The Insane Sleep Schedule Tesla and Da Vinci Used to Boost Creativity

0:00 have you ever wanted to unleash your inner genius but didn't want to do any of those drastic or ridiculous things that some of history's most prominent minds may have done well then this video is not for you because today we're going to uncover the little-known and absolutely extreme daily routine nikola tesla and leonardo da vinci used to maximize their time and most importantly keep them right in that sweet spot on the line of creativity and absolutely losing their minds to insanity because it turns out there's only one letter tesla hated more than the letters d and c and that's the letter z okay enough of that you get where i'm going with this you've probably heard of these two guys when the word genius is being tossed around they're most likely to make the listicle somewhere but these two brilliant minds of history specifically

0:47 share the common ground that many of their wildest inventions were either never created or mysteriously lost to time many of which if brought to fruition would have changed the course of history and technology permanently but were there any similarities to how they lived their lives that may give us a hint to the source of their creative genius and as it turns out both nikola tesla and da vinci shared a very significant aspect of their daily routine their sleep schedules or better put their lack of sleep schedules both claiming to rarely sleep longer than two hours each day but how is that possible most of us follow what's called a monophasic sleep pattern which simply put means we have one giant six to eight hour phase throughout the day that we dedicate to sleep while the rest of the day is spent being

1:33 awake okay let's be real a lot of us toss in a glorious nap now and again where you wake up wondering what year it is so that makes us biphasic two portions of the day we spend snoozing da vinci and tesla on the other hand follow what's called a polyphasic sleep pattern which if you're following the trend here means they have many sleep periods spread periodically throughout the day there are quite a few different methods of polyphasic sleep patterns but the one that tesla and da vinci both dedicated themselves to is what made them uberman i mean wait that's what it's called but the one that tesla and da vinci both dedicated themselves to is called the uberman which is the most extreme variation of polyphasic sleep patterns instead of sleeping like we do where we dedicate one large chunk of time to

2:18 sleeping in the uberman polyphasic sleep schedule every 4 hours you're allowed 20 minutes to take a nap which gave them nearly 22 productive hours during any given day instead of our typical 16 we get with a 8 hour monophasic sleep schedule but isn't that bad for you well they didn't care because not only did it give them more hours in the day it might have also been one of the sources of their genius because here's something that all of these powerhouse names have in common isaac newton aristotle einstein and ah fine i'll mention edison they all chase this one thing to get a powerful creative boost hypnagagia which is that transitional state right between being awake and being asleep it's right when your brain starts slipping into unconsciousness

3:04 and with it provides all kinds of creative lucid thoughts dreams and even hallucinations but how would they get into a hypnagogic state remember salvador dali no well you've probably seen this painting and if you're noticing a theme here you can most likely guess what state he was in when he had the idea dali's technique for hypnagogia was to rest back in his favorite chair to nap with a large metal key pinched between his fingers right as he started to drift off into unconsciousness the key would drop to the floor snapping him back into consciousness but allowing him enough time to be lucid enough to remember the wild creative associations your brain generates while your conscious mind is powering off so now how does this relate to the ubermen well we don't know exactly why but our brain needs rem sleep in order

3:51 to function properly and when you're chronically sleep deprived your brain will get it whenever it can 20 minute nap or skipping the deep sleep and going straight to rem zoned out for a few minutes too long that's right straight to rem right away even while you're still awake your brain can start flirting with that line of being conscious and unconscious producing all kinds of hypnogagia so it seems entirely plausible that the reason these guys had an inhuman degree of creative ideation was in part because they were constantly walking around in a state that allowed them to see problems from different perspectives since different parts of the unconscious mind were fluttering around in their brains if you want to try this method out i'll warn you actually probably a good time to toss one of these up here on the screen it's a rough

4:36 process with most accounts saying that you have to stay awake for at least 48 hours before you can begin shifting to 20-minute naps every four hours but there's a much easier way to gradually becoming more of a genius that's right subscribing to this channel where you can learn something new with each and every episode that comes out and you can even drive the direction the channel takes by dropping questions you want to see answered in an upcoming video in the comments below and like always don't forget to unequivocally decimate the like button for the youtube algorithm