The Uberman's Sleep Schedule

[Kerensky287]

So, the Cracked website is a font of information. Somehow I was recently led to this page, which lists a way to manage 2 hours of sleep per day, while still functioning as if you had gotten the usual amount! Madness, craziness, tell me how to do it before I cut you - those were my immediate thoughts. And then I realized that it sounds far too good to be true.

Is it?

The idea is that every few hours, you take a short nap. For the first 10 days or so, you'll apparently feel absolutely worthless... and then your brain adjusts to the weird schedule and goes straight into the most important stage of sleep when you go for your naps. I don't know much sleep science, but this didn't conflict with anything I knew of it when I read it. So I decided to research it a bit.

It's easy to find anecdotal evidence in favour of the schedule. You can find people everywhere who have tried it, and who claim it works. A bit of info that keeps popping up is that "people like Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Jefferson" (always those two, and always indicating that more famous examples are available) slept that way, though I have yet to find evidence that backs it up. The thing is, I haven't actual found any scientific studies or other research supporting the idea, and that sets off warning lights for me.

I'm very tempted to try it out - I mean, who HASN'T thought to themselves that there should really be more hours in a day? - and with the recent couple of threads touting a love or hate of sleep, I figured it was sort of a current topic. But I figure that there must really be a reason for having multiple stages of sleep, and skipping all but the most important one could mean cutting some serious corners. Has anybody stumbled on this concept before? Even better, has anyone seen any information coming from someone who really knows what they're talking about? Because this is a potentially dangerous concept, and even though success would mean the reward of having a ton of extra time during the day, I'm not sure the biological drawbacks would be worth it.

What do you guys think? Have any of you tried it? Or is there anyone who can say for sure that no, this is a terrible idea that you should stay the hell away from?