I Tried Da Vinci's (Insane) Daily Routine: Here's What Happened

I think it's great to study the lives of very successful people throughout history. I don't think it's something unique on my part. In fact, it seems like a very common thing for us to try to understand

what

made you meet exceptional people. Exceptional. I think it's a deep-seated human desire to want to leave such a lasting impact. our time on this earth However, this whole concept of studying people's lives and trying to emulate them can be a very slippery slope. But we'll come back to that a little later. I am currently living in Milan. And this year marks? 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci was doing his thing in Italy and that's why I'm seeing his face and name absolutely everyw

here

.

Then it occurred to me that it might be interesting to try his

daily

routine

. I mean, the guy was a genius, he clearly was. doing something well. So I think t

here

's a good chance that he'll learn something from this whole experience, but this is

what

I was researching about this and it turns out that his

daily

routine

was ridiculous, so I'm telling you right now that I'm giving you this. a very low chance of success And I think you'll understand why in a second many famous people throughout history have had strange sleeping habits. Charles Dickens was famous for always sleeping with his head facing north because he believed that if he aligned with the Earth's magnetic fields, creativity would increase.

But what Leonardo da Vinci did was much more extreme than that. He is well known for doing what is known as polyphasic sleep, more specifically the Uberman sleep cycle, which is basically a 20-minute nap every four hours, which equates to a total of two hours per day. Two hours of sleep a day, this is not possible. Well, okay, the main benefits of this seem to be that, first of all, you have a lot more time awake. Say, for example, you live to be 72 and sleep eight hours a night, which would result in 24 years of your life sleeping.

But if you do this move on the sleep cycle and only sleep 2 hours a day, you get back 18 of those years or 3/4 of the time Assuming you started from the day you were born, which wouldn't be the case. But anyway, do you get the idea that another major benefit I was reading about is that humans seem to go through a short time? Boosted post-sleep phase of focused productivity and creativity. So in theory, if you take six naps throughout the day, you are maximizing the amount of time you are in this state. In theory, the Vinci is said to have done something very similar to this, about 15 or 20 minutes every 4 hours. and he apparently did this for four years of his life, believe it or not.

Let me be clear. There really isn't much research to show that polyphasic sleep is better than monophasic sleep, which is basically just sleeping at night. So don't try this at home Or if you do don't blame me better let yourself be entertained by my probable descent into hell Without further ado. This is my best attempt at Leonardo. Da Vinci's daily routine. Oh my god, here we go. It's 10:35 a.m. m. So far I spent most of this morning doing boring morning things that no one cares about, but now I'm going to journal. So, as many of us know, the anar da da Vinci.

He would write backwards. I think it's funny that no one really knows why he did it. Some people think that he went to keep his hand clean because he was left-handed. Or to make it harder for other people to read what he was writing. Whatever the reason. case he wrote backwards. So I'm going to write backwards. I'm an idiot So I had to look up how to do this because I don't know how to do it. I'm going to do a couple of tests and see if I can figure it out. She is what the passes are like. difficult, okay, first try Leonardo da Vinci seems to be a big proponent of journaling, which I think is fantastic.

I've talked about how important it is for me to get my ideas out of my brain and onto paper or some other medium. Doing this allowed his work to go too far last bit of advice I mean, think about it if I didn't write down his thoughts then we wouldn't even know about it. I've spent like half an hour on this damn prayer. Let's see how it looks. in a mirror, but this is what it looks like. I had to use this website where I could type my message and it would be given to me backwards.

That's what I just copied. Oh my gosh, it's actually kind of creepy looking at him like that and it makes a lot of sense and seems normal. I'm going to write more journals like this. Wow, if you look at it another way, how is it a diary if I only write likes. this but this is going to be very complicated. Oh, this is harder. Oh, okay, that's worse. That's considerably worse. Alright, so let's talk for a second about what my schedule is going to look like. My goal here is to be as productive and creative as possible.

It seemed that art was a great motivator for Leonardo da Vinci. So, beyond my periodic naps, I'll spend as much of the rest of my time as possible editing videos, writing, reading, and painting. I'm going to pretend I'm working on masterpieces and making fart jokes. Don't make me laugh yet. Okay, time for my first nap. I'm not a big fan of napping, so we'll have to see how this goes. The schedule just makes me laugh. I feel like I'm three years old again. 20 minutes is super fast. I'm going to have to learn to fall asleep super fast to make this happen.

Take advantage of that time. Otherwise, you will simply miss them. 20 minutes. You know, it takes me a while to fall asleep. There is definitely a community of people who do this. I was doing some research on the adjustment period it takes to incorporate this into your life and it's pretty intense. I just felt like falling asleep when the alarm goes off. it went off or maybe I slept for five or ten minutes and I really feel good. It was a kind of rejuvenation. Yeah, I read that it can take weeks to fully adjust and that you have to go through this kind of zombie phase where your cognitive ability just isn't optimal.

