Why did Leonardo Da Vinci only sleep for 2 hours a day?
Leonardo Da Vinci is mainly known for his art, but he was more than just a painter.
Da Vinci defined what it meant to be a genius. Having spent most of his lifetime in engineering, he conceptually invented parachutes, helicopters, machine guns, armored tanks, and diving suits.
Extraordinary minds such as Leonardo’s tend to have a quirky lifestyle choices behind them — and Da Vinci’s bizarre lifestyle choice was how he slept.
Da Vinci slept for a total of two hours per day, in which he took 20 minute naps roughly every 4 hours, known as the Uberman cycle.
If you’ve read even a chapter of Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, you’re probably thinking:
“This is ridiculous! 2 hours of sleep? That’s irreversible damage to your body and mind on an unimaginable scale…”
And you’re right, it probably is, so don’t try this (sleep cycle) at home.
It’s likely that Da Vinci had a mutation in the gene DEC2, which allows some people to be able to function with less sleep.
Going back to the Uberman sleep cycle, let’s look at the benefits of it:
Get more stuff done
This is really the only benefit to it, and it is a huge benefit.
Less sleeping time = more awake time, and following the Uberman sleep cycle would give the average person an extra 20 years of being awake over their lifetime.
That’s 20 more years of time for you to do what you want, but for the average millenial that would probably be useless for their own time, and financially, considering that simply deleting Netflix could make up for 13 years of their life, and splashing out less on overpriced lattes and avocado toast could help build savings for a deposit on a house — but that’s a rant for a different time.
For Leonardo, he used the time to maximise his creativity, genius, and exemplary invention skills by using science to elevate art, having a substantial influence on the world we live in today.
Leonardo Da Vinci is credited with designing the first flight machine, the first humanoid robot, and so much more that highly influenced the world we live in today — maybe an Uberman sleeping cycle isn’t that bad of an idea after all.
