End of 2 weeks: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I'm posting this a week in arrears, and have given things a lot of thought in the intervening time. So I'm going to post what I've seen as the pros and cons, plus the stuff that fits in neither category, and try to make some  decisions going forward from there. Before I do that, though, I thought I'd summarize my week.

On that last day of the 2 week period, I was sick. A cold had been going through the family, and when sleep deprived your immune system is weakened, so I'm not surprised that I got it. Still, I wasn't the only one, and I didn't get it faster or keep it longer than anyone else, so the immune system dysfunction must not be >too< bad. Either way, at 3 that morning, sick, a pounding headache, tired, and tired of being tired as I had been for the whole previous week, I decided to call it quits. I had reached my 2 weeks, and was in enough of a pickle that I thought I needed to at least recover before going further.

So I slept. It ended up being kind of a normal night, just as if I had been sleeping normally all along. In other words, the polyphasic tests didn't appear to harm my ability to sleep monophasically. But when I did wake up, I was still tired. Oh, well, I thought, I was sick, had been deprived, and so on, it makes sense that I'd still be tired. But the same was true the next day. And the next. In fact, I didn't feel any better (or worse) than I had during the polyphasic tests. My only conclusions are that either A) I've broken something more than I thought, or B) my perceptions are out of whack. Given that I've felt just as tired for strings of days many times before, I'm inclined to believe B, but I'm not ruling out A.

Now that it's been a week, and I'm still feeling just as poorly (though less sick), I'm figuring that really nothing is improved by going back to monophasic, and maybe I should try polyphasic again. If I do, I could try the same plan, the U6 plan, or an Everyman plan (3 hrs at night plus 3 or 4 naps during the day).

So last night I went to bed a little early (feeling tired!). I was woken up about an hour and a half later by a screaming infant who was pretty inconsolable, so I was very much awake by the time she'd gotten to sleep. At this point I decided to try polyphasic for the night since the monophasic was pretty ruined anyway. Good news again: I switched over just fine. I had a little trouble falling asleep for the first nap, but no trouble for the second. In addition, I dreamed pretty fully and memorably, and woke up 2 minutes before the alarm.

So I figure I might as well keep experimenting at the very least. Not sure if I'm going to switch poly styles, yet, but I'm probably leaning toward keeping to one style in hopes of improving things by adapting better. I'm probably also going to try to reread a lot of the articles I'd read before to see if any of them say things I'd missed about how to get better sleep or feel more refreshed.

So, the promised list, as I see things:

Pros:

1. Clearly, the time gained. By sleeping less than 3 hours per day, I'm gaining 4 hours from the normal 7 I had been sleeping. If I were to switch to an Uberman 6 and cut times to 20 minutes or 15, I'd be gaining even more time.
2. A new ability: sleep just about anywhere just about any time, and have it be more useful than previously. I can't say it's as perfectly useful as polyphasic proponents would have you believe, but more useful than a nap last month? Sure thing. I'm also less hung up on what bed or pillow I'm using; I used to be pretty picky just because I had trouble falling asleep with foreign ones.
3. Being a pinch-hitter. 5 times during 2 weeks, someone really needed something late at night, and I was able to volunteer and get it done 'cuz I was up anyway. Twice were dropping people off for red-eye flights, and three times were taking care of children. If you don't have children around or friends/family that travels, this might not be important to you (plus it's more benefit to others than yourself, if you're inclined to think that way), but I found this to be pretty useful.
4. A feeling of security at night. My wife mentioned that she does indeed feel safer knowing that if someone were to attempt to break in I'd already be up and aware and we'd have a leg up on handling the situation. Similarly for any other nocturnal emergency. Probably not a big deal, really, since those things almost never happen anyway, but again, the feeling is there.

Cons:

1. The extra time at night doesn't appear to be as useful as daylight hours. As I've mentioned, I've been feeling just fine during the day, but every night has been a struggle and I experience the night through a kind of haze. Sure, I've gotten some things done (some extra work, read a book, played a couple of games), but nothing truly outstanding was accomplished.
2. Being tired of being tired. As I mentioned, I'm always tired at the moment. That's not unusual for me, so I can't say it's due to the polyphasic, but at least for me, the feeling itself is compounded when I wake up, and I can ignore it other times. Since polyphasic means more naps, it also means waking  up more often, which means noticing my pain again. This gets old quickly.
3. Social calendar & inflexibility. I can't say for certain that you can't skip naps, or what the effects thereof are, or those of moving naps, or anything else. But I can say that if you're feeling crummy you're going to want to follow "the rules" as close as you can, and having to sleep every 3 hours kinda sucks for being out doing anything.
4. Having a different schedule from your wife kind of sucks. It'd be nice if we were able to go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time and all of that. We've both missed talking for a little before conking out.
5. Having a different schedule sucks, part 2. If your wife wants to watch a Dr Who marathon and you have to stop every little while for a nap it kind of puts a damper on things. You can't even watch 2 movies in a row. Maybe this goes with #3, but I'm mentioning it separately because, at least for me, this is really, really important -- I spend a huge amount of my time with my family and I'd optimally like to spend more, not less.

