Pseudo-polyphasic

I've been trying to separate my sleep time in two periods for quite a while. However, what I found out is that my body doesn't "get" it.

My normal time to sleep is 8 hours, less is not refreshing enough, so I want to separate in two phases, with about 8 hours in between. I do that pretty much every day and I feel bad, because after 4 hours of sleep it's like there were never any more 4 hours of sleep that happened earlier. My body thinks that it's all sleep it got that day!

Then I go to work and back home, sleep some more, and again my body feels like it slept only for 4 hours, disregarding the previous sleep that happened before.

It's like sleep must last uninterrupedly. No matter how much time it lasts uninterruptedly, my body thinks that it's all it got. It doesn't matter that I sleep two times per day, each time is like the only time.

I'd love to hear from people who did something similar and how they experienced it. I heard of polyphasic sleep where sleeping hours are separated from each other, and it's supposed to work and be refreshing, so I wonder what's wrong here.

At what times are you commencing sleep? Also what is the weather and temperatrue like, and when are your main meals?
Firstly to benefit from a pattern like this you have to sleep at the right time, depending on when you wake up in the morning, the nap should be around 6-7 hours after sleep usually around midday, since you have 8 hours inbetween your body is not as ready for sleep as it was and hour or two beforehand. Another factor which contributes to this is weather, is it warm, are you ever getting exhausted throughout work. If not then your body is not in the need for a rest and your sleep might be wasted. Food has the same affect, often only a light snack or midday meal is eaten before the nap and around 5-3 hours (I think) before midnight sleep a meal must be eaten to remind your body to sleep.
Lastly, in a lot of countries an 8 hour sleep schedule is better because you sleep throughout the colder dark night preventing your body from thinking it is day, the rest builds up and you feel refreshed, in many cases a polyphasic sleep schedule just doesn't suit.

Hours of sleep, they're shifting but the rough idea: 3am - 7am and 15pm-19pm. My work shedule can accomodate that, as I have a half-day job and the second job is freelance and can be done later.

I wouldn't say that my body isn't sleepy, in fact, my main complaint is that I feel lack of sleep all the time! It's ridiculous, when I'm at work I feel like I'm going to drop dead, even though I woke up a few hours ago. And when I go to sleep during the day, I don't feel rested once I wake up and start feeling drowsy once again in a couple of hours.

Work is not exhausting, food is usually a normal lunch. The temperature in my room is very warm.

So you think the gap between sleep sessions is too wide, is that so?

Yes it seems to be, Here is an extract

Quote:

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Thus, in many people, there is a dip when the drive for sleep has been building for hours and the drive for wakefulness has not yet started. This is, again quoting Czeisler, "a great time for a nap."[3] The drive for wakefulness intensifies through the evening, making it difficult to get to sleep 2–3 hours before one's usual bedtime when the wake maintenance zone ends.

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Since you are napping roughly an hour later than you might have to be doing, your body is already entering a drive for wakefullness without ever feeding the drive for sleep by the time you sleep.
Here is a great page to read which offers alot of information on your biological clock and how it is effected by temperature and light levels etc Circadian rhythm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Perhaps you should try offsetting more sleep to one period; more commonly when using a biphasic sleep schedule one uses something more like a siesta.