Tuesday Morning ( Oversleep )

4:00 am nap & 8:00 am nap

I guess I start with that my set up is wrong. Im spending too much time on nice bouncy sofa’s in my house which lure me to sleep. After waking from my 4:00am nap on Tuesday Morning I just went back to sleep, I woke up about 5 hours later due to someone phoning me. For the next 6-9 hours I just fell in and out of micro-sleep. I wasted the entire day, what a shame.

Needless to say, I’m not disappointed at all, I haven’t heard of anyone who has adapted to a schedule and not overslept, and since ( apparently ) no-one has adapted to Dymaxion, I don’t think I can be blamed… yet.

Before the oversleep, I lived in my living room, with the TV and Sofa’s, I have now changed base to my Dining Room where we will attack on the eastern boarder it is much easier to stay awake on horrible wood chairs which had some form of padding in the stone age, when my parents were born.

Tuesday Afternoon

4:00 pm nap & 8:00 pm nap

Slept through these because of the total f**king dope I am.

Wednesday Morning

4:00 am nap & 8:00 am nap

Due to the useless oversleep, I knew trying to nap at 4:00 would be useless so I stayed up, Instead I watched the movie “Inside Man”, “The Hot Chick” and “Its a Boy Girl Thing” ( Shut up, alright movie. ). After that I managed to sleep for my 8:00am nap, I don’t recall feeling tired at all. I just hope the oversleep did not lose what progress I made over the past few days.

Tiredness: 3 ( Oversleep didn’t help much )

Performance: 9

Willpower: 9.5 ( ahem )

Doubt: 3.5 ( Cannot say an oversleep does raise some doubts about success )

Zombification: 0

Sleep Deprivation: 1 ( Feel tired but not sleep deprived )

Wednesday Afternoon

4:00 pm nap & 8:00 pm nap

The 4:00 pm nap was rather interesting, my friends thought it would be a laugh to invite the entire polish community into my house, literally 30 seconds after I laid down to nap I hear a rampaging gang of ravaged girls fly into my house. This was my first nap with any kind of social problem involved, not that I did anything to fix it… I didn’t care : ) – Oh, I also found myself becoming increasingly tired in the final 30 minutes towards my nap, I hope this is a sign of adaption and not one of get-your-ass-of-the-sofa.

8:oo pm nap I almost missed, I noticed the clock with two minutes to go, so I raced upstairs, did the alarm and slept, which I managed to do. I was rather tired when I woke up, it took my about 20 minutes to feel awake…

Tiredness: 4

Performance: 7.5

Willpower: 9.5

Doubt: 3

Zombification: 1

Sleep Deprivation: 3

Oh, dont worry my already crap blog becomes crapper, I dont exactly re-read what I type, I never did before, but I do it less now im adapting.

^ No sense ^

Commento! Complimento! Insulto Meo! Leavo Commento’s!

Fin.

Monday Morning

4:00am nap:

The two hours before this nap were hard, I had a small headache from Sleep Deprivation which stopped me doing anything mental, even playing a game or watching a movie was not possible. With not much Physical Stuff to do it was a very long and boring two hours. When I finally slept I got to sleep pretty quickly, within minutes. Waking up was also fairly easy.

Monday Morning

8:00am nap:

Without a doubt the worst I have ever felt, in terms of Sleep Deprivation. I always found the later morning hours the hardest, mostly to do with the coldness. However this was horrible, my eyes were shutting slowly, if I tried to look at something for more than a few seconds, my eyes would unfocus and begin to hurt. Through that might be because I haven’t taken my contacts out for ages/way to much screens.

I fell asleep in about 1-15 minutes, which could explain why waking up was so bad.

Oh I almost forgot what the f**k happened troll? I woke up from my nap, I remember that, next thing I know I’m standing halfway across the room dropping a full can of Ginger Beer onto the carpet. Now this freaks me the f**k out as I have no recall to how a Ginger Beer got into my hand. I was very robotic cleaning it up, I hardly remember going to the kitchen and getting stuff to wipe it up…

Tiredness: 5

Performance: 7

Willpower: 6

Doubt: 4

Zombification: 5

Sleep Deprivation: 5

Monday Afternoon

4:00pm nap:

Similar to the same nap time on Sunday, the setting of my bedroom made it harder to wake. However it did give me a higher quality of sleep I’m sure. I still only need the single alarm even through I use both to make sure.

Monday Afternoon

8:00pm nap:

You can see below the large difference between how I felt after my last nap and how I felt after the 8:00am morning one. Mornings are defiantly not my strong point. Guess thats why they call it adaption… – I actually feel only slightly Sleep Deprived, infact I think I feel how I did monophasically. The bad news is the little Sleep Headache I had has developed into a nagging pain.

Tiredness: 1

Performance: 9

Willpower: 10

Doubt: 1

Zombification: 2

Sleep Deprivation: 2

Cat

A bit off-topic here, but I looked in my garage and saw the cutest furry little bastard ever, seriously, this kitten demands “awww” from everyone. I have no idea where it came from, I might keep it. Will post pics if its still there tomorrow.

Fin.

Perhaps I am exaggerating at the moment, but at the precise moment of typing, I’m sitting in my chair feeling 100% awake and just like I woke up from a great nap. The strange things is, I have not had any REM sleep since Friday. However I think I may have had a little amount at one of the below naps, but I need to have more naps to see if its true. In a way I’m a little annoyed, I want to feel extreme sleep deprivation that a sign my body is adapting. Then again, as I mentioned im sitting upright in my chair and that could all turn around to feeling tired if I slouch a few inche’s. Ouch. Im not sure whenever to view the experience as positive or negative. : )

Off topic fact: By pure luck, when refreshing the website statistics, I managed to land on 666 views and 777 views. Woo.

In anticipation of possible sudden tiredness and low willpower, I have two alarms, both places opposite ends of the room. Its fool prove, only an idiot could fail to wake up.

Sunday Morning

4:00am nap:

Not too bad, I only used Jesus Clock for this. The act of walking behind a sofa to hunt it down was enough to wake me. I don’t recall getting much sleep however. I was awake for probably 15 minutes trying to get to sleep. Some 80’s version of Scrubs was on, I really want to know what it was – it looked amazing. Anyway, pretty simple stuff.

Tiredness: 3

Performance: 8

Willpower: 9

Doubt: 1

Zombification: 2

Sleep Deprivation: 2

Yup, stats have gone down/got better.

Sunday Morning

8:00am nap:

Took maybe 8 minutes to get to sleep… I recall a strange feeling of waking up out of a dream to my alarm. However I cannot be sure it was REM sleep or some kind of limbo state. It got my hopes up, and still does. It took a bit longer also to wake back up completely, about 10 minutes. I find hot chocolates help rather alot. The hours after the 8:00 am nap till midday are always the hardest.

Tiredness: 3

Performance: 8

Willpower: 8

Doubt: 2

Zombification: 3

Sleep Deprivation: 3

Sunday Afternoon

4:00pm nap:

This nap was a little harder than the rest. I had a friend around in the day and we were playing xbox in the room I sleep on the sofa. So I went upsatirs back to my bed. Remembering my last experiance ( horrible waking up ) I had the genius idea of using two alarms, only a super idiot could foil such a plan. It definitely worked however, I didn’t really need the second alarm, and I turned them both off after waking up to one. No REM sleep. I remember lieing down for two minutes thinking I’m never going to get to sleep when suddenly I’m awake via my alarm : )

Tiredness: 3

Performance: 7

Willpower: 7

Doubt: 3

Zombification: 3

Sleep Deprivation: 3

Sunday Afternoon

8:00pm nap:

The aftershock/tiredness after the nap was about 15 minutes, but after that, I felt fine, really good in fact. I didn’t hit REM sleep, I just think the maybe the Jesus Clock has done something. It took only a few minutes to fall asleep, because the clocks turned back an hour it was dark even before I had the nap – so not warm glow to lure me back to sleep. Not that it could : )

Tiredness: 2

Performance: 9

Willpower: 10

Doubt: 1

Zombification: 2

Sleep Deprivation: 2

I feel that if I’m adapting, I’m adapting well, and if I’m not, I’m failing badly. Even with the massive amounts of people sure I would fail, I actually see a glimmer of success at the end of the tunnel. A few days may not be enough to give it a full theory of success, but its a start! I’m glad I started this blog, pretty damn amazing idea.

I did experiance that elavated feeling, it felt like nothing was blocking my thoughts, no voices etc. Maybe its my imagination.

Fin.

Ok so it is Saturday, no… Sunday, a few things to tell you : )

Record Times

Instead of giving you a record of how I feel after every nap I will do it every 12 hours, and the record will be how I felt after I had woken from that 8:00am/pm nap. This is because my schedule is like “two pairs” (maybe I should call it The Two Pair Schedule?), two lots of 4:00 and 8:00 nap times, I feel it makes more sense in some strange way to do it this way.

Saturday Morning

4:00am nap:

This one was rather easy, I woke up fine, took about 5-6 minutes to feel better, I seemed to be thinking alot “should I go get something to eat” etc but not actually doing anything. Interesting stuff. In terms of sleep I probably got about 5 minutes at the end. No dreams, no REM.

8:00am nap:

Its interesting, I found this nap harder. I remember checking the clock and seeing it had been 15 minutes past and I had done nothing, I got no sleep on this nap. I also found it harder to wake up, as I had dimmed the lights in my room. Bad Idea that. A problem I worked out with these naps was clothes, I have to sleep in full clothes otherwise at early morning hours its just damn too cold to do anything. I also experianced a “high”, I felt elavated but not tired. Im curious to if it will happen again.

