. Since the dawn of time we’ve had natural cycles ingrained in our bodies, ones we have been forced out of, but remnants of this are still evident when examined closely. Maybe you are one of the many that regularly wakes in the night for a mid night snack? or perhaps lays down for a mid day siesta, an afternoon nap? do you get tired around 7pm? or perhaps get a second wind around 11pm? Why do we feel so compelled to do these things? Because this is our ancestors calling to us. it’s in our blood.. And we have been forced into an unnatural life that is only holding us back from our true potential.
Around the time of the industrial revolution something happened to our natural sleep patterns… We began forcing ourselves into unnatural behaviour. Both historical as well as clinical evidence tells us, we are designed to rise and fall with the sun, this much is evident, however it seems we are also meant to have a waking period for a couple hours after dark (when we would typically get that second wind), and also at least one napping period mid day. With the advent the 9-5 job/ school system, we lost our mid day rest, and then with the emergence of electric lighting our natural circadian rhythm began to get very confused, keeping us up later at night.
I’ve put together this rough chart demonstrating an example of a more natural cycle. This is our baseline. Once we master our natural state, from here we can begin to optimize. For more information on how I determined this baseline cycle click here.
I will write more on sleep cycles later on but until then more info can be found:
https://www.livescience.com/12891-natural-sleep.html
https://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/07/13/alternative-sleep-cycles-7-10-hours-is-not-needed/
https://www.mattressnerd.com/polyphasic-sleep/
https://www.mattressnerd.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/
https://www.mattressnerd.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/monophasic/
https://www.mattressnerd.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/segmented-sleep/
https://www.mattressnerd.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/siesta/