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 I have been hacking my sleep to achieve the optimum sleeping period. Two months back when I started this experiment, I was sleeping almost 9 hrs per day. Today I am spending only 6.5 hrs per day on sleep. The gain of 2.5 hours per day is very big. It started with reducing from 9 hours to 7.5 hours. It was tough, specially during the afternoon. Initially I had to take a quick nap (20 minutes) at my desk after lunch. Another change I made w.r.t to my sleeping is to have fixed timings. Before I used to sleep anytime between 9pm-2am and get up anytime between 7am-9am. Now it is more fixed. Now I sleep strictly at 12am and wake up by 6am. My body is so used to it that I don’t need wake up alarms. The standard side effects of reduced sleep are loss of weight, irritation, low concentration etc. As of now I don’t see any side effects (or I don’t know). In fact my other experiment of “Put on weight” is also giving positive results :) The ultimate plan is to reduce the sleep duration to 6 hours. But I am still not sure if my body can take it. I am planning to go with 6.5 hours for six more months and then take my next step. Additional Reading:
6 Comments posted on "Hacking sleep two months later"
Vinay on April 13th, 2009 at 2:54 PM #
 I too am starting off this weekend. I want to try that Uberman’s sleep schedule.
Thejesh GN on April 13th, 2009 at 3:03 PM #
 Good luck with that.  very true. Once your body is used to the sleeping timings, you do not need to force it too sleep/wake-up. In my case, the timings are mostly around 12~12:30 at night to 7 in the morning.
Rahul Viswanath on April 15th, 2009 at 11:18 AM #
 Hopped in after long ….. Need some good sleep as well !!
Thejesh GN on April 15th, 2009 at 2:18 PM #
@Rahul Viswanath : Yup, Quality than Quantity.
Jayadeep Purushothaman on April 16th, 2009 at 4:45 PM #
 Sorry Thej, as I mentioned earlier sleep is not what you need to hack at, it is what you do during the day that you need to hack and remove unnecessary clutter in it. I wouldn’t want you to regret it later(not in 2 or 3 months, but after several years) when you have physical and more importantly psychological problems due to this hacking at the hours you sleep – so quit this experiment right now, you will be just fine without those extra hours. This is an unnatural local sub-optimization that doesn’t look at the whole picture – body needs rest and sleeping is the most natural way to do it. Sorry if I am sounding a bit harsh, but the intent is very very noble Thej. Post a comment
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But then my body got used to it. A month & half later I took another giant step and reduced the duration to 6.5 hours. Again I went through the same cycle which involved similar noon naps. As of today, my sleep duration is only 6.5hrs per day *with out* any noon naps.