Tiredness: 3

Performance: 7

Willpower: 10

Doubt: 2

Zombification: 1

Sleep Deprivation: 2

Saturday Afternoon

4:00 pm nap & 8:00 pm nap:

I must group these together as I cant remember much about them, I do however, remember that they were the hardest so far. I did sleep in my bed this time, my room also has new curtains, and the sun shining through the red gave it a warm glow. Not what I need. From now on I am sleeping downstairs, on the sofa. My willpower was reduced, but not by much : D (Ohh that stats are building up! Better just grind it through the pain ( ahem picture cue ) )

Tiredness: 4

Performance: 7

Willpower: 8

Doubt: 3

Zombification: 3

Sleep Deprivation: 3

My Jesus Clock is doing a fine job, I just put it at the foot of my sofa and let it run to the furthest corner of the room, its enough to wake me… for now. I find even something little like sitting up fully in my comfy chair to talk to people ( such as aegean, who provides great chat : ) ) makes it so much easier, its the little things that count.

I also seem to be using Twitter more now I have time to.. tweet.

Fin.

Seriously, I only do this to avoid Vampire Cat.

Hey : ) Today is the day! Last night was my last time im sleeping more than 30 minutes at anyone time. From now on its positive thinking, 4 naps a day and 120 minutes sleep! I cant say im not excited I have been counting down the says for some time to see if I could be the first person to adapt to a Custom Dymaxion Sleep Schedule! On terms with the topic title, please comment and tell me, even if it is a “yes” or “no” whenever you think I will do this! Since either answer inspires me… *poke*

Jesus Clock

Clocky, the alarm we all know came on the 20th, I have used it to wake up 5 times, and its pretty damn effective. I generally seem to be able to turn it off before it runs and hides. The true test however, will be 3 days in when im sleep deprived.

Sleep Deprivation

A topic which must be blogged about, I am scared and thoughtful to when im going to hit REM sleep. The longest I have stayed awake is actually only about 30 hours ( God, the odds are stacking up, I haven’t even practised napping ). I reckon its safe to say im not going to be hitting REM for at least 80 hours, probably more. If you have anymore numbers to chuck at me, leave a comment.

I do reckon I can stay awake for at least two days simply internet/Xbox – after that I imagine the real struggle will begin. I just hope my willpower doesn’t go all traitor on me. ( Yeah, im just finding excuses to put cats in )

Notation

I decided that each blog post will contain a record, 0-10 of my Tiredness, Performance, Willpower, Sleep Deprivation, Doubts and Zombification. I will make sure each and every nap is documented for the twelve days.

Why?

I was speaking to some people today about Polyphasic sleep, and they didn’t seem to grasp the concept of a extra 6-8 hours a day, and thus they asked me why I was doing this. Im in this for the long term, so the biggest reason is time, the extra months will quickly add to years and to decades on top of other people. We dont have a huge amount of time on this planet and so every second of it should count.

First Nap – 4:00 – 4:30pm

Due to various complicated stuff which no-one understands, my 3:30 naps are moving to 4:00, so I have a 7 and a half hours between my 8:00 and 4:00, and 3 and a half hours between the 4:00 and 8:00. Its rather contridictoy that I choose Dymaxion because the nap gaps were longer than uberman – ah damn.

Tiredness: 0

Performance: 10

Willpower: 10

Doubt: 1

Zombification: 0

Sleep Deprivation: 0

The 1 doubt comes from the few minutes after everyone wakes up and you’re halfway, in limbo – at that moment I feel like I might not be able to do it, however that goes after 5 minutes : ) Im not Tired, Performance is fine, good Willpower : ) No Sleep Deprivation, no Zombie.. yet.

Second Nap – 8:00 – 8:30pm

See above, sorry but nothing has changed : )

Fin

Just remember everyone to use the polyphasic forum and the polyphasic chat at freenodes, alot of great people there who will help you if your interested in adapting.

Erayd reading my emails.

Damn I dropped my Rubix Cube! Anyway, I would like to thank everyone who re-visits the blog. For example Erayd, who is the Most Active Little Bastard, Evar! A thank you to him for reading my posts and dropping comments ( as should you )! But thats not all, thanks to everyone who enjoys my posts, revisits, subscribed to the feed, commented in the Zoklet Thread I posted my blog in and just generally a big thank you to you all. Webblesite stastistics show that 70% of you trolls actually revisit and read more of my cr*p. On average each person will click on 7 pages, so stastically new vistors will read several of my posts!

So yeah thanks all around.

Forum

A new polyphasic forum is rising above the waves to conquer the land. This forum is run by Nick ( or Nicky ) – who clearly prosesses more programming knowledge than God did when he coded the universe. It is the only polyphasic forum I know that has active staff. Sign up! The site also features a world map listing your fellow polyphasic sleepers and a ( in progress ) on-site blog system, a unique selling point to attractive the ravenous hordes of starved REM sleepers.

Heh, so witty. Here is a link to the forum.

Effects

While in my decades of research – I found various debate on the effects after adapting to a polyphasic sleep schedule. I talked to a fellow polypasic user called Hunner ( who is currently adapting, as you read and I type ) You can visit his blog here…. ( but he is more active in the chat ) here are some stuff he said:

Qhost: I was already feeling the sinking feeling by the end of day one this time around

What happens to everyone in the Adaption Period.

The sinking feeling is the feeling you get moments after lying down for a nap as your brain quickly shuts off. It’s like how you fall asleep slowely over 30 minutes normally, and compressed into 30 seconds

It’s unlike any feeling you have monophasically, and so good

the opposite is when you come fully awake in about 30 seconds for seemingly no reason at all, and then your alarm goes off. It feels like I’m floating up from water until my face breaks the surface and I breath again

The thing pdk said about how your mind feels clear of all the voices that prattle on in your head all day and you don’t notice until they’re gone on poly… that’s true

Wow? Are you not impressed troll? Im fasinated by this “sinking” and “rising” feeling you experiance, I think it would be worth adapting just to experiance such a feeling. Also about the voices, I dont feel there are voices prattling in my head like some old grannys chatting about the weather, but again, it would be very interesting to see if this applies to me!

Short post, but amusing none the less.

Fin.

What about your puzzles?

If you read yestardays post, you would see I was talking about going into town to buy puzzles to keep me active.. I asked some friends and classmates where I could find such a shop in Wells ( thats right, my hometown is where they filmed Hot Fuzz.. woo! ) -- and they clearly has no idea as they ended up pointing me very kindly to a estate agents, a photography shop and a beauty salon.

After selling my house, having my photo taken and my nails done, I realised they were wrong, and thus no puzzles. Im sure the mighty power of the rubix cube will keep me occupied : ) Intill I go all “pew pew pew”…

Other Stuff

Well, three days to go!… -- its annoying as Halloween is 7-8 odd days in the adpation period, and I cant go to any of the two-three parties I was asked too : (. I would lie if I said I wasn’t getting more and more excited, I think the sheer amount of people behind me, the sheer amount of people against me, the preperation and hundereds of hours I have spent thinking and mentally preparing will make me immune from failure. ( Yeah, I say this now, ask me in 10 days ) Those against me generally have invalid arguments and are subjected to the picture on the right > ( Must mention in not talking about any Polyphasic Bloggers/Chat here, they are great, informative people -- they know a lot more than I do -- im referring to other sources : ) )

I also decided to add a twitter widget to the right, as you can see it displays the latest 5 tweets from my twitter. Feel free to follow me on it. I imagine my posts will be more “Uuuuuuuuug, Nuuurrrrrrmmmpppphhh” As I get further into the adaption period. Haha hehe.

Reports

I think it would be a good idea to, while in the adaption period, to rate various attributes: (example)

Tiredness: 8

Sluggishness: 5

Performance: 3

Willpower: 7

Or something like that.

Feel free to asks questions/comment/contact me : )

Fin.

And im doing Dymaxion.. ooo

Phew, now thats out the way, I would be happily to tell you I have brought the Jesus Clock, if you want to read more about this f**king annoying alarm, read my post here! The estimated delivery is 22-26 october, not that helpful if it comes on the 26th however : )

Doubts!?

I cant say I dont have doubts, when I got up this morning, I was tired in the shower and I was thinking “how the hell am I going to do dymaxion!?” – Then I remember the decades of living ontop of everyone else, and those thoughts go way out the window : )

On the otherhand, other peoples reactions have been interesting, on Zoklet they have ranged from good:

” This is super interesting, I’ll try to keep up with the blog for sure! I’m interested in how your body will handle the shock of so radically changing your sleep patterns, and how long it will take you to adapt to the routine. ” ~ a good comment

To..

” despite working full time and going to school in the evenings, i can actually do this uberman thing. the naps would fit into my schedule fairly well…too bad IT DOESNT F**KING WORKKKKKk ” ~ Way to go on thinking positive!

Wait a second Troll, “I can actually do this uberman thingy” … “too bad it doesn’t work” – So you can do something which cannot be done, whoa!

And back to good again:

” Gots to give our man Qhost major props for this experiment. He is going above and beyond for the benefit of all mankind. Or at least Zoklet. And remember, Qhost VOLUNTEERED for this mission. He is OUR guinea pig. ”

Its funny ’cause its true.