Weird stuff:

1. Dreams? I think I'm dreaming more often and remembering more often, but that's not saying much. Even if it were true, I'm not sure that'd be a real plus since I'm not convinced that dreaming is all that cool.
2. I'm still baffled by the fact that I'm getting 3 hrs sleep per 24 hr period, have a perfectly normal feeling day, and yet enter zombie mode at night only to be normal again in the morning. I assume that will continue now, switching to poly again, but I'll definitely mention it if not.
3. Unlike Pavlina, I don't seem to have a problem with days stringing together in my mind. For me, the light/dark cycle, and the zombie/not cycle are enough for my mind to separate things just fine. Even though this is the absence of an item, I'm marking it just because Pavlina thought it was incredibly important. Also, having the string of days experience might be kind of cool.

Polyphasic Day 13

First, as expected, I missed my 9pm nap, and also adjusted the 6pm and 12am naps slightly wider to accommodate my social life. There was a small down period while a passenger in someone's car, so I tried to sleep, but it was short and I don't think it accomplished anything. After the 12am (really 12:25) nap, I tried to get back to the normal 1.5 hr cycle (which I normally use as 2 cycles per sleep) by putting in a nap at 1:30 to make up for the lost one at 9pm. I then slept at 3am as normal and it is now 4:30am.

As far as sleepiness, I am somewhat pleased: I feel very tired, but not a lot more than usual for this time of day (night). I may be able to recover better from the loss of a nap now than last week.

Due to the fact that I have continually been having trouble in the night while being fine during the day, I decided to look up some sources suggesting what might be going on. Based on info from the Polyphasic Society, it seems as if I'm exhibiting classic Deep-Sleep deprivation.

REM deprivation is more common and the side-effects are more well-known, including hallucination. SWS deprivation, on the other hand, is A) less common (REM is needed more and more often. Think water instead of food), and B) more subtle. Classic SWS-dep signs: extra night-time grogginess, extra hunger, feeling cold, blacking out (no memory of time awake). I seem to have all of those: I've definitely noticed a few times where I overslept and had no recollection of hitting the alarm.

Given that I'm thus SWS deprived, there are 2 possibilities: either my system isn't adjusting properly to allow for SWS in my naps, or it has done so but is only getting enough SWS for steady-state, not to allow it to make up for the SWS I missed before. If the 2nd is true, a couple of extra long naps in the early night will refill the SWS meter, so to speak, and the problem is solved. If the first, though, the same remedy will likely solve the problems in the short term, but will make SWS adaptation more unlikely and more difficult. Instead, I should stick with it until the 2nd possibility becomes true and then follow that route.

So which is it? It's probably impossible to tell without better sleep monitoring stuff than I've got available (apparently there's a suite of products, now, that are very, very good at helping you figure out what kind of sleep you're getting. I've been thinking today of ordering a LarkLife, for instance, and I'd be interested in Zeo if it hadn't gone out of business). So I'm going to try getting more SWS without ruining my adaptation in another way. I'm going to try to get more SWS naps without changing their length.

To do this, I'm intending on increasing SWS "pressure" (the body's assumed need for certain types of sleep) by A) waiting until early night-time (standard SWS time), and B) increasing body temperature through use of a hot shower immediately before the nap. Once I've got the pressure increased, I'll take more naps during that period.

I guess we'll see how it works out. Tomorrow is the 2-week line, so I'll have some overall progress report info, as well as some decisions on how to move forward.

Polyphasic Days 11-12

So yesterday (day 11), I was going to post something like this: "I seem to be in a rut. It's not a terrible rut, mind; I feel mostly awake, I'm functioning pretty darned well on a grand total of about 3 hrs of sleep per 24 hr period. But I don't seem to be adapting or improving any further."

In fact, I was starting to write that just now because I'd been thinking it for a while and that was just what made sense. And then I realized that it was 4:30am and I'm really not all that tired. More tired than day? Sure. But I'm not nodding off (which is a change), and I feel cognizant and creative enough to sit here and think about what's going on and blog about it (which is also a change).

So I guess I can't speak for every day (this may be a fluke), but today I feel pretty good. 16 hrs from now will be Tuesday night, which is when I'll miss a nap again, so we'll see what kind of damage that does, but I have high hopes once again, whereas yesterday I was starting to doubt a lot. In fact, yesterday's day was one of the groggiest while tonight has been one of the least groggy. So maybe it's finally equalizing or something. At this point, really, though, who knows, since not much has gone the way I had expected it might.

