Yes, I'm polyphasic

It's true, I am indeed polyphasic.

Oh my god, what is that?! Is it contagious?!

No - it's a mode of sleeping. Or a sleep hack, if you prefer. It involves having multiple naps of short duration during the 24 hour clock cycle. I hadn't really thought about this until a couple of people emailed to ask if I was polyphasic or just didn't sleep at all, and I realised that for a large chunk of my adult life I've been following what is essentially a polyphasic sleep cycle. Especially after my doctor pointed out a while back that if I was having trouble sleeping the 8 hour cycle, I should just go ahead and grab short naps whenever I felt tired. So I've now returned to the polyphasic mode. This means I'm awake, alert and functional for approx 20 hours a day, which means to some people I appear to be online 24/7!

If you're interested, there's plenty of resources out there (wikipedia for a start) but broadly speaking these seem to be the main sleep modes:

Monophasic: One long core sleep of approx 6-8 hours, usually at night. This is probably what most of you do.

Biphasic: A shorter core sleep, usually at night, with a shorter nap sometime during the day.

Polyphasic: Multiple short naps at regular intervals throughout the day. Polyphasic also breaks down to these modes:

• Equiphasic (aka Uberman): which involves a 15-30 minute nap every 4 hours and no core sleep. if you don't think this is workable, or sustainable long term, I would urge you to read Steve Pavlina's Polyphasic Sleep Log. It makes for fascinating and eye opening reading.
• Non-equiphasic (aka Everyman): which involves a core nap of 3-4 hours + 2-4 naps of 15-30 minutes throughout the day.
• Dymaxion: a 15-30 minute nap every 6 hours. This was popular with Buckminster Fuller, but seems unworkable by most mortals.

From about 1989 I've been mostly Non-equiphasic, although I wasn't actually aware that's what it was called. I would simply sleep 4 hours and grab a short nap during the day/evening whenever I was sleepy. When I don't follow this pattern, my sleep goes to shit and everything goes out of whack (including my health.)

It's important to note that this kind of sleep mode requires some biological adaptation and certainly isn't workable by everybody, especially if you work a 8-4/9-5 office job - the naps need to be taken at regular intervals. But for me, it works like a charm.

I also now know why I've never suffered jet lag - when you're napping regularly, there's no such thing as jet lag!

So now you know.