In the Polyphasic Chat room, alot of opinions have been voiced have been said to me, from suggestions to try Uberman, to “DONT DO DYMAXION”. But an equal number of people are spuring me on, maybe they just want to see what happens and not care for my wellbeing : (

Puzzles

Tomorrow ill be going into town to look for puzzles ( the puzzle kind, not the jigsaws ). Ill probably post what I find. I already have some to keep me active.

Peu

Im also hosting a blog for Peu4000 on my site here – Be sure to check it out, its new but hopefully he will use it more : )

4 more days to go, its approaching : ) Make sure you subscribe to the feed, comment and re-visit!

Fin.

I just got word from another polyphasic blogger that would like to contribute to the Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping news feed (see correspondence below).

Qhost will be attempting to adjust to the Dymaxion Sleep Schedule. Check out his blog here:
http://theworldandi.co.uk/category/polyphasic/

Correspondence with Qhost

From: Qhost
Date: Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 3:33 AM
Subject: Also.. : )
To: jorel314@gmail.com

I would love to be entered into your feed, I made a “Polyphasic” cat and moved my posts into there : )

Sorry for the double email : )

PS – I will also be trying to adapt to The Batman Sleep when I get a longer holiday : )

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

And thats what this post is about, waking up/methods to get me on my ass for another 6 hours.

First, alarm clocks. Since my normal alarm clock couldn’t wake me up, I need something which would wake Jesus up after the romans photoshopped him to the cross. Infact, I think I probably found the alarm clock which raised him from the dead. But first look at this:

This, troll, is a Sony ICFC318S Clock Radio – I dont know why they added the entire numerical system and alphabet in its name, and I dont care. This Clock has dual alarms, which has the great advantage of setting one to go off when I want, and when I turn it off in a zombified manner, the second alarm can go off two minutes later. Very useful.

However I have looked at Sonys website and Amazon, and nothing talks about battery life or power, I assume it then runs of Greyfox’s magic power. Since I dont have that, I have found a better clock which I MAY choose. It would cost me £20 pounds and is the Jesus Clock.

Its called the Jesus Clock because only something this f**king annoying and totally f**king cute would wake Jesus from the dead. Its “offical name” is the “Clocky Alarm Clock”. And this cute bastard looks like this:

Cutest Little

Electronic Bastard

Evar!

• Clocky is the alarm clock that runs the f**k away and hides to make sure that you are in the worst possible mood.
• After you hit the snooze button, Clocky flys into your face with a flying headbutt rolls off your nightstand and wheels randomly around the bedroom, looking for a hiding place.
• After one to 9 minutes your choice, Clocky’s alarm goes off again – and it won’t turn off until you get out of bed and find the bastard..

I actually remember watching an advert on this, I found it again, seriously I think Steven Spielberg dropped the Saving Private Ryan sequel and directed this. You can actually see it moving and doing stuff here.

I may do another post later about the chosen alarm clock.

I did a bit of research and found some more methods that can help me wake up. These include putting the alarm on the other side of the room. Have a drink of water to splash/then drink after I wake up. Mint gum to chew, somehow that helps, something I can get straight into – such as leaving my laptop on so I can wake myself up by umm.. blogging.

At this exact moment in time its 12 minutes to midnight. Im waiting for it to hit 00:00 so its the next day, then I shall post.

Because I can.

Fin.

Cutest Furry Little Basterd, Evar!

What the f**k – read this troll:

Q. How much sleep does the average person need?
A. The average person needs 7-8 hours a night, but it differs for every person. Some people may need as much as 10 hours a night and others need much less. If you sleep longer on the weekends than during the week, you probably aren’t getting the sleep you need every night.

More like “The average dumbass” – I secretly laugh when I see this response, just like I laugh when I hear people say “I need to catch up on my sleep” – it is amazing how people stick strictly too the “Oh my gawd, I need 8 hours sleep every night for evar and evar and evar, science sayz so”… Where there is no evidence that we actually need the other 4 stages of sleep ( the one we spend 80% or so in our sleep lifes ). People say living only on REM sleep is dangerous as the body produces chemicals/what not it needs while we sleep monophasically in the other stages of sleep.

Second Cutest Furry Little Bastard, Evar!

However, Polyphasic sleepers have reported a craving for grape juice (and grapes), its theorised that much of what we need in sleep can be gained from grape juice, I look forward to seeing if such applies to yours truly.

As no-one has really documented this, I hope I can contribute some truth onto these problems, time will tell.

Troll, I got my first comment today, and it said:

“I’m not sure why you would want to do this, sleep is nice! You will just end up feeling like shit all the time. ~ Shrike”

A valid comment. This shows at least 100% of everyones reactions when I tell them about this. They just automatically attribute less sleep with feeling crap. I once explained to my friend for 10 minutes about REM sleep and sleep cycles. He still doesn’t understand.

I would also mention, I do check comments ( after approving them) – so if you ask a question I will answer.

Also a thanks to Shrike, for havng a awesome name – and able to post the first comment without shouting “FIRST!11!ONE!”

cc photo by Ibrahim Iujaz

The following have been added to the list of current polyphasic bloggers.

- “randallCbennett[dot]com” by Randall C. Bennett
- “Growing Happiness” by Marlina
- “unlikelysquiggle” by Leigh T Cooper
- “Br. David Klecker” by Br. David Klecker O.Cist
- “Steve & Thoughts” by Steve Torpey
- “icasm” by zecqi
- “Puppies & Ponies” by Clutch
- “Francesco Georg’s Blog” by Francesco Georg
- “TendoMentis Projects” by Nick
- “greenGuru” by greenGuru

The following have been removed due to inactivity (no polyphasic posts for more than 1 month) or explicitly mentioning they are no longer blogging about polyphasic sleep.

- “La fabrique des idées” by Boreale (long term, French)
- “Becoming Überman” by Matt Brandt
- “Nisrak’s Polyphasic Sleep Blog” by Nirsak
- “Hexadecaphasic Sleep” by gill
- “Polyphasic Wonderland” by Robert
- “Polyphasic in San Francisco” by Elizabeth
- “Carolee Flatley” by Carolee Flatley
- “Larry’s posterous” by Larry Nichols

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

However, this "recipe" is my own, and I’m rather proud of it.  I call it "People who don’t like Brussels-sprouts will like these" Brussels-sprouts; and as a bonus, there’s a nearly-identical version called "People who don’t like asparagus will like these" asparagus.  It is, as you’d expect from someone like me, who has little time and less kitchen-skill, stupidly easy.  But it is also delicious, as you’d expect from someone who’d been spoiled on the food of awesome cooks.  ;)

Here’s the "recipe":

1. Put tinfoil on a cookie-sheet (preferably one with sides) and put a few tablespoons of oil in the middle.  I use olive oil, but you know, whatever.
2. Heat up the oven to about 400.  Lower temps take longer, but I’ve cooked them at everything from 350 to 450 and they don’t really seem to care.
3. Wash the sprouts / asparagusses.  (Asparagi?  Or as my mom calls them, "Asparagrass", which if you’ve ever grown them makes some sense, too.)
4. For sprouts, cut the bottoms off and whack them in half.  For asparagus, snap the bottoms off with your fingers.  They snap pretty automatically in the right place, which is cool.  (If you’re worried about time or hate knives, make asparagus; it’s much easier to prepare.  Not that cutting Brussels sprouts is an olympic activity.)
5. Throw veggies in the pan.  Wick around with a spoon/spatula type thing until they’re all oily.
6. Add a good amount of salt and pepper.  If you’ve got fancy stuff like sea salt and fresh-ground pepper, by all means use it, but it isn’t required or anything.
7. Cook for about 15-20 minutes, or until they’re not crunchy anymore.  Stop before they turn completely black.  I’ve found that they helpfully begin to smell really good just a few minutes before they’re done.  If you’re not sure, open the oven, stir them around and eat one; add 5 min. if it’s not done.
8. Serve with butter.  Generally speaking, the less salt & pepper you put on, the more butter you’ll want.  I once cooked a batch that I accidentally COVERED in S&P, so I served it with almost no butter and voila, it was awesome.  You really almost can’t ruin these.  ;)
9. Collect accolades from everyone.

So, now that I’ve gotten the "useful content" out of the way, an update:  I’ve discovered new depths and horizons to stress; I’m impressed as hell at my brain for not simply snapping like a twig.  My sleep-schedule has mostly survived it, though there have been a few "screw this, I’m going to bed" naps.  My diet has pretty well died — I did lose about ten pounds in the 5 or 6 weeks I did it, and I’ve stopped losing weight now but haven’t gained any back.  I’m still working hard to snack better and eat a lot more vegetables and keep my portions small, so though I’m not at 1200 cal/day anymore, I’m still eating less and better than I was before.  I’ve learned a ton, too.  Here, since you’re here, have a sample of my hot sweet lessony goodness:

• it’s easy to pack low-calorie, filling lunches in a bento box.  Buy crackers, raw veggies, dried fruit, and other healthy things, and use about 3/4 of the bento box for that.  (Use one of the little divider-containers for dip for your veggies.)  Put leftovers or rice balls in the other 1/4.  Add a small treat for "dessert" (I’ve found that 2-3 pieces of candy is perfect), and voila!
• find decadent-tasting things with low calories and stock up on them; let yourself have one every day and you won’t feel nearly as deprived.  My favorites are Japanese candy (which is almost always surprisingly low-cal; a whole package of their version of Starbursts–which is OMG better than the American kind anyway–is only 120 calories), non-fat frozen yogurt with a spoonful of jam or flavored syrup, and mascarpone cheese mixed with a spoonful of honey as a dip for fresh fruit (holy shit is this orgasmically good, and it’s barely over 100 calories a serving). 
• if you BUY raw vegetables and some things to dip them in and put them in your fridge, you’re a lot more likely to eat them.  I found that telling myself, when I get hungry, to eat some veggies first and then if I’m still hungry I can have something else, means that about 50% of the time, I only eat the veggies and that’s enough.  Also, be creative about stuff to put in/on raw or gently-cooked veggies:  salsa, hummous, olive oil with spices, etc. are all low-calorie options that taste better than you think on veggies.  Something I really fell in love with was the goat cream cheese at Trader Joe’s (yes, this was foodie-friend’s fault) — it’s good on almost any vegetable, and a small serving is very low-impact.
• speaking of servings, small ones are much easier to deal with if you eat them slowly and make yourself pay attention to how they taste.  In fact, this habit alone is incredibly valuable, because it lets you eat less and be satisfied with it, and also quickly trains your body to not be cool with scarfing large amounts of food.  Also, the calorie restriction itself is a nice way to make good food-choices, because when you only have 400 calories left today, you are NOT going to want to burn half of them on a can of Coke.

