It is believed that Leonardo da Vinci was polyphasic, to the extent that he slept for only 15 minutes every 4 hours, which adds up to only 1.5 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. That left him with 22.5 hours a day to do his great work!
Da Vinci slept for 20 minutes every 4 hours, for 2 hours a day. He had a structured diet rich in water, fiber, and vegetables and low in fat, sugar, and salt. He combined his sleep schedule with habits like journaling, self-affirmation, and athleticism.
Leonardo da Vinci's sleep schedule included 20-minute naps every four hours. Da Vinci followed an extreme form of a polyphasic sleep schedule called the Uberman sleep cycle, which consists of 20-minute naps every four hours.
Leonardo da Vinci dissected bodies at night, by candlelight, drawing with a piece of cloth covering his mouth and nose, a world away from the comfortable surroundings associated with his portrait paintings. Leonardo was the first to draw a three-dimensional, depiction of the parts of the dissected body.
Probably because of his abundance of diverse interests, da Vinci failed to complete a significant number of his paintings and projects. He spent a great deal of time immersing himself in nature, testing scientific laws, dissecting bodies (human and animal) and thinking and writing about his observations.
Riding, walking and swimming were da Vinci's favourite sports. In his book, Gelb advocates taking the 'mirror test' – standing before a full-length mirror (the very brave can do so naked!), noticing things about your appearance without judgement or focusing on 'looks'.
Another genius who utilized napping during the day was Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci created what is called the polyphasic sleep process, or, the Da Vinci Sleep Schedule. This process entails 20-minute power naps throughout an entire 24-hour period. This results in about 5 hours of sleep every 24 hours.
Leonardo da Vinci, who functioned on two hours of sleep a day while painting the Mona Lisa, followed a form of polyphasic sleep schedule called the Uberman sleep cycle, which involves 20-minute naps every four hours.
Da Vinci, famed painter and theorist, is estimated to have had IQ scores ranging from 180 to 220, according to parade.com.
Other great achievers, inventors, and thinkers – such as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sir Isaac Newton – are said to have slept between two and four hours per day.
Elon Musk says he's upped his sleep to 6 hours per night—and that his old routine hurt his brain. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks with CNBC on May 16th, 2023.
Productivity begins even before the start of the workday. High achievers don't sleep in. Nearly 50 percent of the self-made millionaires begin their days at least 3 hours before the start of their workday.
Leonardo da Vinci's hobbies were varied. He enjoyed observing nature to try to figure out the answers to questions such as how birds were able to fly. Leonardo dissected animals and participated in the dissection of human cadavers to learn about anatomy. He completed experiments, such as those involving fluids.
Leonardo grew up on his father's family's estate, where he was treated as a “legitimate” son and received the usual elementary education of the day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Leonardo never married, but he had many close relationships with other artists and intellectuals as well as with his assistants.
Leonardo da Vinci was famous for his designs, art, cartography, geology, and studies. Leonardo's designs later helped us to invent things like the tank, parachute, helicopter and many other things. He was also a very talented artist. Most of his pictures and paintings are in art galleries and museums.
For da Vinci's possible adoption of this practice, Claudio Stampi writes in his 1992 book, "Why We Nap": "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.
Similarly to Margaret Thatcher and especially during the war years, Winston Churchill would only sleep for four to five hours a night. However, in contrast to Thatcher, he would catch up on sleep in the afternoons with a 90 minute nap.
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.
Inventor Nikola Tesla never slept for more than two hours a day. Tesla got more out of the day with his limited sleep schedule. Like Da Vinci, Telsa also followed the Uberman sleep cycle and claimed to never sleep for more than two hours a day and reportedly once worked for 84 hours in a lab without any rest or sleep.
The prolific inventor Thomas Edison slept three or four hours at night, regarding sleep as a waste of time, "a heritage from our cave days." President Clinton grabs five to six hours.
What Counts as a Power Nap? Some experts say the power nap should be even shorter — 20 minutes max. But all agree it shouldn't exceed 30 minutes. That's because the body enters a deep sleep around that time, and waking up from a deep sleep can lead to grogginess, according to the Sleep Foundation.
Medical diagnosis
Most authors agreed that da Vinci suffered a right hand paralysis caused by a stroke,3,5 although the hand shown in Figure 1 does not depict the typical clenched hand seen in post-stroke muscular spasticity.
Because of his varied talents he is often viewed as the personification of the term “Renaissance man.” In light of this exalted status, it may be surprising to learn that da Vinci struggled with procrastination.
While he didn't have a superhuman mind or access to formal education, he nurtured the qualities he did have, and they led him to develop his unique genius. Those qualities were: 1) A universal curiosity that he channeled into observation and experimentation.