Getting Shit Done Like a Mongoose Lemur
How I Manage with Nearly 20 Hours of Sleep Every Day
I spend approximately 19 hours lying in a bed every day, 18.8 of those asleep. Granted, not all at once, as I break up my 18.8 hours of sleep into distinct units called lemurs. I’ll explain that in a bit. First, some history.
I recently happened to read an article by entrepreneur Andrew Torba (“Torba”), a social media guy who explains how he gets a lot of shit done with only 4-6 hours of sleep each day. He in turn had read an article about a Russian project manager guy (“the Russian guy”) who gets 4.5 hours of sleep each day. This works out, Torba explained, “to earning . . . an extra two months worth of awake time every year.” Why? Because, like this:
life is too short and exciting to spend 8-10 hours of a 24 hour day laying in a bed. Every second that I spend sleeping is a second that someone somewhere around the world is working to put me out of business.
When I read both articles I couldn’t help but laugh. These guys slog away—awake, mind you!— a solid three months more out of the year than me. Every year— for at least the last five years! That’s more than 365 days of extra awake time, during which they have kicked my ass in business. While they’ve been producing and accomplishing actual things, I’ve been sleeping. They’ve been answering email, tweeting, posting on Facebook, working out, writing, interviewing, and managing stuff. I’ve been wearing a CPAP.
Let me put it this way: I’m awake a total of 91 days out of the year. The rest of that time— 274 days— I’m asleep, with nearly a day of extra sleep during leap years. Do I manage? Hell, yeah. I manage like a fucking mongoose lemur. Let me explain.
You see, Torba et al., are traditional diurnalists, demonstrating an active pattern of awake time each day. Most of you reading this are also practicing diurnalists, as is the Russian guy. The Russian guy, though, considers himself a polyphasic sleeper: unlike the common monophasic sleeper like you, he sleeps 3.5 or so hours every night, supplemented with three 20-minute naps throughout the day. That’s how the Russian guy gets his shit done.
Torba, on the other hand, is a biphasic dude, sleeping for a solid block of 4 t0 5 hours in the morning, supplemented by a 1-2 hour “power nap” after his workday. And that’s how Torba gets his shit done.
Me? Unlike traditional diurnalists, I operate cathemerally. That is, I’m active sporadically both day and night, randomly almost. I’m neither a diurnalist nor a crepusculant, nor specifically matutinal, vespertine, or even bimodal. In a word, I’m like a mongoose lemur, a strepsirrhine cathemeral primate that happens to sleep up to 20 hours a day. Which is why I call my workstyle “Getting Shit Done Like a Mongoose Lemur.”
Confused? Here’s how it breaks down. Keep in mind, though, that my sleep patterns change almost every single day. That is, while one day I may return voice mails at 1:00 am, the next day I may be asleep at 1:00 am. Or 5:00 am. Or 3:00 pm. How do I get shit done? Easily. I don’t have high expectations, nor do I really want to accomplish a whole lot. With this lifestyle, it helps to ratchet back business expectations and to assume some other diurnalist will kick your ass and ultimately bury you in awakeness. C’est la vie.
But a single day could look like this, each specific sleep period broken down into units called lemurs:
5:00 am to 7:30 am —Sleep
7:30 am to 8:15 am — Dinner, daily constitutional, check weather
8:15 am to 10:30 am— Sleep, sunning
10:30 am to 11:30 am — Downtime
11:30 am to 1:30 pm— Sleep
1:30 pm to 2:00 pm— Breakfast, listen to voice mail, read, downtime
2:00 pm to 5:30 pm— Sleep
5:30 pm to 6:00 pm— Write
6:00 pm to 8:30 pm—Sleep
8:30 pm to 9:00 pm—Lunch, email, car maintenance, bathing
9:00 pm to 2:30 am—Sleep
2:30 am to 3:30 am—Grocery shopping, play with kids
3:30 am to 4:00 am—Downtime, laundry, write
4:00 am to 5:30 am—Sleep
I’m not saying a cathemeral workstyle like mine will work for everyone or even more than two or three other people, nor could it be healthy. But to date I have yet to run across any study linking cathemerality to lockjaw, scurvy, hookworm, or any bovine spongiform diseases. So I’ll continue sleeping 19+ hours every day and getting shit done like a mongoose lemur. That’s why, right now, I gotta go.