See?  Wisdom!  It’s not as much of a superpower as being able to make cookies from scratch that will sway the will of world leaders, but it’s pretty awesome, still.

I do think I look a bit better too; in reality I think I’d only want to lose another ten, maybe fifteen pounds from here anyway.  But I do want to see if I can lose that too — I maintain that as a martial artist, it’d be nice not to be pudgy, even just a little.  ;)  However, I go to visit Major Foodie Amazing Cook BFF on the east coast next week, and there is NO point trying to have a diet around her, so I’m not going to worry about fixing it until I get back.  It was awesome to lose the ten pounds and to know that simple calorie-restriction works, and that I can do it — woot! 

(If you’re here because you heard about Uberman in the Cracked article and want to know more about it — and its variants — awesome!  You want the Polyphasic Information Portal to start, probably.  Enjoy!)

Also, first of all…  ;)

For all of you who love the idea of a sleep track (a timed piece of music or white noise to nap to) and would love to roll your own, if it were only an easier task…Rejoice!

Lifehacker has an article on the web software called Sound Sleeping, that lets you mix your own sleep tracks using custom levels of drums, crickets, thunder, white noise and more.  It’s not a new idea, but supposedly it’s been much improved from its 2006 incarnation, and seems worth checking out even if you didn’t care for it before.

You can check out Sound Sleeping at http://www.soundsleeping.com/.

(For the record, no, I don’t use a sleep track or relaxation track now, but I have in the past.  They can be godsends when you’re forced to sleep in a none-too-quiet environment!)

Yes, I am losing weight, too. Probably less than ten pounds so far, but it’s definitely noticeable — my clothes are looser in the tummy; a darn good sign. I’ve pushed my calories to 1200 a day minimum (instead of maximum; I had more 800-1000 calorie days doing that than was probably healthy). If I eat raw veggies at the first sign of hunger, 90% of the time it goes away, so I’ve barely been hungry at all through this — yay! Things like bento boxes, low-cal snacks like apples and grapefruit-slices, and drinking lots of water really help too. I’m going on a month of this, and it’s been WAY easier than I thought! The hardest part has actually been the Weirdness of realizing how fast I got used to healthy food and smaller portions…for example, I bought myself a Ramune (Japanese pop; I’m a crackhead for Japanese food, if you couldn’t tell) last week and I still haven’t “felt like” drinking it!

Also, I did some research into circuit training (on the advice of a wise commenter) and realized that, with a little tweaking, my daily workout routine could produce better results. Circuit training sounds complicated, but all it actually means is taking 7-10 exercises and doing them fast for 30-60 seconds, with a 30-second break in-between exercises. You do the whole “circuit” between 1-3 times, no more than 4 times a week. Simple, eh? And fast, and, based on my reading, it’s the most scientifically-sound method for burning fat and building strength.

Also, sleep is going well. (That’s totally the detailed update you were hoping for, innit? ;) I fell right back into my schedule much more easily than even I anticipated — “adjustment” was about 48 hours long. Even a weekend full of Fail and bad alarm clocks didn’t stop me from hopping right back on without any problems, though I did take the excuse to buy a new alarm clock, which I’ll review when I get it. I’m still “Crazyphasic” and I’m still working to get things more regular and reliable — story of my life, that — but I’m certainly not tired and I’ve got my extra time back. Yay!

But here, that was a really skimpy sleep-update, so here are some Random Sleep Tips to make up for it. (I thought of a few lately, and haven’t had anywhere else to put them, heh.)

1. If you have a morning nap, consider putting it so that you’re falling asleep when it’s still dark, but you wake up as it’s getting light outside. Natural light is a good switch-thrower to make you feel more awake.

2. If you’re super tired and about to take a 20-minute nap that you’re worried you might not wake up for, drink a coffee right before you lay down. It’ll take 20-30 minutes to “kick in” (note: use more or less caffeine depending on your tolerance), and you’ll be more inclined to wake up and be alert.

3. When you want to sleep but shouldn’t, go somewhere you CAN’T sleep, like in the shower or outside. Sometimes just relieving the strain of constant “but I could just lay down and…” from your brain will help you feel less tired.

4. Know the difference between not getting ENOUGH sleep, and not getting GOOD sleep. If your problem is that you’re not sleeping well (whether you’re polyphasic or not), sleeping more won’t solve it — nor will switching sleep-schedules, unless you’re sleeping badly because you’re sleeping at the wrong times, which is possible but less likely than that there’s another factor, like a high-sugar diet or bad sleep environment. If you’re sleeping but not feeling rested, make sure to troubleshoot for quality of sleep, not just quantity!

5. Learn to be a complete bastard about getting your naps uninterrupted. I mean, don’t actually BE nasty, but if you’re like me you’ll feel like a total jerk for being as firm as you need to be to actually get people to leave you alone. If you don’t feel like you’re being a jerk, you probably aren’t being firm enough about it. I learned this one the hard way (more than once, d’oh) so you can trust me on it: be a jerk. Most people hear “nap” and they think “optional luxury”; it’s your behavior and only your behavior that gives them any other impression. So bark a little. If you get woken up, rain a little fire and brimstone to make the point that waking you up is NOT something they want to do again. As I’ve said in my better moments, unless someone is dying, it can wait twenty minutes, PERIOD.

Peace and naptime!
PD

cc photo by Stephane Tougard

The following have been added to the list of current polyphasic bloggers.

- “Polyphasic in San Francisco” by Elizabeth
- “Unlocking the Human Potential” by Emerald Wolf
- “Carolee Flatley” by Carolee Flatley
- “Larry’s posterous” by Larry Nichols
- “J’s Polyphasic Sleep Log – The Uberman” by Jason West
- “Aqil’s Polyphasic Sleep Experiment“
- “Kyle Murphy’s Blog” by Kyle Murphy

The following have been removed.

