After a couple days of experimenting with the nap-when-tired, approach I’ve started following a kind of mixture between the Everyman and Uberman cycles, which I have lovingly coined, “Uveryman.” Every other night or so, I sleep for 1.5 – 3 hours while also sticking to the regular Uberman naps every 4 hours. Sometimes the nightly core sleep gets split up into two 1.5 hour blocks. It all depends on how I feel.
Uveryman doesn’t yield the same insane amount of free time that Uberman does, because I currently end up totaling 4-5 hours of sleep per day, but it is much more manageable. I have flexibility to skip or delay naps, or add naps as I see fit. I’m taking short naps all the time, which I find relaxing and meditative.
I can’t give any more accurate a picture of what exactly the Uveryman schedule entails as I am still experimenting with it, but so far, it seems to be a happy medium between the healthy sanity of monophasic and the vampiric kick-ass-ness of Uberman.
For me, polyphasic sleep is becoming less about acquiring ludicrous amounts of free time, and more about finding a schedule that provides frequent breaks and avoids the daily disorientation and discomfort of stumbling out of bed after a long night’s hibernation.