Polyphasic sleeping and the 24-hour Entrepreneur
I just thought of this yesterday and had to get it down (get down! uh!) –
Anyway, think about this: If you were on the Uberman schedule, you could run a small store 24-hours-a-day with ease. Especially if you could live in or near the store.
If need be, in the beginning you could do it all yourself. Yes, it’d be easier if someone could help you for even just a couple hours here and there, so you could run errands and shower and whatnot, but a lot of small business owners have to do it all by themselves, or with sporadic help from friends and family, for a while anyway. Having your sleep requirements cut to six 20-minute naps would make you basically a 24-hour management machine.
(This goes without saying, but just in case you’re not versed in business tactics, you’d absolutely have to be running an establishment that did something you were interested in!)
When you had the money, you could hire someone to work 4-6 hours every morning or afternoon and take half of every day off. (Or if you ran a comics shop, coffee house, or something like that, and nighttime was your busy time, you could hire the help for then. Or just hire help for the time you least like to work.)
When you had enough cash-flow for a full staff, if you wanted to, you could simply reserve the “dead shift” for yourself, and use it to do accounting and store maintenance. Now, when most managers are working double shifts — one to work a shift and one to maintain the store–you can double up by taking the least-popular shift for yourself, and do it without having to sacrifice the rest of your time to sleep.
Seriously. Most entrepreneurs I know–even online ones–feel like all they can do, at least for a while, is work and sleep. And most entrepreneurs who aren’t open for business 24 hours, at least 6 days a week, wish they could be.
Being open 24 hours is a serious benefit to any small business, if you can do it. Even if it’s odd for businesses of your type to be open all night, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get all of the business that’s available during those hours, and that’s worth a pretty significant chunk of change over time. Plus, you get to optimize your own hours.
Yup, as someone with a lot of small businesses in my family, I can see right away where this would be a *huge* advantage. Taking your naps would require a little finesse at times, but not much, I bet. “Being the boss” counts for a lot, as is shown by my own situation (I’m not the boss, but I’m close enough and it makes a big difference in my ability to sleep as I like). Like, if you have to, you can hang up a “closed” sign for half an hour, or ask a trusted customer to watch people while you snozz.
Hey, if anybody thinks of other cool uses for polyphasic sleep, they should, y’know, poke me with them. ‘Cuz I deserve it. Right? Right.
Now. It’s my first wedding anniversary today, so if you don’t mind, I’m off to dinner and nookie. ;)
17 devoted students of Roshi accepted this page in 0.258 seconds without moving, or saying a word.
Yeah I’ve thought about this before. The nookie that is. I want to hear more about it.
I kid of course, polyphasic sleep is a great advantage to many things, the only disadvantage I can think of is that you could burn out. I’ve got a part time job as well as my full time course at University, plus administrative duties on a few websites and I can cope with polyphasic sleep fine, but I don’t know for how long that will be. I certainly couldn’t imagine running a store 24/7, and I don’t know if there’s anything that I enjoy enough to allow myself to do that for such a long period of time, I’d probably end up going insane.
Good luck to whoever manages it though.
Dear Pure Doxyk-
I’m a New York journalist writing about polyphasic sleep. I’d love to talk to you Please email me at:
hailey@bust.com
thanks,
hailey
Man, I really don’t read this blog enough.
I ♥ your entries though, and whenever I remember to read it I like the stuff! :)
I couldn’t find an email address (didn’t search too hard either, though) so I’m commenting to say this.
Aw, thanks! Always nice to hear that this isn’t quite as much a waste of time as it feels like in my guiltier moments. ;)
(Email addy’s in the little “About the Author” blurb, if you need it.)
Happy Anniversary! It’s my 10th next week.
I came to this site in such a round about way. I was looking for info on napping, but found polyphasic info (had heard about it a few years ago).
My schedule only lets me get five hours sleep at night, and a two hour nap when the baby (22 months) goes down for one herself. I’ve been doing this for over a year, and it’s killing me. So reading your site has given me an idea.
I’m going to try switching to the “everyman” schedule this weekend. Well… maybe I better wait till after my anniversary ;)
ps - for another “wierd” thing, I do alternate day fasting. Meaning, I eat like a pig Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, then on my “off” days, I eat have one meal 20 hours after my last bit of food from the previous day. At 35, I am able to now easily mantain a 6% bodyfat level, and I’m muscular enough to be on the cover of men’s fitness. I recommend this diet plan to anyone crazy enough to maintain it.
pps - do you still talk to your friend from college who also did the polyphasic sleep? Does she currently practice any form of polyphasic sleep?