- “Polyphasium” by Geekapolluza (long term)
- “My Polyphasic Sleep Experiment” (long term)
- “Contemplation” by akshatrathi294
- “Kenny’s Polyphasic Sleep Experiment” by Kenny
- “Jean’s Polyphasic Experiment” by Jean
- “nemogbr” by nemogbr
- “An Experiment in Polyphasic Sleep” by Matt
- “(optional.is)” by Brian Suda
- “Phasor Dot Org“
- “neurohack” by Sharif Olorin
- “A Polyphasic Sleep Experience” by Onymous
- “A Polyphasic Summer” by Chris Lee
- “Conor Sherman” by Conor
- “Secret Little Spartan“
- “A nice cup of rabies” by Peggy
- “BlackGin’s” by Blackgin
- “Thoughts of an ablexxive man” by David Freiberg
- “3DMacDaddy” by Josh (video blog)
- “Morpheus” by Daniel
- “From the Ground Up” by Rowland Fitzgerald
- “Love is a Many Splendid Thing” by David

~~~~

- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

Okay, gonna fall off-schedule this weekend; it’s unavoidable. I’ll deal, try to stay well-rested and pay for it with a groggy Tuesday, but needless to say I would rather have not. Thankfully most of what’s keeping me from napping tonight, and probably killing my core-nap on Saturday, is fun stuff; and fun stuff is worth a tired Tuesday. It’s a holiday weekend! And I dunno about you, but I busted some significant tail this week, so I plan to be equally diligent in my relaxing.

Actual-dieting continues to go well. I’ve had less-than-perfect days, but I’ve also come in under 1200 calories at least as often as I’ve gone over — today, for example, it’s 10pm and I’m only at 350 calories, so I’ll need to eat some more before bed. It doesn’t surprise me that once I start restricting calories, I would tend to take it too far (gee, really? me?), but it’s still unnerving sometimes. Also, again predictably but still kind of unreal from my perspective, I continue to exercise more as I keep getting more addicted to it. My latest thing is to learn to do the situps where your upper body and knees come up at the same time, meeting in the middle as you balance on your hiney. It’s glamorous stuff, hiney-balancing. Rawr. ;) (If you care, I can only do about 10 of those, but I can do 25 if I let my toes slide ‘long the floor. My woot! for the day though is that I can do 30 pushups without breaking rhythm. *woot*)

So the conclusion for now, I suppose, is that I still stand by my statement that if I don’t lose weight this time, my fat must have the Great One’s own permission slip to be here, and I doubt I’ll go any further specifically trying to lose weight (provided I stay healthy). …I know my own obsessive tendencies, and I’ve worked really hard to not end up obsessed about my weight; I know I would have gone to extremes and hurt myself. It hasn’t been an easy ride, since I was just chubby enough as a kid to really develop a complex about it. The gods really threw me a lifeline when they gave me an awesome hot husband who could give a crap less about a few pounds, though, didn’t they? Wow. Anyway, my local medical authority says it can take up to a month to get started, so I’m Being Patient. This is week three.

Also, adapting is a pain in the patoot. I didn’t think about the fact that I have a “rolling” off-schedule day basically every Friday, due to an evening appointment that almost always eats my nap. I think I’ll try adapting around it, since I can’t get rid of it. It usually means 4.5 – 6 hrs sleep on Saturday, but most weekends I can get things back on track by Sunday. Just not this week, unfortunately. This week, I had to go and grow a social life. Oh well; it won’t last. ;)

Happy Day Off, Americans! And Happy Something Else, Everyone Else!

PD

(Somewhere in the future, that will make a handy aphorism for something that needs a vague-sounding aphorism.)

Details on the re-adaptation, day two and the stupid $@%!ng alarm, under the cut. >,<

I’m pretty sure my two main alarms (on my cell-phone) went off, but I don’t remember them. And my backup alarm, the one guaranteed to wake anybody from two rooms away…is tricky to set. Which means I probably shouldn’t have set it (or not set it, as it turned out) at midnight last night, when I was so loopy my husband was openly mocking me without fear. (Without fear, I tell you! What’s the world coming to?)

The good(-ish) news is, I slept in exactly 3 hours. This is good for two reasons: First, it’s a six-hour total, which means my naps yesterday “took”; that’s how much I would normally oversleep if I were to sleep in as much as I could on my old Everyman schedule. If things weren’t going as well, I’d have expected to sleep for a total of 7 or 8 hours rather than six. Secondly, it’s good because it made me angry; I had JUST gotten used to having the extra time, and I had plans for it this morning, so I’m super pissed at having to get up, grab a shower and run. This pissedness will prove good motivation for tonight…which is going to be as productive, adaptation-wise, as a Day Two, but probably as difficult as a Day Three. (They do that, when you screw up, if you hadn’t noticed — you don’t get as much out of the subsequent days, adaptation-wise, but they are pretty much just as hard, or harder, than they would have been if you’d done it right.)

By the way, I will fix this in a rather unorthodox way, but that’s because this is Tuesday. Lemme ’splain. (No, is too much; let me sum up. ;) Every Tuesday evening I have a kungfu class that always turns me into a dishrag. It also almost always makes me miss my evening nap. So on a normal Tuesday, I usually don’t worry about the evening nap (assuming I even get home in time to take it); and I go to bed at 11:30, to get 4.5 hours of sleep, which makes up for the missed nap and seems to help me process the mad amounts of extra exercise. Because today is now day two/three, and I have that class tonight (and it’s definitely going to kill my evening nap), I’m going to compensate thusly, with a bit of a Sleep Patch-Job: I’m going to nap early this afternoon (probably 11 or 12 instead of 1pm), and then try to catch a nap before class (about 6, if I can pull it off). I’m hoping I can then stay up until 1, since it’s the strict 1-4 nap that’s the challenge to get used to here.

*sigh*

So, Dumb Stupid Lesson from this one: Set the tricky alarms in the afternoon, or early in the evening, so that they go off when you need them! I think because I didn’t need the Big Bad Alarm on the morning of Day Two, part of me assumed that the cell-phone-alarms were going to be enough all the way through.

And it IS true that this has been easier than I expected so far, or at least more immediately familiar. But duh, it’s been my schedule for three years. I’m sure the adaptation will be shorter than a full one — but the second and third days at least are still going to be challenging; I have to get over a “hump” there, where the new habit of conking out all night gets replaced with that oh-so-tantalizing three-hour nap. ;) Other people adapting or thinking of adapting who are reading my progress here should note: It’s going to go faster for me than it will for a Freshie. I have been on this schedule for three years, and though I’ve totally gotten off it now, it’ll make sense if I re-adapt pretty quickly once I get the timing down. So please don’t take it as a personal failure or anything if you’re adapting, and it doesn’t go as quickly!

The items, in case you can’t read them, are:

Sort clothes
Organize a drawer / shelf (implied is “or any other small area”)
Do a (kungfu) form
Pushups/situps
Learn a yoga pose
Organize/update lists
File paperwork
Videogames (Currently, Tales of Symphonia II and Zelda: Twilight Princess, neither of which I’ll get made fun of for at all I’m sure)
Draw/paint (No, I suck at it; it’s just fun)
Calligraphy (ditto; Chinese calligraphy specifically)
Pack [friend-who-lived-here-briefly's] things
Really thorough bath/shower (stupid picky personal care items are great time-eaters)
Pack bento box
Memorize a poem or song
“Piano” practice (on the keyboard, since it has a volume knob and the piano emphatically does not)
Shirt design (design one of the thousand or so T-shirt slogans I’ve come up with)
Writing (endless! And wonderful! ;)

notes:

- Everything on this list is “night-friendly”, because my days are already totally full of work-kid-kungfu, and I’m not going to have trouble staying awake then. But I know I’ll be wiped out and needing distraction after eleven, and between 4 and 7 a.m. So “practice playing drums”, for instance, is not on here. (Yes I do, and yes I have a kit. ;)

- Also, my handwriting is sorta horrible. But to be fair, I wrote this on a tiny notebook while laying on the floor. Because I am secretly five.

- Many iterations of this list have taught me to have the little Key you see here, so that I can quickly spot which items involve lots of physical movement, lots of thinking, staring at a screen, or are particularly healthy or necessary. This is so that I can grab the list with “arrgh I can’t stand the computer anymore” or “I’ve already done three hours of kungfu today” or “my brain is fried” or “Hmm, I should do something healthy or productive” in mind, and quickly find something to do. When sleep-deprived, it’s best not to count on being able to make complex decisions. To say the least.

- Why yes, if you have a list you’d like to share, I’d love to see it!

I hate it.

I hate sleeping “normally”! Why do people do this? Seriously, it’s taken me almost two weeks to write the “I’m going monophasic” post I was going to write on Day 3–because I have no time for anything.

Ha! I’ve always said polyphasic sleep’s been great for me, and makes a neat alternative some experimental types may want to maybe, perhaps, kinda look at; but I think this experience changed my mind. Most people ought to at least consider polyphasic sleep! There are SO many benefits. So many I didn’t realize until they were gone — this week has been hell!

So yeah, I’m an evangelist now! Hallelujah, praise the nap! ;)

Okay, back up, slow down; you want details and I badly need to organize them. I’ve been monophasic for a week solid, after a week’s transition by way of Everyman 6. In actuality I’ve been monophasic “for the most part” for a week and a half.

I hate it; we’ve established that. My husband hates it too, and once he figured out what was really up, he flat demanded that I change it back. (Mr. Laid-Back here is not prone to making demands.) But I trust him for a reason — he knows me very well, and is one of the few people on this planet twisted enough to really understand me, and as we talked, he confirmed my suspicion that he was demanding my polyphasic schedule be reinstated because it fits me better, makes me happier, and has drastically increased the quality of my life over the last three years.

It was work, and my capitulations to work, that knocked me so horribly off-schedule; but work also needs me, so when I relayed my love’s demands, they folded immediately and gracefully. So I shall be having my naps at work back, and nobody will f$cking bother me unless the building is on fire, and that’s that. Though, lest you think I have too cushy a deal, note that I do not take a lunch break unless I need to attend a meeting that’s happening at a restaurant…which is less than fun now thanks to the (successfulsofar!) diet. But my nap is enough of a break, and I usually have enough privacy to eat at my desk.

Anyway, I slept 6 hours at night for a week, with the intent of taking naps in the afternoon, but that didn’t happen (work) and I exhausted myself. Slept in all over that weekend, and as a result, when I tried to take afternoon or p.m. naps, I couldn’t fall asleep for them. Then I tried the 6h thing again, but when I didn’t get a nap Monday I knew it wouldn’t work, so I slept 8 hours the next night — it was surprisingly easy; I was so tired I conked out right away and didn’t wake up or dream all night.

Since then I’ve gotten between 6-8 hours nightly, 8-9 on the weekend, and no naps. My old schedule. It feels completely familiar and totally shitty, like an old burlap shirt. ;)

IT IS WORTH NOTING that I ended up monophasic as a result of attempting to live on the Everyman 6 schedule, and failing. I’ve used E6 quite a lot as a stop-gap measure for when I don’t get some of my naps as usual, but I’ve never tried to live on it before. Perhaps that can’t be done — or perhaps it requires timing that I couldn’t pull off.

So. There’s that: A short but painful experiment. I’ll be ending it next Monday (re-transitioning to “Everyman 3″ starting Sunday night; I’ll keep you posted how that goes). I’ll have been monophasic for a little over 2 weeks by that point, and to be honest, if that’s all the monophasic sleep I get for the rest of my life, I think I’ll be just fine with that.

I thought that if I just went ahead and slept at night while work did its crazy stuff, then when the dust settled I would know what schedule I was going to need. Now I think that work will just have to conform to my needs, as I am intolerably miserable and inefficient as a monophaser.

