Uberman

Uberman is a nap-only schedule, composed of 6 20-minute naps placed equidistantly through the day. Uberman is the most widely known form of polyphasic sleep, with its appeal being the large amount of extra time it provides. For this reason, it is also one of the most widely attempted schedules by many first-time polyphasers. However, the adaptation success for this schedule is few and far between, with virtually all attempts at the schedule ending in failure, since it does not meet the minimum sleep need for the majority of people.

History

This schedule is invented and named by Marie Staver (Puredoxyk) and her buddy Psuke Briah in 1999, drawing inspiration from a TIME article about Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion sleep. It was first revealed in a post on everything2.com in 2000. (https://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule)

Puredoxyk stayed on the schedule for 6 months in 2000 and she was not able to re-adapt to it later.

Steve Pavlina adapted to the schedule in 2005, and stayed on it for 5 months.

Difficulty

Both Steve Pavlina’s blogs and Puredoxyk’s book Ubersleep greatly understated the schedule’s difficulty. Puredoxyk adapted to the schedule in times of extreme stress at university, and was unable to adapt to it again afterwards. Nevertheless, people tend to overestimate their chances of succeeding. There has been no detailed accounts of someone adapting to the schedule in more recent times. You may see many logs of people attempting this schedule, but most of them ends in just a few days, presumably because the author overslept and gave up. Those failures are often used to discredit polyphasic sleep altogether, without ever considering more reasonable schedules.