Thursday during the day will be the 2 week marker, since that's when I attempted my first polyphasic nap, and I said I'd review things and make some kind of decision then. I definitely feel that I need the data from later tonight to make an informed choice, but even then I'm not sure I have enough data. I'll just have to make a decision of some kind regardless.

I know that even as recently as yesterday I was feeling really poorly and just wanted to go back to sleep, but I also know that I'm still curious and still functional, so there's no particular reason I can't keep going.

As a side note, my soft palate is killing me at the moment; I'm pretty sure I'm picking up at least a part of the sickness my daughters have both had. I'm trying to hydrate heavily, and it's possible that either the extra water or the sickness itself has been modifying how I feel today.

Polyphasic Day 10 (on time)

Day 10: 2013/8/24

This is the first log post to the blog that's actually (mostly) on time, only a few hours after written instead of days. Future posts will be written here exclusively.

Today was fairly uneventful. However, it is noteworthy precisely because it was uneventful. I was expecting the wee hours to be quite difficult, but really they weren't. I'm not sure if it's because I'm better at keeping myself awake or if my sleep is getting better. I hope the latter but expect that it's a combination.

Of further note in the "nothing happened" category, I hit all of my naps pretty much on time, I slept fairly quickly (I think that part is improving), and I appear to have slept well, waking up at the alarm and feeling fairly refreshed. This isn't refreshed like total Polyphasic devotees would have you believe, mind. Just standard "I just woke up" refreshed, which, for me, is sometimes >more< groggy than just before sleeping. 

Nap times are currently 23 minutes. Not sure if I should modify that or not. I'd like to get to the point where they're 20 minutes each exactly, but I'm not sure I'm falling asleep that fast, yet, and I think, for now, that I'd like to not buck the system too much.

Continuing the "nothing happened" theme, I still have been too groggy at night to really get anything interesting done. I've watched a few old movies, played a few new games, read a book (Starship Troopers), but nothing like what was on my mind as far as things I'd really like to accomplish. I just haven't had the mental capacity to even think of what to do, let alone actually do it.

In comparing myself to Pavlina at this point, I'd say I'm not as well adapted (still groggy), still sleeping longer total hours, and with no positive sides to it. I'm not sure if these are due to genetics, food, exercise, environment, or schedule, of course. 

I'm also still afriad, Pavlina notwithstanding, that Wozniak was right on the whole, my nights won't ever get better, and so on. We'll see.

Polyphasic Day 9

Day 9: 2013/8/23

After 3 days in a row of failing in some manner, I worry that I'm either not going to succeed, or have backtracked quite a ways, or something else is going to go wrong. Still, I think that's mostly empty worry as I don't really think I've lost much -- I just haven't succeeded wildly, either.

Today's naps seemed OK, though I had to adjust for social reasons more than I wished I could. It's early "night time" at the moment, and I feel pretty tired. I hope tonight's not as bad as the last few.

I think I've discovered the answer to that, though, and it is something I knew right from the get-go but that I forgot when the fog of deprivation made my mind turn to fluff: find something to do that wakes you up. Something that forces your mind to turn on. A new book or game, exercise, whatever.

So right now I'm pretty tired, but I've also been doing the same thing for a couple of hours, so I think I just need to change things up a bit.

Yes, I realize that this still means I'm technically sleep deprived, and that 'forcing myself to stay awake' is something I shouldn't have to do steady-state or the whole polyphasic sleep thing must be bunk. I figure I'm still within the 2 weeks, so anything goes. I'll worry about steady-state later on.

Later edit: At this point, I believe I can say that Wozniak at least is not correct. He states that it should be impossible to entrain the brain to undergo REM in less than half an hour. If that's the case, then barring 3 accidents of 2 hours each total (say 1 REM cycle each?), I've had no REM for 9 days. I'm pretty sure I'd be seeing pink fluffy elephants prancing around the room at that point. I guess I'm no expert, though.

Polyphasic Day 8

Day 8: 2013/8/22

So today was the day I could finally get more structured again. I did pretty good, but was 15 mins late once. At 1am, I'm feeling very tired again, but not yet as bad as the last few days. I'm going to try still doing every 3 hours, but extending naps to 45 mins instead of 25. Theoretically that will give me 2 cycles per nap. We'll see if it helps.

I'm finding that I'm eating more than I did before; I get hungry during my new waking hours. And given that I'm not really being any more active (most of my new hours are at the computer), that means I'm probably gaining weight. I'll have to check that. Clearly, if you're going to do this you'll need some kind of weight reduction concept in place. I plan to start lifting (not sure which day, though), so maybe that will help. I have a set of adjustable-weight dumbbells at home that I'll use.