Let’s lay out the ways in which monophasic sleep has sucked, shall we?

1. PAIN. Headaches, neck pain, stiffness, aches, popping joints…not in “ow ow doctor help” ways, but I’ve had to take OTC drugs more often, and been generally far more uncomfortable. My workout routine is the same, which means I stretch and do taiji daily (in addition to other stuff), but it only seems to help so much.

Plus, every day I wake up feeling like I’m crawling out of the ground, clawing and stumbling and making zombie-noises, uuUUUUuuuggghh.

And it’s a familiar feeling.

I’m not sick or injured; heck, with the diet and the kungfu I should be in amazing health–this is just what it’s like to sleep all night. (Even with a good mattress and a chiropractic pillow, which I have.) I had forgotten how awful it feels to crawl out of that inertia. Everything settles and stiffens and gums up and gets sore from being in the same position so long. It’s too much, eight hours straight of that! Maybe that’s less a fact about human beings than about me or people like me, but at least for me/us, the body isn’t meant to lie still so long.

2. TIME. Can I just collapse crying here, and will that explain it clearly enough?

No? Okay, fine. Take your day and lop four hours off of it. Go ahead. See if you don’t just collapse crying about it too, smartypants. –Don’t get me wrong, everything is getting done, as long as by “everything” you don’t mean to include “the things I did purely because I enjoyed them”. Which, you know, is not a group I’m happy having given up. I enjoy other things, but I also think being alive is a lot more awesome when you do things just because. Remember doing it as a kid? You had time, so you explored the world, messed with things, experienced things. Maybe the things I now officially Only Have Time For On Weekends (If That) weren’t important, but they made a huge difference in how I perceived my life and my freedom. I resent the work I don’t like now, because I’m not getting the time I want to set aside for the work (and play) I do like.

Plus, I’ve always liked nights, and I’ve grown to really like mornings. And guess what? I can’t have them both anymore! Actually, I’m lucky if I can even have one…in order to wake up at 6, I have to be in bed by 11 at the latest, and that only gives me 2 hours to work after the Spawn goes to bed, and 1 hour before I have to leave for work in the morning! HECK. NO.

3. QUALITY OF WAKING-TIME. In addition to having time for less Purely Awesome Stuff, the time I do have is less fun. For one thing, I yawn a lot and generally feel tired a lot. This is because I don’t sleep as well (see 4.) and because I don’t get enough sleep every night. Like most modern Western adults, I have more on my plate normally that can fit into a sixteen-hour day. Work and the commute is ten, leaving six to write, parent, eat, practice, and take care of myself and my home. So like most people, I end up shorted on sleep by an hour or two most weekdays, and oversleeping on weekends to make up for it.

I forgot how much I hate feeling tired, though through most of my 20’s that’s how I felt pretty much all the time. For the last three years, though, I’ve had no tiredness most days except for the period right before a nap, or if I missed a nap, or maybe a little in the morning (after my 3-hour core nap). I didn’t need to sleep in on weekends, though sometimes I did anyway, just because it felt nice. But even a bad morning waking up from my 1-4 nap was nothing compared to how groggy I am, and for how long I stay groggy, waking up from 8 hours. On top of which I’m in more pain and more stressed-out from feeling rushed. A whole day of commute-work-commute with no break followed by a kungfu class followed by parenting and writing through the evening, and I feel totally dead and drained. Then I crash all night and wake up feeling like a half-decomposed train-wreck. EW.

4. QUALITY OF SLEEP. Yeah, all that and the nice fat chunk of sleep I traded it for isn’t even good. I haven’t had any evidence of actual sleep disorders, but I definitely don’t enjoy sleep like I did when I was napping. It’s hard to explain how, but it doesn’t feel refreshing and calm anymore. Instead of resting, I feel like I’m temporarily dying–dramatic, I know, but that’s really what it feels like!–and I hate how I feel when I wake up so much that I dread it, and I’m so groggy and icky when I first crack my eyes that I hit snooze a thousand times if I can get away with it (which just makes me even more sore & groggy).

It’s only been a few weeks since I last patted someone on the digital head and told them “Ah yes, I remember what it was like to hate sleep”, as if they’ll grow out of it naturally. But I didn’t grow out of it naturally. And now that I’m back to monophasing again, I totally remember why I hated sleep before. I’m back to hating it again!

Even when I try to wind down before sleep (something that used to be easy, but which now means cutting another half-hour off my productive waking-time), I still sleep (comparatively) fitfully and wake up like Garfield on a Monday. I can tell I’m sleeping deeper (my husband confirms that I can’t be woken *at all* during the night), but I’m not getting anywhere near the rest out of it that I used to. It’s like eating a huuuuge meal that stuffs you to uncomfortableness, but contains no protein.

On top of that, quitting the regular-napping routine has ruined naps for me, too! Every single day, I’ve yawned multiple times and wished for a nap at least once. But when I can get a nap now, I can’t sleep for it — something about that big honking “meal” of sleep at night puts me off getting any rest during the day, even when I’m obviously tired.

Okay, so the bad things about monophasic sleep for me? Are apparently Legion.

There are some not-so-bad things. I will admit that. My overall mood, metabolism, exercise, and intellectual “landscapes” seem to have remained pretty much the same. (Other than being pissy about having less time, and being crankier about waking up in the morning, I should say.) Work, kungfu, writing, parenting, all get done nearly as competently as before, and I don’t notice a huge difference in my brain- or body-skills per se. But obviously the overall dislike I have for my new schedule affects a lot of minutiae that I probably couldn’t describe fully here if I tried.

So that’s The Suck, in a nutshell. There were some interesting artifacts to the transition — for instance, during the first week I got tired precisely at naptime every day, like clockwork. (Even though if I laid down for a nap then, I couldn’t sleep.) And there’ve been a few upsides here and there. I’ve always found my evening nap annoying — not having to slow down for that is nice, as is being able to have unlimited coffee during the day without worrying about messing up a nap (though needing this much coffee during a day is not nice).

But even though a week ago I was thinking, “Is this it? Am I going to be monophasic again now?”, I can already say with certainty that this is NOT it, and eff monophasic sleep right to heck. I don’t want to have my “hard days” of transitioning be over a weekend — work makes it much easier to get up on time after my core — so I’m waiting until Sunday/Monday to switch back to Everyman 3.

I’m spending the next few days preparing. (Yes, even I, the Polyphasic Master General Priestess Sifu Poobah, prepare for an adaptation. Because I want it to work!) I’m getting back into the habit of laying down for naps again asap, at least in the afternoon. (No sense letting work think I’m not serious!) I’ve also got a new Big Fat List made (if you like, I’ll post it) and am grocery-shopping for a TON of healthy snacks this weekend.

I’m also going to use the re-adjustment opportunity to clean up some of my sleep behaviors and other habits that were helping knock me off-schedule in the first place (like not having a firm time to always take my p.m. nap at if possible, changing into jammies too soon–we martial-artists like jammies, you know–and skipping my evening nap if I felt like it, since I could replace it with a 4.5-hour core).

I’ll keep ya’ll posted. And THANK YOU for being here, and being interested. It looks like I’m a lifer now (barring some insanely powerful interference by the Sleep Police), so I’ll try to stay interesting enough to be worth it.

Peace!

PD

Wouldn’t it be great to locate polyphasic sleepers near you? Now you can with the handy map at the following link.

http://trypolyphasic.com/map

I came across this wonderful tool from a post by Nicky Hajal at the Polyphasic Google Group.

http://groups.google.com/group/polyphasic/browse_thread/thread/777506bf09d53303?hl=en

Send Nicky some love along with any suggestions or bugs.

I’d like to see more people from the Bay Area on the polyphasic map. Currently, there’s just me and Oki O.

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

It’s day three and for some reason I’m posting neat original content on LJ and chatty updates-on-life to pd.com. Eh, I’ll just roll with it; it seemed like this food thing I’m doing might merit more details.

I’m really amazed and amused by how very like an Uberman adaptation this experience is. There’s that shift in everything, how time passes and things stand out and you realize all kinds of things you’ve been thinking habitually forever that suddenly don’t make sense anymore.

I’ve been surprised by all the changes, but I shouldn’t have been — I drastically changed my whole diet. It’s somewhat telling that it didn’t occur to me before that this would have a big impact, isn’t it?

So, I get fuller much easier now, which isn’t surprising as I haven’t had a meal over 200 calories in three whole days now. Those meals fill me up nicely, and when I get hungry between them I have some kind of raw vegetable (though I’ve been thinking, adding cooked ones would increase the variety; I dunno), and that fills me up too.

The food I eat, I taste. It’s really odd how strongly everything tastes. But it’s nice; nothing tastes bad or anything.

Oddly, my problem isn’t overeating — that’s what I want to do of course, but so far I haven’t — what I have done is eat too little. During the day, I don’t want to eat one of my “meals” in a rush, or just grab something; I have to think about it. So I put it off, and end up eating nothing for half a day like I did today.

I’m not sure if that’s a big deal or not. This diet isn’t really predicated upon eating at certain times, is it? I chose not to make up the calories that I missed out on earlier (because from what my sources say, it’s actually good when starting a calorie-restriction gig to cut waaay back the first few days, as it kick-starts the necessary processes). Although, when I had to ask myself if I should have that artichoke in addition to the already-170-calories I’d had for dinner, even though it would probably push it over a bit, the fact that I was already down 400 for the day made it easier to say “hell yes, artichoke!”. Which is as it should be, right?

So anyway, yes, this is proving interesting.

Crap. I just realized that I should probably buy a scale, eh? Well…maybe. But I’m NOT putting one of those goofy slider-bar .gifs on my blogs. That’s a little masturbatory even for me.

Okay, peace ya’ll, time for some real writing before bed. I’ve got another story almost done and another one starting. Woot!

P.S. Also, something special coming up soon…Content from Beyond!

I’ve had more fun.

However, I probably also never have actually eaten this healthily, if health can be measured in quantities of raw vegetables.

Anybody could know why I did it, I imagine…three years of regular, increasingly athletic exercise, and I’m in the best shape of my life… and I still haven’t shed a pound of the thirty that I put on since momhood. I try to make healthy choices whenever I can, but it’s no joke that I have a mean oral fixation (ever seen my fingernails?) and a pretty reliable sweet tooth. I was raised on the Middle American Sugar Diet, and it shows. Even when I was “just tracking” my calories with the dots-per-day thing, I was aiming for 1400 and probably missing it by 200-300 most days.

So, eventually the obvious quits f*cking around and actually becomes obvious (dammit, brain!): The weight isn’t going anywhere, except possibly underneath a fresh layer of more, until the food issue gets solved.

I really, really prefer to do things all-out and cold turkey, when I can. It’s SO much easier to just get it over with without a big drawn-out battle, isn’t it?

I’m waxing my legs today, as a commemorative. I figure it’ll help if I engage in a long, painful ritual involving repeated visceral reminders that shit hurts a lot more if you do it slow, if you stall it or drag it out; the only way to go is one-two-three and exhale on three (if you can, add a kiai!) and rip that sucker off.

