Eight Rules Instead of a Schedule
Mas, co-founder of the Ukrainian Banner Network and creator of Infostore, says he arrived at the method about four years ago, and around the same time he bought a Mac. The retelling of the essay on Lifehacker is built around eight principles. You should fall asleep and wake up as you please, and the author considers an alarm clock harmful. Then come music, oolong tea, no food before bed, honesty, calm, no avoidance, and no rushing.
The author formulates the main idea in one phrase, which Lifehacker quoted verbatim:
“If you need 22 hours of true time, you will get enough sleep in two hours,” the author writes.
The phrase sets the logic of the entire text. Sleep in it is measured not by duration but by the quality of time spent in a state of rest. Hence the epithet “true” attached to the word “time.” Mas does not explain how exactly to measure this time, nor does he offer a way to verify it in other people.
What Is Actually Described
The essay does not divide sleep into phases and contains no schedule of short segments throughout the day. It is about the resulting roughly two hours that, according to the author, replace full rest. Mas writes that such a regimen can be sustained “for about two months.” In the course of his experiments, he says, he also slept for eleven hours, meaning the experience included ordinary sleep as well.
A separate layer of the text consists of reflections on the brain. Mas mentions zones that, by his description, are active during truth and during lies: zones 7–9 and zone 14. There are no references to research in the text. Likewise without sources, he cites the Dalai Lama. It is impossible to compare these claims with the scientific literature on sleep based on the text.
There are no medical warnings in the essay. The editors add a caveat: the described experience is the author's personal experiment, not a doctor's recommendation, and sleep regimen questions are best discussed with a medical professional.
The Author's Path to Internet Projects
The essay on sleep was written by a man who by 2012 had traveled from banking systems to major internet projects. In 1995–1997, Mas worked at Ukrainian Capital bank, then at the National Bank of Ukraine he handled Visa processing on HP-UX. In January 1999, together with Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network. It was written in Perl, took three weeks of work, and cost about $100. Later the network became one of the key projects of the Ukrainian internet.
On March 7, 2000, Mas became director of Ukrainian Portal (UAPortal). In August 2008, Mail.ua entered closed testing, and its architect was Mas. The project, according to data from that time, attracted more than $1 million in investment from the Internet Invest group. In December 2008, the Ministry of Internal Affairs seized Infostore's servers: 18 servers, two storage systems, and a switch. The search lasted 12 hours, and the case was widely discussed in the Ukrainian press.
In 2009, Mas was one of the organizers of the first Ukrainian Internet Professionals Forum, which later became iForum. The forum took place on April 1, 2009, to mark the tenth anniversary of UBN, and drew 1,280 participants. Mas put together its program and moderated the “Internet Business” track.
April 2012
The essay on sleep appeared on Lifehacker as a reprint from, published by Slava Baransky. The text was part of the stream of materials Mas was then sharing with his readership. The text contains no reference to specific studies, but it does contain a personal report on living in the new regimen. According to the author, one can live this way “for about two months,” and during his experiments he also slept for eleven hours.
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