Adjusting to polyphasic sleep is fun. By fun, I mean it's like being repeatedly poked in the eye with a knitting needle.
It's pretty obvious that the best way to start a polyphasic schedule is to block off two weeks, minimum. This would allow time to properly adjust, fine tune your schedule and avoid any consequences if you oversleep.
Take, for example, the events of Wednesday. On the verge of sleep, a housemate slammed a door, interrupting my 11AM snooze. Unable to fall asleep, I was a complete zombie at work. Rather than risk falling asleep at my desk, I decided to drink a strong cup of coffee. Then another. Then another.
This is a fairly effective method of staying awake after a missed nap. It's also a great way to make sure you can't sleep for the next 8 hours. I crashed so hard that I fell asleep sitting in a lounge chair at around 3AM, awaking to my phone ringing at 9:15AM - Apparently I was 15 minutes late for a meeting.
Not everything's been so dark and gloomy. This week I've had several semi-lucid dreams. I'm also starting to notice some time dilation during my naps, particularly the 11AM.
The biggest issue at the moment is falling asleep during the 5PM snooze. At best I drift off into a semi-sleep trance. I'm hoping that taking a small dose of melatonin before this nap will help my body adjust to sleeping at this time.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep - Days 5 & 6
Sick of sleeping through my alarm, I decided to make it near impossible to oversleep.
Nearly, but not completely impossible.
I found a cool website, http://www.nakedalarmclock.com, which offers a free online alarm clock. I loaded this onto my eeePC and put it on the top of my wardrobe, accessible only by ladder or standing on a chair.
Turns out my laptop has a very short battery life.
After three days of consistently oversleeping during my 5:00 AM nap, I've decided to change to a more flexible schedule. Instead of 4 evenly spaced 2 hour naps throughout the day, I will take a 20 minute nap at 11:00, 17:00 and 22:00, plus a 3 hour "core sleep" at 3:00 AM (commonly referred to as the "Everyman Schedule"). While not quite as dramatic (or insane) as the "Dymaxion Schedule", the extra sleep will allow for an easier transition period. While I would still like to attempt Dymaxion sleep, it would require an extra week or two away from work; something which I don't think my boss would be too happy with.
At the moment I'm fairly confident I can maintain the Everyman schedule, with the possibility of chipping away at the core sleep in the future.
Nearly, but not completely impossible.
I found a cool website, http://www.nakedalarmclock.com, which offers a free online alarm clock. I loaded this onto my eeePC and put it on the top of my wardrobe, accessible only by ladder or standing on a chair.
Turns out my laptop has a very short battery life.
After three days of consistently oversleeping during my 5:00 AM nap, I've decided to change to a more flexible schedule. Instead of 4 evenly spaced 2 hour naps throughout the day, I will take a 20 minute nap at 11:00, 17:00 and 22:00, plus a 3 hour "core sleep" at 3:00 AM (commonly referred to as the "Everyman Schedule"). While not quite as dramatic (or insane) as the "Dymaxion Schedule", the extra sleep will allow for an easier transition period. While I would still like to attempt Dymaxion sleep, it would require an extra week or two away from work; something which I don't think my boss would be too happy with.
At the moment I'm fairly confident I can maintain the Everyman schedule, with the possibility of chipping away at the core sleep in the future.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep - Days 3 & 4
I'm starting to develop a love / hate relationship with sleep.
Day three was utterly depressing. After having a few drinks with some friends visiting from out of town the night before, it was both difficult to fall asleep and excruciating to wake up. Between 7 and 9 AM I was unable to focus on anything for more than about 30 second. After this my vision started to slide out of focus and started seeing double. By 9:30 I actually started falling asleep while standing. Oddly enough, each of these half-second "micro sleeps" gave me about 30 seconds of mental clarity, before drifting off again. By this point it was pretty obvious that going to pass out and / or crack my skull open on the floor, so I called it a night (figuratively speaking) and slept from 9:45 to 11:45.
Day 4 was a dramatic improvement. While I did oversleep from 5:00 - 8:30 AM, this was because my sleep starved mind had decided that I had somehow set my alarm clock incorrectly and the only solution was to turn it off and have a quick snooze (only for five minutes, of course). Besides this hiccup, day 4 was far more enjoyable. Each nap produced vague dreamish images, indicating that I was finally starting to achieve REM sleep during naps.
I think I've finally devised a foolproof alarm system, which should put a stop to these extended naps. More details to come...
Day three was utterly depressing. After having a few drinks with some friends visiting from out of town the night before, it was both difficult to fall asleep and excruciating to wake up. Between 7 and 9 AM I was unable to focus on anything for more than about 30 second. After this my vision started to slide out of focus and started seeing double. By 9:30 I actually started falling asleep while standing. Oddly enough, each of these half-second "micro sleeps" gave me about 30 seconds of mental clarity, before drifting off again. By this point it was pretty obvious that going to pass out and / or crack my skull open on the floor, so I called it a night (figuratively speaking) and slept from 9:45 to 11:45.
