Can I Change This Later?

I’ve been thinking about an idea for a hybrid somewhere between the Uberman schedule (the specific polyphasic schedule I’ve been trying) and regular monophasic sleep.  As I was easing into polyphasic sleeping, I was taking two naps during the day and then sleeping for a modest chunk of the night.  I remember that didn’t feel too bad.

I’m picturing a core sleep from midnight to 4:30am with naps at 8:00am and noon.  The 4pm and 8pm naps are the ones that I’m the most likely to stay awake through right now anyway.  And from midnight to 4:30 I seem to have a great deal of difficulty staying awake. 

I think this alternate schedule would give a little more flexibility.  If social stuff was happening, I think I could stay up past midnight and shift my sleep a little later without being blown out the next day.  It gives me a wide chunk of time to naturally be awake from 12:30pm to midnight every day, which seems ideally suited for social engagements, even when traveling out of town.  (And truthfully, I think I’d have a little more flexibility on when those naps occurred.  If 9am and 2pm were the times sleep was available, I expect that would work since I would have stored up some energy from my core sleep.)

It still gives me the advantage of “stealing” a few extra hours out of the day in the early morning when the rest of the world is snoozing.  I’d be sleeping 5.5 hours a day and should get 5-6 REM cycles.  (6 being the target of the Uberman schedule, and 5 being what I think I got on a monophasic schedule.)   The only question is if my body would be smart enough to jump to REM sleep for the short daytime naps when I was sleeping for a longer period each night.  I think it might, based on what’s been happening over the past few weeks.

Since I’d still be getting up and going to work by 5:30, I’d still be leaving for the day at 3 (which I really like).

I think I could adapt to this pretty easily, since it’s very close to what I’m doing now.  If it does work, than I would be getting some of the best elements of polyphasic and monophasic sleep.