Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

The polyphasic voyeur

If you haven't been keeping up with Polyphasic Pavlina, you may not know about polyphasic sleep. I wrote a bit about it earlier, if you want to catch up.

Well, today, I saw a post from Steve about Polyphasic Mutants, and it reminded me of an email thread Bren Connelly, Skip Angel, Lisa Haneberg, and I exchanged the other day. We somehow ended up talking about "polyphasic porn”, “sexy management”, and other things that would draw the kind of attention that Steve’s wakeful lifestyle have received to date. That conversation got me thinking.

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First, lets settle on the definition of polyphasic, courtesy of MerckSource.com: (poly·pha·sic) (pol²e-fa¢zik) having or existing in many phases. With that in mind, I will try to describe other polyphasic activities that Steve might be able to investigate for us in the future:

Outlandish Polyphasic Definitions
polyphasic management 3-4 hour blocks of micromanagement interrupted by short periods of inattention. This is in contrast to many traditional (monophasic?) management styles which utilize 3-4 hour blocks of inattention, interrupted by short periods of micromanagement.
polyphasic employment A technique that enables polyphasic sleepers to “double dip” or “triple dip” by holding 2 or 3 full time jobs at a time, and still work 40-hour weeks at each of them. If you sleep polyphasically and only have one job, you should be a doctor or a taxi driver. See “polyphasic porn.”
polyphasic porn When combined with polyphasic employment, this enables one person to run a successful 24-hour phone sex business.

OK, so it’s a little ridiculous. I am amused by how much voyeuristic interest Steve’s polyphasic experiment has drawn, particularly the people who (apparently) are trying to get him to stop. I think a lot of people are just jealous that he is able to stick with it (I know I am). Besides, he lives in Vegas - what could be more fitting in a 24-hour city?

Hats off to you, Steve - and I look forward to your next boundary-expanding experiment.

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Save your comments

Des (desparoz On The Go) has a fantastic technique for keeping track of comments you've made on blogs around the web.  It involves del.icio.us tags, and it's elegant in its simplicity.  I plan on starting to use this, as it will be simple with the "Popup post to Del.icio.us" link I've added to my browser toolbar. (see tip below)

Thanks for the great technique, Des!

** Tip:  How do you add a button for Popup posts to Del.icio.us?

  • Once you're registered and logged in to del.icio.us, you can find "Popup post to Del.icio.us" under Browser Buttons. 
  • Then, you just drag the link to your toolbar or add it to your Favorites to use it.
  • I have also created a an ActiveWords keyword called "pd" which does the same thing.
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GTD 2006.17: Unplanned Work is an oxymoron

In my day job I do a lot of work with IT organizations on best practices -- aka 'best known methods' -- and IT process improvement. I spend a lot of time working with various research bodies (such as Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, the IT Process Institute, along with other industry bodies). Our goal is to determine and evangelize repeatable ways to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness.

For a while, my fellow researchers and I have been talking about "unplanned work" as the silent killer of IT efficiency. Unplanned work is also known as "firefighting," and it usually means you're being totally reactive to what happens to you and your organization.

In a conversation with a colleague of mine a few hours ago, he told me that unplanned work was eating him alive this week. I joked that there are actually two types of unplanned work:

Type 1: This is our traditional definition of reactive firefighting in which you have to deal with urgent stuff didn't expect.

Type 2: This is work that you've consciously added to your list, but you just don't have a plan.

I asked him how much of his unplanned work was self-inflicted -- type #2.

Over the past couple of hours, my mind has drifted back to that discussion and I realized it wasn't just a joke, and it applies to our own personal productivity. When I look at days in my life that have seemed chaotic and unproductive, or taken on a life of their own, I realize that one of these two kinds of unplanned work are often at the heart of my frustration.

And my fondness for procrastination just amplifies both of these. Procrastination is particularly "effective" on Type 2, because those are the situations in which I probably don't know what the next action really is.

After pondering (wallowing?) a bit more, I realized that David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) is effective because it tries to deal with both of these issues head-on. After all, the proper use of GTD combats firefighting by helping you systematically deal with (or renegotiate) the things that "show up" in your day. GTD also combats Type 2 by providing you with a system to ensure that you don't have a bunch of ambiguous, unplanned projects or next inactions sitting there on your action lists.

What about you? Do you find yourself dealing with lots of unplanned work these days? Might be time for a refresher on the basics of Getting Things Done.

Related posts:

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What if the world slept polyphasically?

I recently followed Steve Pavlina's journey into a polyphasic sleep routine, and have found myself wondering what it'd be like if a majority of the world operated in this way. He just posted his "60 day update" on polyphasic sleep, raving about the productivity gains he's seen.

In case you haven't followed Steve's experiement, he describes polyphasic sleep this way:

"Polyphasic sleep involves taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk. A popular form of polyphasic sleep, the Uberman sleep schedule, suggests that you sleep 20-30 minutes six times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock. This means you're only sleeping 2-3 hours per day."

I have been thinking about some of the implications, were this ever to catch on across the majority of the world:

  • Would we change the length of our work days? What about the school day?
    • Maybe we could spread out the congestion of "rush hour" by having staggered shifts around the clock?
  • Would all business begin staying open 24 hours?
  • Would this create more jobs, or just create the expectation that we should do more at our current jobs?
  • Would we all consume more?
    • We'd leave our lights on a lot more (at home and at work)
    • We probably wouldn't turn down our heat at night during the winter
    • We'd probably drive more
    • We'd be awake more and eat more
  • Would the hotel and leisure industry change? How?
  • When would they play those infomercials on TV?
  • Would bars and restaurants change how they operate?
    • After all, when would it be "time for breakfast?"
  • Would we still get jet lag?
  • Would our joints and organs wear out faster because we'd make them work more?
  • Would we get sick more or less often?
  • Would the murder rate (or crime in general) go up or down?
    • If more people were awake for more of the time, and you didn't have everyone away from their neighborhoods at the same time every day, what would that do to crimes of opportunity?
  • What about the suicide rate?
  • When someone said they needed to "sleep on it" would they really be ready to answer about 15 minutes later?

And I could go on, of course. This is fun and intriguing to think about, but I don't think the majority of the world will every sleep polyphasically. A few years ago, I heard claims that the "Atkins diet" would cause all kind of negative impacts on the market for sugar, potatoes, corn, and all kinds of things like that. Of course, that didn't happen - and I think polyphasic sleep is much less of a phenomenon than Atkins was.

Sometimes, I consider doing the polyphasic sleep thing and have even discussed it with my wife. She is also intrigued by it, especially after hearing some of Steve's stories about how much more he is getting done with all of his extra time.

At the end of it, my wife usually says, "Wait until Steve's done it for about 6 months to see if he has some big problem." And then there's the fact that on cold winter mornings like this morning. As I reached over, hit snooze, retreated back into my warm, comfy bed, I decided I'll just consider it a bit longer.

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