This page documents my experience with polyphasic sleep. In all forms of polyphasic sleep, you take several naps during the day rather than sleep in one large block at night.
The two most popular forms of polyphasic sleep are the Uberman and Everyman schedules.
Following the Uberman schedule, one only sleeps 20 minutes every 4 hours. The few people who have been both crazy enough to try it, and determined enough to survive the 7-14 day transition period, report feeling as good as, or even better than they did when following a normal sleep pattern. In one theory, one who successfully follows the schedule, learns to click in and out of REM sleep while cutting the less necessary phases of sleep. Another theory is that you still hit every phase of sleep, but condense them down into a more efficient nap.
The Everyman schedule adds a core sleep at night that is typically 1.5 or 3 hours long. You then take 3-4 20 minute naps during the day. The Everyman schedule is more flexible than the Uberman, but involves more time asleep.
I unsuccessfully attempted to transition to uberman for the first time during December of 2008. I documented the attempt and the somewhat amusing results can be found here.
This blog has several entries related to my attempted transitions to the uberman schedule–some trials were more successful than others.
Virtually no scientific research has gone into study of the health implications of polyphasic sleep, and most people tend to think that it isn’t too great of an idea.
The best example of I’ve found of someone successfully following Uberman can be found in this blog