Dreams: Many people have mentioned heightened ability to dream -- including lucid dreaming -- while polysleeping. I thought I'd throw in a more thorough description of my own experiences thus far. First, let me start with how I was before I started the experiment. While I have certainly had some very vivid, realistic, and "enlightening" dreams that I remember quite well, they hadn't been recent. For the past 10 years or so, if I dreamed, I usually didn't remember it. Even when I did remember, it was only for a short time and then it was gone.

Since starting polyphasic sleeping, I have noticed increased incidence of dreaming, a propensity to dream while still awake, increased perception of being awake while actually being asleep (or maybe the opposite?), and increased sense of confusion upon awakening.

Incidence of dreaming: Of course, this means incidence of >remembered< dreaming. I still don't often remember my dreams for very long, but virtually every nap, now, I realize that I had been dreaming at some point, even if I don't remember any of it.

Dreaming while awake: This has been limited, so far, to dreaming just before falling asleep. I'm clearly awake and can will myself to roll over or whatever, and yet I'm talking (without moving my lips) to someone that isn't there, or imagining I'm somewhere else, or otherwise hallucinating.

Perception of being awake: Combined with the above, it makes recording how much sleep I've gotten rather troublesome. Sometimes I'm really awake but dreaming (I can make myself turn over) and sometimes I'm really asleep but think I'm awake (if I try to turn over, I either imagine that I did so, but didn't really, or the request simply gets ignored and I forget about it a few moments later).

Confusion: Likely due to the extra dreaming and altered perceptions. At this point, when I wake, I almost always have to do the "where >am< I" routine. I certainly didn't have to do this before polysleeping.

Later edit: when I took my 3am nap, I apparently woke up to the alarm, turned it off, and then went back to sleep, all without remembering any of it. I woke up at 5am. I had been feeling pretty darned tired, but I'm now moving the alarm to elsewhere in the room, just in case.

Polyphasic Day 7

Day 7: 2013/8/21

With the screwed up schedule from the previous day, it would have been nice to have this be more structured and careful, but no, this was the day I had the most stuff going on with work and needed to be on-site. So after sleeping until 9, I then missed naps until 3pm. That extra couple of hours this morning was >very< helpful, but by nightfall I was starting to really feel it again. This was the 2nd worst night so far.

I tried sleeping a bit more often. Every hour or two instead of every 3. Didn't seem to help; it just meant I had more instances of awakening and attempting to sleep.

I was struck by something today: even on the worst nights, I seem to be fully awake and functional during the normal daylight hours. It isn't until the wee hours that I notice any negative effects.

Polyphasic Day 6

2013/8/20

Today I had my first missed nap. I was hoping that a 3 hour cycle instead of the 4 would allow more flexibility in case a nap had to be missed. It doesn't appear (at this time) that that's the case.

I hit my 6pm nap as normal, knowing that I was leaving shortly and would be in an environment where sleep was impossible at 9 (this is a weekly event). As usual, I was feeling pretty good about everything. At 9, I felt tired and like I should sleep, but nothing further than that.

At 11:30pm my body reminded me, politely, that it was significantly past the first nap's time and getting close, now, to its successor's time. At 12am I had just barely gotten home so I managed to crash into bed no later than 10 after. I woke up feeling a bit more tired than usual, but I figured 'what the hey' I just missed a whole nap a little tiredness should be normal. Given that I had missed a nap anyway and was feeling pretty tired, I figured I'd throw in an extra nap right away, so took it at 1:30am, half my normal time.

It's now 3:45. I took the 1:30 and the 3:00, and with each nap I'm feeling worse, not better. This is now one of the more difficult nights I've had. It appears that skipping a nap means (at least in feeling) restarting at least some portion of the adaptation schedule. That's very bad.

At this point, I'm planning to continue as normal. I may take yet another nap at 4:30, but either way I figure that next week's skipped nap will be far more informative about how bad a missed nap is.

Later edit: This was the worst night in all of my testing. At 7am my wife woke up, saw what shape I was in, and ordered me to bed. I was too groggy to resist. I slept for 2 hours.

Polyphasic Day 5

Nap 37: 3:00am

Again, took some time to fall asleep. Awakening was among the hardest I've had to deal with thus far. Now that I'm awake, it's not especially tough, but somehow I just really didn't want to get up.

Nap 38: 4:30am

I added in the extra nap again just because of how generally poor I'm feeling. I wonder how much of that is due to just making the polyphasic adjustments and how much to the 2 hour block I had earlier. Again, it took a while to fall asleep. That doesn't make any sense to me.

Nap 39: 6:00am

Slept a little quicker and a little better. Starting to feel better already and it's not even 9, yet. It's possible I'm starting to move toward the upswing.

 Day 5: 2013/8/19

 Rather than bore you with the fiddly details that are mostly the same over and over, I've decided to move to a daily report. This way, too, I can hopefully talk more about the overall experience rather than getting caught up in the small stuff.