So it will go with food, if I’m lucky. I did it with smoking, and my first Uberman adaptation, so it’s not impossible that I might. It also runs in the family: my grandfather (may he have a breath of respite now and again in his Hell) quit drinking and smoking cold-turkey at once, with no drugs or doctors to help, and kept a new bottle of whiskey in his cupboard and a new pack of cigarettes in his pocket for I don’t know how many years. My dad, oddly enough, though he inherited my grandfather’s intellect (and blessedly not much else), doesn’t seem to have this ability.

My grandfather was a bad person. (One of them; the other is a hero of mine.) I won’t tell you what he did but trust me, you’d agree that he was just bad, bad in the incurable way that people still think capital punishment exists for. I wonder sometimes if he was always screwy somehow, or if he was normal, maybe before the War. He was Big in the War. Boxful of medals; Normandy I think; and it definitely messed with his head. All those old men at his funeral who flew in from places. I wanted to talk to them, but I didn’t because I couldn’t ask them what I really wanted to know: Was he a good guy then, really, or was he always creepy, always “off”? Did the War do it to him? Then again, I wonder if any of them even knew, or believed, the stories of what he did.

Brrrwaugh! Wow, apparently that needed to come out. Whew. Anyway, back to something resembling the point.

*raises flags and marches Pointwards*

I can’t live in a world with no chaos, so I’m on a daily allotment of 1,000 – 1,250 calories, by my best estimation and package data. I try to get this allotment in five 200-calorie chunks, so that I can eat often, which I sense will make things easier. I’m allowed to reduce one meal to compensate for extra calories in another, but I’m not allowed to skip meals entirely, so I can’t “go over” by too much. Moreover, in addition to this amount I’m allowed to have raw veggies whenever I want. Also, only one of my 200-calorie “meals” is allowed to consist of junk food. (I tend to save that one for last, having a long-bred habit of craving “dessert”.)

I have been hungry, though oddly it’s been from pushing back or even skipping some of my meals. Where I would have just “grabbed something” before if I was busy, I don’t want to now; I want to enjoy it. But when I am hungry and starting to really feel it, I grab some of my fridgeful of new veggies: green peppers, celery, cabbage; all good raw-eatin’ stuff. I also have brussels sprouts and an artichoke to cook for a meal sometime (I cook ‘em with looooots of butter. ;)

One thing: The components of this diet are, so far, very cheap. Did you know a head of lettuce is less than a dollar? And I’ll be eating that thing all week!  Tearing off a cabbage-leaf is a great “geez I just need to eat something” antidote. It doesn’t really need sauce or salt, and it’s fast, and if you just have a few bites and put the rest in the compost, you don’t feel bad. I hereby approve of cabbage leaves.

I’ve also eaten vegetarian for the last two days. I didn’t really mean to, but well, with 200ish calories, you get a lot more food if it’s not meat. And I don’t really crave meat in my diet anyway, so it’s been pretty easy to ignore it. I’m not committing to that part, at least not yet, but it is interesting. If it keeps up I’ll need iron supplements, eek.

I devised this diet the way I did for three reasons:

1. I want to lose weight, and the only surefire way of doing that is to restrict your caloric intake. I’ve seen it work in several cases to help people I know lose over 100 lbs. So I aimed for 1K, figuring I’d screw up some and end up at 1200, which would be fine. I knew that if I had to fuss over every single number, I’d quit. I hate mental math!
2. I like to eat often and I don’t like to eat too much; my appetite has always been small (or maybe I just grow bored of eating) and I eat a more varied diet when I spread it out. So I took my caloric requirement and divided it up a way that seemed to make sense for me.
3. I know that in order to keep weight off, there has to be a lifestyle change, not just a temporary change in diet pattern. Like the lifestyle changes involved in quitting smoking and sleeping at night, I guess. So I wanted to create a “diet” that would be both healthy and livable over the long-term.

OMG I just realized this means I’m eating polyphasically. Holy crap, that’s funny.

Less funny is the fact that I have to actually change my polyphasic sleeping schedule soon. The more work ramps up, the more impossible it gets to get my naps, and things have been getting dangerously messy lately. I think things will get busier before they get stable, but I’m still trying to get a handle on what the bigger changes might look like so that I can plan a new schedule. Man, I’d better be able to at least do something like a siesta schedule, or I’ll be pissed.

I’m also getting fuller, sooner, today than I’m used to. Maybe my stomach is already accustomed to these small meals? For dinner I’m having home-baked tortilla chips (ikr?!) and awesome fresh salsa, and I gave myself a few more chips than a serving as a treat or something, but now I don’t want them; I’m full. And the last thing I had was celery, like, almost three hours ago.

Next stop: Sustaining life with only sunlight and water and bloody-mindedness!

(This image is actually slightly appropriate, but only if you’re a huge nerd. The rest of you will just have to settle for enjoying the random pic of a sparkly anime guy. *yay sparkly anime guys!*)

cc photo by Robert S. Donovan

The following have been added to the list of current polyphasic bloggers.

- “A Polyphasic Summer” by Chris Lee
- “Conor Sherman” by Conor
- “Secret Little Spartan“
- “Nisrak’s Polyphasic Sleep Blog” by Nirsak
- “A nice cup of rabies” by Peggy
- “BlackGin’s” by Blackgin
- “My Polyphasic Sleep Experiment“
- “Thoughts of an ablexxive man” by David Freiberg
- “3DMacDaddy” by Josh (video blog)
- “Morpheus” by Daniel
- “From the Ground Up” by Rowland Fitzgerald
- “Love is a Many Splendid Thing” by David
- “Hexadecaphasic Sleep” by gill

The following have been removed from the list.

- “A Polyphasic Lifestyle” by Aximilation (long term)
- “Polyphasic or bust” by Hunner (long term)
- “eftichis.com” by eftichis
- “She Who Chatters” by D
- “Polyphasic Sleep log of Angel Grablev” by Angel Grablev
- “cwfineart” by Chris Wolf
- “Technology for Living” by John Allison
- “Why am I doing this?” by Migo

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

Speaking of boredom, if you’re polyphasic you may have experienced this: not wanting to nap because it’s too boring. It’s not necessarily that you’re engrossed in something particularly, or have any actual reason to skip a nap; it’s just that darnit, there are more entertaining things to do than go blow half an hour in bed.

It probably doesn’t surprise you that I have this problem sometimes. ;)

It’s surmountable with willpower for the most part, of course. But one item helps a lot: A notepad. (Er, emphatically including a pen. Nothing’s worse than a notepad with no pen!) A bored mind is a restless mind, and if you’re like me, a restless mind comes up with some positively drool-worthy ideas in order to tempt you into giving up on this nap shit and doing (in my case, usually writing) something. And those ideas are made of capsaicin-coated caltrops, and they twist painfully in your grey stuff until you let them out. So keep a notepad (and pen!) beside your napping spot. If you think of something you don’t want to stop thinking about, write it down so you can come back to it later.

This concludes your oddly-titled random polyphasic information for today.

‘Night!*

*In theory, if not in practice!

cc photo by Martin Fisch

The following have been added to the list of current polyphasic bloggers.

- “Kenny’s Polyphasic Sleep Experiment” by Kenny
- “Keighsie’s er… livejournal.” by Keighsie
- “Jean’s Polyphasic Experiment” by Jean
- “nemogbr” by nemogbr
- “Polyphasic Sleep log of Angel Grablev” by Angel Grablev
- “cwfineart” by Chris Wolf
- “Technology for Living” by John Allison
- “An Experiment in Polyphasic Sleep” by Matt
- “(optional.is)” by Brian Suda
- “Why am I doing this?” by Migo
- “Phasor Dot Org“
- “aeia” (video blog)
- “WalkingDog Design” by Matt Brandt
- “neurohack” by sio

The following have been removed.

- “Sleepless in Saskatoon” by Toad008 (long term)
- “La fabrique des idées” by Boreale (long term, French)
- “lies and wonderland” by muflax (long term)
- “My Polyphasic Sleep Experiment“
- “Conscious Growth” by William Womack
- “Polyphasic study” by Nate Pickering
- “My Journey To The Infinity” by Rakesh Ramachandran
- “Catching Up On A Fetishist’s Zzzzs” by Isabeau Chaloult
- “Flairf” by cumom
- “Brain Vault” by Ibrahim

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

Last week, June 9, was the 1 year anniversary of this blog. I thought it’d be fun to post some stats and to see how my numbers compare to other people’s first year stats.

I had a total of 38,247 views this past year. My busiest day had 373 views.

Last month was my busiest month with 5,808 views.

My top referrer comes from a blog comment I left on Hack N Mod.

My most viewed post is “Tutorial: How to Crack WEP on a Mac“.

366 people viewed my blog by searching for “spoonwep”.

922 people went to download BackTrack after reading my tutorial on how to crack WEP.

As you can see from the screenshots of my stats, most of my traffic is related to cracking WEP passwords, polyphasic sleep, pirating software, and abs.

Although having my traffic increase is great, I find making connections with important people in fields that I’m interested in more important.

Anyone care to share their first year stats with me?

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)
- Arrr! Prepare to be boarded. (feed)
- Alpha Nerd (feed)
- Set Free (feed)

cc photo by John Kroll

The following have been added to the list of current polyphasic bloggers.

- “Sleepless in Saskatoon” by Toad008 (long term)
- “She Who Chatters” by D
- “Polyphasic study” by Nate Pickering
- “My Journey To The Infinity” by Rakesh Ramachandran
- “Polyphasic sleep” by Isabeau Chaloult
- “Flairf” by cumom
- “Keep on flyin’” by Akshat Rathi
- “Brain Vault” by Ibrahim

The following have been removed.

- “Oh God, the Chicken!” by Andrew (long term)
- “Polyphasic (Uberman / Everyman) Sleep Blog” by Marc (long term)
- “The Guinea Pig Chronicles” by Cavia porcellus (long term)
- “A Near Life Experience” by Hank May
- “ovisional” by Joseph Jujnovich
- “Love is the Law, Love under Will” by Cykros

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

Most of my friends know I experiment with polyphasic sleep. Fortunately, one of them is in the sleep field and had access to a sleep clinic. He offered to do a sleep study on me, and I happily accepted.

So the plan was to do a monophasic sleep study first, then do another sleep study when I’m fully polyphasic to compare the two.

The local sleep clinic I went to specializes in sleep apnea. I was hooked up to an EEG, and I got to sleep in a room that resembled a nice hotel room. I had my trusty N85 with me to take a photo of all the wires I was connected to which you see in the photo above.

The results were given to me the next day, and it turned out I have sleep apnea! I did a little research, and it has been reported in some cases polyphasic sleep seemed to help with sleep apnea. Here’s an example of someone saying it helped (although there isn’t any data to go with it)…

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-sleepdisordr&tid=1814

Here’s what the sleep clinic owner said about polyphasic sleep and sleep apnea…

As for Polyphasic sleep and sleep apnea, you will continue to demonstrate sleep apnea whether you are monophasic or polyphasic. In fact, if you are polyphasic, you will no doubt have more REM sleep. During REM sleep, this is where the apneas would be more prominent. The good part of Polyphasic sleep is that your sleep periods are very brief.

Here are the actual reports from the sleep study. Please note, the owner of the sleep clinic requested to remain anonymous, so I took out any identifiable information.

- monophasic_polysomnogram-jorel314.pdf
- monophasic_sleep_analysis_report-jorel314.pdf

Like all the original content on my blog, these sleep study reports have been set free from any copyrights using the CC0 waiver.

I’ll be sure to publish my polyphasic sleep study reports when I’m done transitioning. I’m not sure if anyone has publicly published anything like this before, so hopefully someone will find all this useful.

Also, I’d like to give my sincerest gratitude to my helpful friend and to the extremely generous sleep clinic owner.

