Polyphasic Sleeping June 2011
I have decided to have a second attempt at polyphasic sleeping. The last time I tried was about a year and a half ago. I jumped right in trying the Uberman schedule and quickly abandoned it. I was so grumpy within the first two days that I didn't even get close to becoming acclimated. Still though, the idea of polyphasic sleeping has been in my mind ever since I heard about it two years ago. I have wanted to try it out but things never seemed to mess together well enough. Now however, is a perfect time for another attempt.
Based on my first attempt I decided to try the Everyman schedule instead of the Uberman. Instead of only sleeping twenty minutes every four hours I will do that with the addition of a four hour block of sleep in the night. I reckon if I can acclimate myself to this schedule perhaps I will try for the Uberman in the future. For now I want to succeed and I hope that I will better be able to do that with this additional three hours and forty minutes of sleep.
The Beginning
My decision to try this again now was pretty spur of the moment. It was Tuesday the 14th of June and I was on a sail boat just north of Auckland. Polyphasic sleep resurfaced in my mind and I thought, “I'm going to start tomorrow!” So I did. In the evening I sat down with a paper and pen to figure out a suitable schedule and I was ready. I slept about seven hours that night, waking up at 6:30am on Tuesday. My first naptime is at 9:30. I am giving my myself an extra five minutes to relax and fall asleep. My first nap I didn't fall asleep. I simply wasn't tired and therefore could not fall asleep when it seemed like I had only just gotten up. I have heard that laying down and resting can be almost as good as sleeping. Also, I was informed last time that getting my body into the rhythm of the schedule is very important. Nap number two is at 13:30. This time I did manage to fall asleep. Nap number three is at 17:30. I am unsure whether or not I fell asleep. It didn't seem like I was asleep but it also didn't seem like I was awake. I think I was just somewhere in between. Nap number four is at 21:30. This time I was at the beginning of a game of Settlers of Catan. I had already told my game mates that I would be leaving though so they didn't mind. I quickly fell asleep and almost went back to sleep after the alarm went off. When my mind is muddled with sleep and my bed is warm there is small voice that tempts me back into sleep instead of doing the things that I really want to do. It is at these moments that I must find proper motivation to get out of bed. The thought of the chocolate bar I have in the kitchen did it for me. Funny thing is, even though the chocolate got me up, I ended up not even eating it. When I returned to the lounge I joined back into the game of Catan. When that game was over I ended up playing two more games. It was a good thing I had this to occupy my time because when 12:30 came around I getting pretty tired. It would have been a real struggle to stay awake if I wasn't having fun playing a board game with others. Finally it was 1:30 and I laid down for my four hours of sleep.
Day Two June 16
When my alarm went off at 5:30 I didn't get up immediately. There is often a little voice in my head that tells me the best thing to do when I wake up is go back to sleep. That is the voice of my being lazy and cozy in my warm bed, especially when it is cold out. Fortunately another part of my brain had more power, the part that knew I would be very disappointed if I gave up so quickly. I decided the best motivation for getting out of bed was cooking. I figured what I wanted to make and got to it. I really enjoy quiet mornings in the kitchen before other people get up, in particular when I am living somewhere with a lot of people. Baking pesimmon ginger scones at 6:00 while listening to The Mountain Goats is a great first morning. Again I didn't manage to fall asleep during nap number one but I was quickly sleeping when nap number two came around.
I'm sitting here watching the clock, waiting for the time to start nap four. It is still another 45 minutes away. I feel tired. When I awoke from nap three I felt fine. I did a bit of yoga, ate a nashi pear with tahini then headed to pizza night. I felt energetic, though my eyes did have a bit of tiredness in them. That was two hours ago. It isn't my body that feels tired, it is mostly in my eyes and a little in my thoughts. Nap three wasn't the most restful as it took a while to fall asleep then I had a startle response to a dream that woke me up. It was the same response that you get when you dream you're falling, but in my dream I hit my head on a large piece of wood. I did manage to go back to sleep, but shortly after my alarm went off. In conversation, I am not as attentive as I usually am; concentration seems to get difficult somewhere around the mid point between naps. I will now join some others in watching a movie for the next half hour before my nap.