Today was feeling a little better overall. I've got high hopes that my body is getting used to the situation and it's all downhill from here. I did have a problem toward the middle of the day when I forgot to actually turn on the alarm before sleeping. I slept for an hour then woke up.

I find that -- special circumstances aside -- I'm actually waking up before my alarm a small majority of the time. I'm partly excited by this, but also partly worried -- I tend to wake myself up after only 10 minutes of sleep, and I'm just not sure that's enough -- I can't have gone through a whole cycle can I? I'm not sure what to do about this fact, yet. Should I get up when I wake up regardless of how long it's been? Should I stay in bed and attempt to finish a normal cycle (until the alarm)? For right now, I'm playing by ear: I see how I feel when I wake up. Mostly I feel like getting up.

As I write this, it's technically the 20th, in the dark hours of the morning, and this is by far the easiest night I've had yet, including the very first before the first polyphasic nap. That fills me with a sense of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm hoping it continues to improve. As yet, I don't have any of the feelings of euphoria or enlightenment that some have mentioned that poly-sleep gives them, but I may just not be in tune to those kinds of feelings, I suppose.

As far as the sleep itself, I'm also a little concerned (confused?). I feel like I'm getting truly awful sleep -- tossing & turning, feeling half-awake the whole time, having trouble getting to sleep, etc -- and yet I wake up feeling pretty good all things considered, and I'm clearly not having the issues that no sleep at all would be giving me. I find that I often start dreaming almost immediately, even before I'm fully asleep. Maybe all of this is a result of drastically different sleep requirements and is the new "normal". Or maybe it's a sign that I'm not sleeping as well as I think I am.

Ah, well. Time for my last nap before waking up the kids for their first day of school.

Polyphasic Day 4

Nap 28: 2013/8/18 1:30am

Was starting to nod off, so added this between-time nap as expected. I was woken up once by a dream where I thought the kids had woken up and were misbehaving and I needed to tell them to go back to bed. Pretty sure that didn't happen in hindsight. I also woke up from an actual child having a bad dream and the time-dilation experience coming from being woken up multiple times made me to decide to just get up. I still had 10 mins on the clock.

Nap 29: 2013/8/18 3:00am

More trouble staying awake. More feeling of disorientation on awake. I find I often wonder where I am and why I'm there when I wake. This time I woke up 30 seconds before alarm.

Nap 30-31: 2013/8/18 4:30am,6:00am

Fell asleep fairly quickly, slept well-ish. Woke up before alarm (30s) on the first, with it on the second. I feel like I'm sleeping a little harder, and I remembered a dream from the first, though I've forgotten it by now. I don't feel quite so bad today as I did yesterday, though I'm definitely still feeling over tired and a little chilly.

Nap 32: 2013/8/18 9:00am

Slept well, woke up to alarm. As before, I seem to come more and more awake at this time of day.

Nap 33: 2013/8/18 12:00pm

Had a social event, so didn't have time to post about the nap immediately. I recall that I woke up early because of my wife being a little extra loud, but it wasn't a big deal. 

Nap 34: 2013/8/18 3:10pm 

DISASTER! OK, so I mostly just wanted to write "DISASTER" in big letters. Apparently I rolled over and hit the button on the alarm. My alarm stops when the button is pressed and starts counting up (while flashing) if you missed it, and it was stopped at 12 mins left, unflashing. so either I woke up, hit the button, fell asleep, and don't remember, or I rolled over and bumped the button, which was on a chair next to the bed at the same level. Or the clock failed, which I find highly unlikely. So I ended up sleeping 2 hours instead of 25 minutes.

I recall waking up feeling alarmed and disoriented, but frankly that's how I often have been awakening. I feel >more< groggy and tired than I'm familiar with, especially during the day, but I'm especially ... well... grumpy. Clearly not the end of the world, but rather a disappointment. I'll skip just the 6pm nap, attempting to sleep next at 9. Maybe this will pull me out of sleep deprivation enough that I feel better without destroying the adaptation that's been done so far? That would be nice, at least.

Nap 35: 9:30pm

Attempted to sleep, but was unable. Felt tired, just couldn't manage it.

Nap 36: 2013/8/19 12:00pm

Took a while to fall asleep, but managed it eventually. Woke up to the alarm. Felt OK.

Polyphasic Day 3

Nap 18: 2013/8/17 1:30am

Got to this entry late. Not sure how I felt. Probably tired.

Nap 19: 2013/8/17 3:00am

Slept fairly quickly, though still not as fast as I keep expecting based on tiredness level. Slept 20 mins then woke up on my own.

Nap 20: 2013/8/17 4:30am

Again, got to the entry late. I'm not thinking clearly at night and appear to be forgetting to log. I know I was tired and having trouble keeping awake at times.