Day 4 was a dramatic improvement. While I did oversleep from 5:00 - 8:30 AM, this was because my sleep starved mind had decided that I had somehow set my alarm clock incorrectly and the only solution was to turn it off and have a quick snooze (only for five minutes, of course). Besides this hiccup, day 4 was far more enjoyable. Each nap produced vague dreamish images, indicating that I was finally starting to achieve REM sleep during naps.
I think I've finally devised a foolproof alarm system, which should put a stop to these extended naps. More details to come...
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Polyphasic Sleep - Day 2
Fuck.
$5.00 supermarket timers , while cheap, are not very loud. They also shut themselves off after a minute.
Today I slept from 5:00 - 9:30. While not a major setback, this will probably put me back by roughly one day. As of writing I'm not feeling too bad, though I'm fairly certain this will change soon.
Today I slept from 5:00 - 9:30. While not a major setback, this will probably put me back by roughly one day. As of writing I'm not feeling too bad, though I'm fairly certain this will change soon.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Polyphasic Sleep - Day 1
Today marked the start of my polyphasic endeavour. Due to a lack of sleep over the Christmas period, there's been no noticeable increase of fatigue... Yet. Naps have been taken at 2:00, 5:00, 11:00, 17:00 and 23:00. For most of those naps I slept 5-10 minutes at most, though I suspect that falling asleep will not be an issue over the coming days. Day one felt pretty easy, though I think two and three will be the most hellish.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Polyphasic Sleep
Some people pledge to lose weight. Others decide to give up smoking. For my New Years resolution, I'm giving up sleep.
Well, not quite.
Polyphasic sleep is the act of breaking up sleep into small chunks throughout the day. The aim is to sleep fewer hours without suffering through ungodly sleep deprevation. This is achieved by shortening the time required for the body to enter REM sleep. The body typically travels through 5 stages of sleep (stage 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM) , with stage 1 being the lightest and stage 4 the heaviest. It's during REM sleep that the body heals itself and dreams occur.
By starving the body of sleep for several days, it is forced to adapt and enter the REM cycle within a few minutes of falling asleep. By napping for 20-30 minutes every several hours, it is possible to sleep for 2-3 hours a day.
The biggest problem people face when trying to adopt a polyphasic schedule is the adaptation period. For three or four days the body is deprived of vital REM sleep, causing severe fatigue. After the first few days, the body must catch up on missed sleep and pay back the accumulated "sleep debt".
After the inital adaptation, the second issue facing the potential polyphaser is the scheduling of naps. While there is some wiggle room, naps must generally be taken on time, every time. Missing a nap or oversleeping can cause fatigue which lasts for a full day and is potentially disasterous during the adaptation period (requiring the whole adaptation to be started from scratch).
I will be attempting polyphasic sleep from the 27th of December. I have 8 days off of work, which will (should) allow me to adapt without needing to use my brain too heavily. Initially, I'm going to try a modified version of the dymaxion schedule, taking a total of 5 30 minute naps at 2AM, 5AM, 11AM, 5 PM and 11PM.
For the first week I will post daily video updates of my sleep deprived hell. I will also post blog updates for the first fortnight and use twitter to post my naps times for a month. My goal is to convert to polyphasic sleep (and survive) for three months.
This is going to be interesting.
Well, not quite.
Polyphasic sleep is the act of breaking up sleep into small chunks throughout the day. The aim is to sleep fewer hours without suffering through ungodly sleep deprevation. This is achieved by shortening the time required for the body to enter REM sleep. The body typically travels through 5 stages of sleep (stage 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM) , with stage 1 being the lightest and stage 4 the heaviest. It's during REM sleep that the body heals itself and dreams occur.
By starving the body of sleep for several days, it is forced to adapt and enter the REM cycle within a few minutes of falling asleep. By napping for 20-30 minutes every several hours, it is possible to sleep for 2-3 hours a day.
The biggest problem people face when trying to adopt a polyphasic schedule is the adaptation period. For three or four days the body is deprived of vital REM sleep, causing severe fatigue. After the first few days, the body must catch up on missed sleep and pay back the accumulated "sleep debt".
After the inital adaptation, the second issue facing the potential polyphaser is the scheduling of naps. While there is some wiggle room, naps must generally be taken on time, every time. Missing a nap or oversleeping can cause fatigue which lasts for a full day and is potentially disasterous during the adaptation period (requiring the whole adaptation to be started from scratch).
I will be attempting polyphasic sleep from the 27th of December. I have 8 days off of work, which will (should) allow me to adapt without needing to use my brain too heavily. Initially, I'm going to try a modified version of the dymaxion schedule, taking a total of 5 30 minute naps at 2AM, 5AM, 11AM, 5 PM and 11PM.
For the first week I will post daily video updates of my sleep deprived hell. I will also post blog updates for the first fortnight and use twitter to post my naps times for a month. My goal is to convert to polyphasic sleep (and survive) for three months.
This is going to be interesting.
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