43 Folders

Back to Work

Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

Join us via RSS, iTunes, or at 5by5.tv.

”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Ultradian Rhythms & the 20-minute Break

I had a Psychology teacher back at New College (who's now apparently an expert in the Klingon language), who used to talk about how the human body had these ±90-minute cycles. And that if you could become aware of yours, you could do Great Things -- particularly because you could learn the optimal time to snag a nap versus, say, try to cure small-cell carcinoma.

Not sure if this is exactly what he was talking about, but I am certainly fascinated by the idea of ultradian rhythms:

Ultradians are the regular recurrence in cycles of less than 24 hours from one stated point to another, as certain biologic activities which occur at such intervals, regardless of conditions of illumination.

Commonly used in sleep research to describe individual stages of sleep that occur within intervals of an organism's circadian rhythm, and especially to refer to the 4-hour ultradian cycle.

A guy named Rossi appears to be the mainstream gorilla in this field, especially as it pertains to "healing" (or, to put it less fancily, rest and renewal). He wrote a book called The 20 Minute Break and has a site where I found this overview/interview:

The basic idea is that every hour and a half or so you need to take a rest break - if you don't you may be well on your way to the Ultradian Stress Syndrome: you get tired and lose your mental focus, you tend to make mistakes, get irritable and have accidents - If you continue to ignore your need to take a break you can experience more and more stress until you actually get sick.

When you learn how to recognize your need to take a 20 minute break you can convert your stress into what I call The Ultradian Healing Response - Its that wonderful feeling of comfort and well being that you naturally have when you are tired but let yourself have the freedom to take well deserved rest.

Just learned about this stuff last night, so, no, I haven't read much more than what I'm posting here yet. Thing is, I recently started taking 20-minute naps every day (with the assistance of the most excellent Pzizz), and the effects so far have been profound. So I'm especially interested in whether there's a connection here. What do you guys say?

What's the deal with ultradians? Is there anything to this? Does this jibe with your experience? Prof. Schoen, are you out there?

chron's picture

This does work. It's shown...

This does work. It's shown in a different light by Steve Pavlina's experiment with polyphasic sleep, which I tried. It does work, but you have to be rather rigid about it, and most (including me) cannot adhere to it with the typical daytime (or nighttime, for that matter) job.

 
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

Popular
Today

Popular
Classics

An Oblique Strategy:
Honor thy error as a hidden intention


STAY IN THE LOOP:

Subscribe with Google Reader

Subscribe on Netvibes

Add to Technorati Favorites

Subscribe on Pageflakes

Add RSS feed

The Podcast Feed

Cranking

Merlin used to crank. He’s not cranking any more.

This is an essay about family, priorities, and Shakey’s Pizza, and it’s probably the best thing he’s written. »

Scared Shitless

Merlin’s scared. You’re scared. Everybody is scared.

This is the video of Merlin’s keynote at Webstock 2011. The one where he cried. You should watch it. »