Nap 21: 2013/8/17 6:00am

Was very tired and groggy. Didn't want to get up, but of course I did anyway. I fell asleep fairly quickly and slept until the alarm. Still, even just in coming down the write my entry I appear to be waking up from zombie mode. Something about morning, I think, though maybe it's the extra naps I'm taking at night.

 Nap 22: 2013/8/17 8:55am Started crashing about 45 mins before scheduled nap. Had a hard time staying awake, but I managed it. Fell asleep pretty quickly. Woke up just before alarm, but >really< didn't want to get up. I did anyway. This day 4 thing kinda sucks. Wearing the flannel again as I've gotten cold again.

Nap 23: 2013/8/17 12:05pm

Started feeling better as the day started more in earnest. Seemed to have little to do with actual sleeping; it just seemed like day length helped. In fact, I was feeling energized enough that I had some trouble sleeping again. With feeling better, I stopped feeling cold, too. 

Nap 24: 2013/8/17 Wasing color.Feeling good enough that I forgot to try to sleep. Didn't get much sleeping done, either, though that was partially due to various children in the house. I clearly dozed, but didn't feel like it accomplished much.

 Nap 25: 2013/8/17 6:15pm

Again, had trouble sleeping. I guess I'm having trouble sleeping through the day, which is weird, because previously if I were tired, I'd be able to sleep any time.

Nap 26: 2013/8/17 9:15pm

Had trouble getting to sleep but stayed asleep once I got there. I feel fairly well rested, but I'm concerned about this evening, since night is when things start hitting harder.

Nap 27: 2013/8/18 12:00am

Was definitely starting to wear down as it came close to time. I fell asleep somewhat quickly and slept for the whole time.

Polyphasic Day 2

Nap 8: 2013/8/16 3:00am

Pavlina mentioned that he had better naps at night if he left a dim light on, so I thought I'd try that and see if I had any better results. I didn't have a dim light handy, though, so I just used the main room light even though it's pretty darn bright. I did sleep a bit better this time, but I don't know if I can attribute that to the light, yet. I fell asleep within a few minutes, but woke up once at exactly 15 mins in with the memory of some dream. I decided to try to sleep for the rest of the time, and fell asleep again quite quickly, sleeping through until the alarm.

I feel pretty tired at the moment, but really only as if I'd gotten myself up at 3am on any night. It doesn't feel as if I missed a night at all.

 Nap 9: 2013/8/16 6:00am 

I slept OK, had dreams. Didn't want to wake up. The previous 3 hours have been the toughest so far, and I came close to falling asleep during normal tasks. I think I'll go back to the hour-and-a-half thing, now that I'm actually feeling deprived and think it could work.

Nap 10: 2013/8/16 7:30am

Still very tired. I started getting cold a little after the above entry, even though it's 74F in here. I put on a flannel shirt.

Nap 11: 2013/8/16 9:00am

I started feeling a little more awake as day started, but took my nap as normal, of course. This is about the third time that I've woken up part way through feeling pretty alert. I went back to sleep until the alarm again. 

Nap 12: 2013/8/16 10:30am

Feeling much better. Even before this nap I was starting to feel like a human being again. Not sure if I'm starting to adapt, if the extra naps are just making me feel better, or if it's more to do with my regular circadian rhythm, but whatever the cause, I feel mucch more alert. I am, once again, surprised by this. My expectation had been for far more zombification and for far longer. At this point, I don't believe I'm over the hump, yet, and this evening will be the toughest time yet, but I guess I'm not sure.

Nap 13: 2013/8/16 12:00pm

Had a little troupble sleeping again. I'm feeling so generally awake that my mind just wasn't ready, I suppose. I'll drop the extra naps again (back to 3 hrs), and maybe bring them back if tonight is like last night.

Nap 14: 2013/8/16 3:10pm

As you can see, I got to this one late. That's the first time I've been late for a nap I intended to take. I did start feeling just a little bit... off at about 2:50, though I don't know if that's adaptation or just regular wear & tear.

Note that I say "off", not "tired". I wasn't feeling tired in the normal way that I usually do so, it was more like the day after sleeping after having pulled an all-nighter the previous night. I'm awake and not exactly tired, but definitely not all hunky dory, either. 

At any rate, I didn't feel like I was going to be able to sleep, but I definitely did. After probably 5 mins or so, I was asleep. I woke up on my own at only about 12 mins in (including the 5 to get to sleep), feeling refreshed (not completely refreshed, just better than before the nap). I decided that wasn't enough and I should go back to sleep, which was again quite easy, and I woke up with the alarm.

I'm not sure what I should do about the waking up mid-nap thing. I'm also not sure about the right length of a nap, or the fact that I don't seem to be dreaming as memorably as other polyphasic sleepers have reported. I definitely want to play around with the length of a nap to see what works best, but I figure it would be good to have some baseline first, and I'm not sure I'm there, yet. I think this evening's sense of well-being will be informative.