Day Three June 17
I have found that it is best to have some sort of motivation to get up, otherwise I could easily keep sleeping, or at least stay laying there for a while. Chocolate has been a motivator, baking was a motivator now I just need to keep these going. One thing about my eating partners however are that I am finding I keep eating shortly before I sleep. When I am on a monophasic sleeping schedule I don't like to eat less than an hour before I go to bed. I'm not sure how I feel about napping with a full stomach. I'll have to monitor this more and decide what I want to do. The problem is that it takes a while to make food and do whatever else I get distracted by. So by the time I finally get around to eating, it is getting close to the next nap. I should think about preparing food prior to naps then eating when I wake up again. Perhaps this will be a good thing to do for motivation to get up as well!
A few people have asked me about dreaming. I dream almost every nap. Sometimes I start to dream before I am full asleep. It is a thing I have done for a long time. I will start to have crazy, strange thoughts that are more dreamlike than wakeful coherence. A few times I was having trouble quieting my mind to get to sleep when I starting having these dream thoughts. Unfortunately I realized what was happening, bringing my mind's attention to it and therefore waking myself up again. One dream I have had twice is that I am awake before my alarm goes off. Actually, I am unsure if I have dreamed this, both times, or if it actually happened.
Day Four June 18
I am a switching back and forth between mildly delirious, spacing out and being tired right now. I accidentally missed nap number one today. I was doing my wwoofer cleaning duties and neglected to set an alarm. Before I knew it, it was 45 minutes too late. So now I am just trying to occupy my time in order to make it till 13:30 for next nap.
Another sleep schedule that I would like to try is biphasic with a four hour core sleep then an hour and a half sleep half way through the day. I would have chosen that one instead of this schedule because it seems much more convenient in general. However, with rafting this summer there is no way I could manage that. I am crossing my fingers that the schedule I have arranged for myself now will be okay for the rafting world. The way I see it is at 9:30 I should be mostly done with breakfast and able to take a nap before putting on the river for the lower or I will be on the bus heading to the upper and it will be a perfect nap time. The 13:30 nap is the most tricky time because lunch will have to be timed properly. I could be in various places at 13:30. I am hoping that if I'm on a lower I'll be able to sleep at the lunch spot, maybe in my boat if I tie in beneath the some trees for shade. If I'm on the upper it is most likely I'll be back to camp, but on occasion we play for a while on the river. If I'm at camp I'll probably be cooking lunch. At 17:30 I'll be done working if I'm on the upper but if I'm on the lower the timing will probably be okay. I'll either be on the bus back to Lotus or already back in the midst of cooking dinner. I'll just have to make sure everyone I work with is okay with me running off for half an hour. I expect the toughest person to sell is going to be my brother John. I'll have to wait and see what happens when I get back.
I ended up pressing snooze therefore sleeping an extra ten minutes during nap number two. I was seven minutes late for nap number three. Which was okay because I feel like I fell asleep pretty quickly. I reckon once I get used to falling asleep quite quickly I'll shave the extra five minutes I give myself down to two or maybe just three. In the evening I went to a wedding party. This was the first time going out while trying to do polyphasic sleeping. I've been informed that drinking alcohol is not a good idea, therefore I am choosing not to drink... much. I really enjoy nice wines, and they had several nice wines available. It felt like such a bummer not to be able to try them, however I was also glad because with a free open and being a light weight I could have gotten drunk very easily. I don't like being drunk. I just like to enjoy a glass of wine. I ended up deciding to just have a tasting amount of one of the wines. The caterer misunderstood though and started the fill the glass, I had to stop him but it was already more than I wanted. I have this issue with wasting food, even alcohol, and that paired with the habit of drinking that I have in my hand was a bad mix to be my immediate situation. In the end I drank a bit more than I intended but I didn't finish the glass. I was proud of myself for that. Yeah, yeah it may not seem like a big accomplishment to you, but to me it was a very positive thing. So that happened at about 19:30. Nap number five was done in the car parked on the street outside the venue. It was easy to fall asleep and easy to wake up. Again, food was a motivator. I noticed the caterers were about to serve dessert as I was walking out. I asked them politely to put aside a serving for me and they had agreed. Bring on the tiny finger food dessert! Yum!
After the wedding party I still had a bit of time before my core sleep at 1:30. I ended up starting to watch a movie around midnight. It was such a good movie that I pressed snooze on my alarm reminding me to get ready for bed. I looked at the clock again at exactly 1:30. I hurried brushed my teeth and hit the hay at 1:34. The day had a few hang ups, but I'm not doing too bad I think.
