Are you busy? Well, there's one busy man who built a billion-dollar company, but the difference is that he slept for 6 times every single day.
We grow up into thinking that too much sleeping is bad. It makes us feeling exhausted, and of course, it reduces our productivity. After all, what else can you do when you're sleeping?
But Matt Mullenweg is trying to prove that wrong by not only sleeping for more than 5 times a day but also by building WordPress and Automattic, which is now valued at several million dollars in the market. If you're not familiar with WordPress, then know that more than 20% of websites you see are powered by it. That's how influential he is in both tech and the world.
Mullenweg is an advocate of polyphasic sleep or sleeping for more than once a day. A person who sleeps once a day is called a follower of monophasic sleep. On the other hand, if you take siestas in the afternoon, then you adhere to a type of polyphasic sleeping.
Polyphasic sleeping is not a new concept. People in Spain have been doing it religiously for many years. In fact, they have one of the longest lunches in the world, as workers usually spend a good amount of their time lounging, resting, and napping after their lunchtime meal.
Mullenweg also cited the fact that before people didn't sleep for straight hours at night. Rather, during the days when there was still no electricity to power lights, people slept at sundown and wake up in the middle of the night to meet with friends or even to make babies.
WordPress's founder, however, is taking the polyphasic sleep to a whole new level by following the Uberman technique, the same one followed by Tim Ferriss, the best-selling author of Four-hour Workweek. He also interviewed Mullenweg to talk about his sleeping habits.
In Uberman, Mullenweg divides his sleep into 6 times, each lasting for about 30 minutes. In between sleep is about 4 hours of being awake. The logic is that this practice helps you make the most of REM (restorative dream phase). Mullenweg, however, warns that missing even one of these naps may disturb your body clock and wreak havoc to your day.