Well? This time I couldn't fall asleep But you can still lie down for a while and I guess now you go back to work. Not only that, but it seems like the success of a system like this relies a lot on being super. strict and consistent with it. I'm feeling a little sleepy right now. I hope this nap is the boost I need to keep going. Hey Perry, stay asleep, a schedule you create for yourself has to fit the things that are most important to you, the things you want to focus on. I mean, that's the point and it's easy to get carried away with obligations or There are other things that people impose on you and I think that's how many of us end up with a schedule, a routine or a lifestyle that we don't really like. suits.

Every time I go to bed and they get up. I'm a little more disoriented. It's like dipping your consciousness in and out of water. I will say that I am seeing the benefits of lying down for a while. It feels like it contributes to a bit of a boost of energy and creativity. right after, but I'm a little afraid that this will lead to diminishing returns. It made me very hungry. So I'm eating a spinach frittata. How do we end up at this point? My ability to do any meaningful work and, more than anything, stay focused has diminished considerably in the last few hours.

So I'm going to change attacks and I won't. He's pretty well known for doing that, so a few days ago I bought some art supplies and I have a lot of free time. That's what I'll do. now. So I wanted to paint a photo I took once in Florence. It's nothing special really, but I like it. Florence is in a region of Italy called Tuscany, which is where the releases come from and is also where the Italian language originates from, although it is a curious fact that I accent from there. It's very strange. They do not pronounce seeds.

So coke is Cola Basically with the local accent there, not that you needed to know that, but I felt like sharing myself and look, you're choosing to be here with me at this strange time of day. Let's start working. If you put aside how strange it would be to live like this, it was great to have all this extra time to work. Then the sun came out and I realized it comes at a cost. When I'm very tired, random things start playing. much more fun, friend, I'll give you an example. The human foot is an engineering masterpiece in a work of art.

The genius of Leonardo da Vinci. With something I like feet, I feel pretty brain dead right now and overall super. scattered I usually have a lot of motivation to do things and I don't feel any of that at the moment I thought about going to the supermarket Do some shopping leaving the apartment for a while my ability to speak Italian well That's like a 1 point 5 out of 10? YO? Did such a tangle of words come out of my mouth when I was at the checkout? Trying to pay, I just feel sleep deprived and honestly, that's exactly what's happening.

I mean, naps don't do much, who would want to live like that? Honestly, this is the opposite of productive. This doesn't make any sense 15 minutes ago, I felt like shit, but I started watching the Mr Bean movie and now suddenly I feel all this motivation to paint. So I'm on this weird emotional rollercoaster right now, okay. It was becoming very apparent to me that I was no longer capable of any kind of deep or high-quality work. And so, as night approached once again, I decided to end things. I'm not sure what my Leo man would say, being an art of them.

Woo In total I did this schedule for about 36 hours, you know two days I would have liked to continue and I think I could have continued but at what cost? It's been a week so I've had some time to reflect on things and I remember those days that I spent doing this as a bit emotionally turbulent and I read some things that I wrote and I just don't feel like it was written clearly and what? Hey? If anything, this gave me a lot of appreciation for a very boring and very normal sleep schedule. I slept like a rock for at least 10 hours and woke up a new man.

Just enthusiastic and positive and basically me again. I felt like I got a glimpse of the value da Vinci placed on time. His approach doesn't quite work for me, but I did see the power of napping and how useful a tool it can be. By the way, if you're going through some sort of energy drop, this is where I'm at with the painting I was working on, it's not finished yet. If you want to see the final result, I could post it on Instagram. As I said at the beginning of this video, I think many of us idolize famous or powerful people, whether now or throughout history, and that's okay.

I think there is a lot we can all learn from these people, but it doesn't matter how hard you try. I just never get the same results because inevitably the circumstances are different the cultural context your access to resources even things like your physiology Basically what I'm trying to say here is that it's beautiful to be curious and experiment with things, but you just don't No you force it. You know, okay, his sleep schedule doesn't work for me. But there are many other things that we can preserve from this genius. I guess I'm advocating choosing carefully, you know, figuring out what works for you.

He said that learning never exhausts the mind and I love this mentality. I think it is true. I think learning things has given me a lot of energy. Let's not forget that the Internet and everything it has to offer did not exist in its time. I guess I'm happy to thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video and this channel and giving me the opportunity to do very strange experiments like this. I really like them as a company, they offer tens of thousands of courses on a wide range of different topics. and the Skillshare originals are very well made.

There's a link in the description below to get a two-month free trial for any of those classes, and if you decide to go beyond that trial, it's less than $10 a month. There are a few classes that I wanted to specifically mention that I personally enjoyed and I will link them below as well. I like this class about skill development in a pretty general sense. I feel like there is value here for literally anyone and also this class on creative writing or journaling and This one I'm drawing if you're looking for an alternative to journaling. So yes, consider using the link in the description below.

Anyway, I'm thinking about turning this into a little series of sorts, so let me know if you'd like to see more of these types of videos. Yes, thanks for watching. . I'll see you soon