Nap 15: 2013/8/16 5:55pm 

Due to a social event I started a little early and shortened to 25 mins. Unfortunately, noise in the house made it difficult to sleep well. I fell asleep OK but was awakened 3 or 4 times and didn't fall back asleep instantly. Still feeling OK overall.

Nap 16: 2013/8/16 9:10pm

Fell asleep fairly quickly and slept fairly well, as far as I can tell. Didn't awaken in the middle, but felt groggy when the alarm went off. Don't have a whole lot to say.

Nap 17: 2013/8/17 12:05am

Starting to feel tired again. I expect at this point that I'll be going into zombie mode each night unless and until my body adapts a bit better.

Polyphasic Day 1

Day 1: 2013/8/15

So having stayed up all night, I'll be taking my first nap shortly. It's currently 10am, and I'll probably start the nap at 12 noon. I feel pretty much as I expected to -- I've been up pulling an all-nighter before, and so far the experience is, of course, exactly the same. I'm rather tired, and I feel that my faculties aren't what they should be, but I'm also not doing horribly. I'll log again after my first nap.

Nap 1: 2013/8/15 12:00pm

 It took a little while to fall asleep, and I don't have any memory of dreaming. I had set the alarm for 1/2 hr, and it probably took 5 min or so to sleep. I woke up pretty quickly, though, and don't feel too bad -- slightly better than when I went to bed.

Nap 2: 2013/8/15 1:45pm

I got to attempting the nap about 15 minutes late. I was feeling quite good, actually, awake and functioning (at least to my mind) as if I'd gotten a whole night's sleep the previous night. Regardless of the whys, however, I couldn't sleep. I laid in bed for about 5 minutes before I just couldn't handle the boredom anymore and got up.

Nap 3: 2013/8/15 3:00pm

It took a while to fall asleep again, but I did. Waking up from this nap was one of the hardest times I've had waking up in a while, and I'm guessing it's still going to get worse from here. I felt completely disoriented. In fact, I worried that I had somehow fallen asleep when I shouldn't, and it took a while even realize that an alarm wouldn't have woken me if that had been the case. I feel a little out of sorts, but really not bad, and I have the feeling that it might be like the first nap, where I felt better after I'd been awake for a while.

Nap 4: 2013/8/15 4:30pm

Didn't sleep well again. I expect that I probably did sleep some, but it felt like I was awake the whole time. I did wait the entire time, though.

Nap 5: 2013/8/15 6:00pm

Fell asleep in a reasonable amount of time. Woke up after less than 20 minutes instead of the timed (and alarmed) 30. Still feeling pretty good overall. I'm guessing it's more to do with body resilience and the ability to go for a day without sleep than to any kind of adaptation, yet.

Nap 6: 2013/8/15 9:00pm

I decided to punt on the extra naps and just do the long-term planned ones every 3 hours. The mid-term naps weren't working well, I didn't feel tired like I needed them, and I mostly just sat there. Nothing particularly interesting about this sleep -- still having a difficult time falling asleep, not really feeling well rested, but not feeling awful either. If I had to rate my current 'restfulness' on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is awake but only barely, I'd probably say 6 or so, which is better than I expected. It's also better than some of monophasic nights I've had.

Nap 7: 2013/8/16 12:00am

Still having lots of trouble falling asleep. I should mention that I normally fall asleep within a couple of minutes, so even 5 is a long time. For this nap I felt like I kept drifting in and out of light sleep, but that's all. I did have a couple of minor hallucinations (strange beeping noises) during the nap, too. I'm very surprised that I'm not falling asleep faster. Also, given that it's now past midnight, I'd think I'd be more tired than I am. Currently rating myself around a 4 (hallucinations notwithstanding), but I expect it to improve a little soon (I'm feeling groggiest just after I get up).

Obligitory Blog about Blogging

So I'm pretty new to the whole blogging thing. This is my first attempt ever, and I basically don't know what I'm doing. I'm obviously in the process of learning and discovering and trying things out, so if site design and layout changes don't be surprised.

I figured I'd leave this post here for people to add comments on elements of site design they'd like to see. If you do have a suggestion, I'm also interested in hearing ideas on how to implement it.

Polyphasic Sleep experiment

2013/8/14, start of Polyphasic Sleep Experiment

I am undertaking today an experiment on the limits and abilities of the human body in regards to sleep. Rather than rehash all of the details here, I'll just ask you to Google "polyphasic sleep" to get as much info as you want. Wikipedia, Steve Pavlina, and Piotr Wozniak probably offer the best information, though the Polyphasic Sleep Society is also pretty detailed. Suffice it for now to say that instead of sleeping a normal 7-8 hours a night, I'll be sleeping half-hour naps 8 times a day, with no big block of sleep at all.

