Scenario: you have a month in which to do an amount of work which isn’t actually humanly possible. Finish a book, write the next Facebook, whatever. So you need a way to cut down on sleep as much as possible during that month while leaving you as functional as possible.

Caffeine doesn’t immediately have an effect on your nervous system. It takes from 15-25 minutes to actually work. Also, caffeine’s half-life is about five hours in a healthy adult.

Which brings me to Tesla with caffeine naps. It goes like this:

1. Take a dose of caffeine (how much would vary by individual tolerance, but I’m guessing about 100mg would do it (about the amount in one cup of drip coffee).

2. Sleep until the caffeine takes effect. Quite often the caffeine will wake you up on its own – if not, set an alarm as well. It will definitely make waking up a lot easier.

3. Do stuff for the next five hours and forty minutes.

4. Repeat until your task is done.

I’m not making any claims about this working long-term. After a point the caffeine would just stop working at the present dose. But in the short-medium term, from 2-6 weeks, I’m thinking it would be effective. Caffeine definitely makes the early stages of adaption to Tesla a lot less painful (but it makes the rest more painful, so don’t try it with ordinary Tesla).

So next time I’m faced with a huge task and only a month in which to do it, this will be my pattern of choice – and of course I’ll write here about how it works out for me.

Questions/opinions/’you’re insane’ comments welcome. :)

So I give you the Tesla pattern. Because a) Tesla’s awesome and b) Tesla’s one of the few people known to sleep almost as little as we polyphasers.

Some info on the pattern here.