Genius Nikola Tesla Never Slept More Than 2 Hours A Day

Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com – We keep hearing from experts how important it is to get enough sleep. Sleep plays an important role in our physical health. Sleep is vital for learning and memory, and lack of sleep can lead to serious health problems.

Yet, some of the world’s most brilliant minds had very odd sleep routines and rarely slept at all. One of them was genius Nikola Tesla who never slept more than two hours a day!

Born on the night of 9/10 of July, 1856 in the Croatian village of Smiljan, a village near Gospic Lika, (the Krajina, a military district of Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in the Republic of Croatia), Nikola Tesla was in many ways a genius ahead of his times.

Tesla died in 1943 as a poor man in a small New York City hotel room, but his remarkable inventions changed the face of the planet in ways that perhaps no man ever has.

Without Tesla, our world would be a very different place. Tesla had a thirst for knowledge and to him, sleep was a waste of time. When he was a young boy he used to spend hours reading instead of sleeping. In his book, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla, author John J. O’Neil describes how Tesla as a young boy did everything he could to avoid sleeping.

“By plugging the keyhole and the chinks around his door, he was able to spend the night hours reading volumes purloined from his father’s bookshelves. Frequently, he said, he would read throughout the entire night, and feel none the worse for the loss of sleep. Eventual discovery, however, brought paternal discipline of a vigorous nature. He was about 11 years old at this time.”

Professors at the university warned Tesla’s father that the young scholar’s working and sleeping habits were killing him, but there was nothing anyone could do.
Tesla followed a polyphasic sleep schedule. Polyphasic sleep refers to sleeping multiple times – usually more than two. Each of these is in contrast to monophasic sleep which is one period of sleep over 24 hours.

According to the Polyphasic Society, humans who polyphasically improve sleep density, sleep stability and decrease overall time asleep.

People often adapt  a polyphasic sleeping schedule because they have a schedule that leaves them unable to sleep continuously. Sometimes, they may wish to extend the amount of hours in the day where they can be productive. However, there is not a lot of research into any long term effects that these alternative sleeping schedules could have and there are many risks involved with not getting enough sleep including, an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack, and stroke, which may apply to people who choose to adopt these schedules.

Tesla spent only five hours resting, and two of those hours were dedicated to actual sleep.

He could memorize entire books and store logarithmic tables in his brain. He had a talent for languages, and he could work all day.

See also:

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American inventor, Thomas Edison, and Leonardo da Vinci are both said to have adopted a polyphasic sleep cycle.

Sleep researcher Claudio Stampi writes in his 1992 book, Why We Nap that da Vinci followed a secret sleep formula.

“One of his secrets, or so it has been claimed, was a unique sleep formula: he would sleep 15 minutes out of every four hours, for a daily total of only 1.5 hours of sleep. Therefore, it appears he was able to gain an extra six productive hours a day. By following this unique regimen, he ‘gained’ an additional 20 years of productivity during his 67 years of life.”

Napoleon Bonaparte was known for frequent nap taking, Napoleon supposedly slept in 2 hour chunks at night, with a 30 minute nap in the afternoon, even during battle.

Thomas Jefferson, an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809 regularly woke with the sun, but also stayed up late, frequently working late into the night. He usually slept between 4-6 hours daily.

There are many people who have managed to live long and healthy relying only on just a few hours of sleep daily, but this doesn’t mean it’s a healthy lifestyle that works well for the rest of us.

Written by Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com Writer

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