It is currently Wednesday, and it is my final "normal" day, as I slept a standard monophasic night last night. I tend to be an early riser, generally getting up without an alarm sometime around 5:30 or 6am. Last night, however, I'd gotten to bed late, so I'm not surprised that I woke up at 7.

I feel a little groggy today, but not terrible. I normally have trouble truly feeling "awake", but don't have any frame of reference, so I'd call today just slightly under average as far as feeling good & rested.

Previous nights this week had been just a little earlier than average: 4:30-5:30 am. I can't pinpoint any particular reason for this, and don't recall feeling especially tired in the morning, though I definitely did feel tired around 10:30pm, when I usually start thinking about bed. I had a house guest this week, so that could account for some irregularity, though you'd think it would be in the opposite direction.

I'm undertaking polyphasic sleep primarily out of desire to do something different, coupled with intense curiosity. I've always hated sleep -- it just feels incredibly wasteful to me. I'm very interested to see if there are good alternatives. I've read through Wozniak's page as well as Pavlina's; they're clearly at odds with each other on what's possible (and I'll post links at some point).

At this point, I believe that I've got a good 98% chance of success. I don't buy that only 2% of the world can do it (nor certainly that no one can!). I've got a lot of positive things going for me -- a flexible work schedule, a supportive family, age & experience (36), and so on. I'm not a vegetarian like Pavlina was, nor am I completely self-employed, so it'll be interesting to see what the differences are, but I'm pretty sure I can do it if anyone can. I've got some questions about the science involved, but I don't think Wozniak really answered those, and I remain optimistic. 

I'm interested to see what I can accomplish with the extra hours. I have several things I've been wanting to do but putting off since I didn't feel like I had the time. Exercise, more thorough investing, writing a novel, writing a pen & paper RPG, learning Spanish and the piano, things like that. I haven't made a lot of headway before this, so if I don't now, either, I won't be horribly surprised or offended; I just think it'd be nice. A perk, so to speak -- the icing on the cake that is not having to waste my life asleep.

I'm attempting to focus myself more today, too. It's completely separate from my polyphasic trial, but I've been trying to figure out exactly what I want to accomplish in life and how I'm going to go about it. I'm not sure how clearly I'll be thinking for the next week or so, but after that I'm interested to know if I'll feel much different about my life's goals. 

I will be attempting the Uberman8 method. Pavlina writes that his biggest problem with continuing polyphasic was that it was so inflexible. I'm hoping that by using an 8-nap schedule (vs his 6) I'll be able to miss a nap here and there and not have much trouble. If it doesn't work out that way, I'll probably try switching to an Uberman6, just to get some of that same flexibility back, since napping every 3 hours is worse than every 4.

I've got my adaptation schedule mostly worked out. As everyone knows, adaptation is the most difficult part, and I've looked up everything I can on the subject. I'll be trying for the fast method: I'm kick-starting the process by staying awake all night tonight, forcing my body to be in deprivation mode earlier (and wasting less time in ineffectual naps before the body even attempts to adapt). Once I'm definitely deprived (around 30 hours, after a "second wind" and starting to feel tired again), I'll sleep at twice the rate I intend to keep to, meaning every hour and a half in my case. I'll be starting with 30m naps, though I understand that I'll likely need to shorten that as the body adapts. I intend to follow good sleep hygiene: no bright screens for 15 mins before a nap, eating something small and healthy immediately upon awakening, and so on. I'll probably need to look up lists of that stuff again -- my habits to this point have been decent but not perfect.

As mentioned, I don't think I'll fail, but I figure I should set limits regardless. It wouldn't be good to be a complete zombie forever more.

 Limit 1: My wife. She's supportive at present, but she's probably a better judge of overall sanity than I would be if I were actually insane. If she says she really doesn't want me doing this anymore because it's affecting my mind, I'll back off. I've asked her to give it a couple of weeks, though she still can pull the plug regardless.

 Limit 2: Two weeks. Pavlina said he started feeling better by the end of the first week. I'd like this to be a real test, so I want to go further than that, but one month is probably plenty. Still, if I'm not feeling good about it at two weeks, for whatever reason, I'll stop.

I kind of wish I'd spent more time logging how my sleep has been for the previous few weeks so I'd have something to compare with, but this is the right time logistically for me to get started, so I'm starting anyway. I'll write more before attempting my first nap, and probably after each nap for the first few days, or at least once a day. At present I'm writing to myself in a text file on Dropbox, but I intend to make a blog out of all of this at some point. Maybe in the wee hours tonight.

My understanding is that the most difficult thing to do is stay awake when you have nothing to do, so I'm going to find some computer game to get involved with, I think, to help force myself to stay up.