Because I'm an early-riser, I was attracted to this story about polyphasic sleep, a method that involves taking spacing out your sleep time in shorter sessions. Instead of one sustained period of sleep, polyphasic sleep involves short 20- to 30-minute naps every four hours, around the clock.

It takes about a week and lots of discipline to make the transition into polyphasic sleep, according to this convert, because your body has to readjust its own "clock" so it can learn how to REM sleep immediately, rather than much later in the cycle.

Although the writer has benefited from making the switch, this approach probably won't work for the great majority of you for some very practical reasons:

• You must be slavish about the sleep schedule, meaning skipping naps or oversleeping derails the process in a hurry.
• About the only way anyone could do this would be to have a completely flexible work schedule.
• If you're dealing with serious health challenges that could worsen due to a lack of sleep like obesity, I urge you to avoid this method altogether.

In fact, getting the right amount of sleep is one of the best ways to improve your health. Learn some approaches to help you get there by reviewing my free sleep manual.

Steve Pavlina.com October 20, 2005