~~~~

- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)
- Set Free (feed)

cc photo by mikecpeck

The following have been added to the list of current polyphasic bloggers.

- “ovisional” by Joseph Jujnovich
- “Love is the Law, Love under Will” by Cykros
- “Oh God, the Chicken!” by Andrew

The following have been removed from the list.

- “Sitka Nature” by matt goff
- “Jayden” by Jayden

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- Adventures in Polyphasic Sleeping (feed)

Now on with the story.

Exactly one year has passed since beginning my first polyphasic sleep schedule. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my experiences and share with you some of the results.

The other day, I was thinking about how much time one could reasonably expect to gain using a polyphasic schedule. That lead me to wonder:

What is Reasonably Possible?

I personally have fallen in love with the Everyman sleep schedule of 4.5 hrs core, and one or two 20 minute naps throughout the day. It has by far been the easiest to maintain and most cohesive with my body and lifestyle. I wondered how much time this could add to a person’s waking life if it was strictly followed for a full year. The results shocked and amazed me.

The calculations are simple, but here they are if you haven’t done the math yourself already. With a 1.5 nap average at 20 minutes per nap, that comes out to exactly 5 hours of sleep per day. Assuming a normal person needs 8 hrs of sleep to feel rested without napping, the resulting amount of additional time comes to:

1095 waking hours per year.

You read that correctly – 1095 hours.

That amounts to 45.6 full days, or a full MONTH AND A HALF of extra waking time!

My Personal Results

Now the above results are of course only theoretical. Life happens: naps are skipped, alarms are missed, and business trips, vacations, projects and drunken nights will take place. However, after being on a polyphasic sleep schedule for the majority of the past year, I feel I can provide some living proof and shed some light on what is realistically possible.

Looking back on the past twelve months, I spent at least 70% of it on some form of polyphasic sleep schedule. Because my exact sleep scheduled varied over the course of the year (ranging between 3 hr core + 3 naps, 4.5 core + 1-2 naps, and 6 hr core +1 nap) I have approximated my average amount of sleep to be 5.5 hours per polyphasic day. Using these estimates and the same calculations as before, my resulting totals are:

639 additional waking hours, or 26.6 days.

And That’s Not All

If I’m not adjusted and in a regular schedule, 3 hours sleep is still difficult, but when deadlines or other reasons force me to take less sleep it becomes quite easy. But 4.5 hours is just cake. I can hardly remember the time when 4.5 hours seemed like a horrific and unfathomably miniscule amount of sleep to be had. Now, 6 hours literally feels like a luxury. It is the same feeling I would get when I slept in 10 hours on a weekend in high school or college – feeling guiltily over-rested.

Other less obvious benefits include: the ability to nap nearly anywhere, being able to fall asleep quickly (no more laying in bed wasting time waiting to fall asleep), and no jet lag (the schedule is easily shifted – even if I’m not polyphasic at the time).

The downsides: finding a time and place for a nap(s) every day, if naps are missed, more likely to get tired throughout the day (if the mind is left not being stimulated), seeming strange to the general population.

Fortunately the first two downsides are easily remedied – if there isn’t a time and place to nap, I go back to monophasic. If I get tired throughout the day, a nap or a little caffeine will do the trick (but I could see it being difficult to stay awake in a particularly boring class for those still in school).

I don’t have a solution for the last one - but fortunately I don’t really mind.

Making it Work for You

The real secret behind successfully becoming polyphasic is having a reason to need more time.

For me it was my goals in my work and play. I love my work, and want to do as much as possible to become successful. I also loved my free time. Throughout the past 365 days, my pastimes and personal goals have kept me busy to the wee hours of the morning, and then I am lucky enough to have my job to look forward to when I wake up.

However, at times when work was slow, or I was less interested in the things I was doing in my spare time, I found I would sleep more for lack of better things to do.

Sleeping is easy. Sleep fills empty time. It is the path of least resistance.

Know what your passions and goals are and work your ass off towards what makes you happy. It will be the path of more resistance, but that is what makes life worth living. If having more time in the day will help you towards those goals, you will have no problem adjusting to a polyphasic sleep schedule.

Are there things you would like to know I haven’t touched upon? Would you consider a polyphasic schedule? Post a comment and let me know!

7/28 - Monday

4.5 hrs
nap: 10 am (20 min)

Total: 4.8 hrs

7/29 - Tuesday

4.5 hrs (6:30 am wake)
nap: 9:30 am (40 min)

Total: 5.2 hrs

7/30 - Wednesday

6 hrs (7:30 am)
no naps

Total: 6 hrs

7/31 - Thursday

4.5 hrs (6:30 am)
nap: 7:40 (20 min)
nap: 4:00 (20 min)

Total: 5.2 hrs

8/1 - Friday

8 hrs (9:00 am)

Total: 8 hrs

8/2 - Saturday

6 hrs
no nap

Total: 6 hrs

8/3 - Sunday

7.5 hrs
no nap

Total: 7.5 hrs

8/4 - Monday

6 hr core
nap: 4:00 pm (20 min)

Total 6.3 hrs

8/5 - Tuesday

6 hr core
no nap

Total: 6 hrs

8/6 - Wednesday

6 hrs core
no naps

Total: 6 hrs

One thing to note - when I have alot of things to do the next day, I am very motivated to get up after little sleep, while on days when there aren’t things extremely pressing to get done, I’m more likely to convince myself to sleep in instead.

Wed 7/23/08

Wake 8:00 am (6 hrs)
Naps none

Total: 6 hrs

Thurs 7/24/08

Wake 6:30 (4.5 hrs)
Nap 1 7:40 am (20 min)
Nap 2 4:00 pm (20 min)

Total: 5.2 hrs

Fri 7/25/08

Wake 9:00 am (8 hrs)
Naps none

Total: 8 hrs

Sat 7/26/08

Wake 9:00 am (6 hrs)
Naps none

Total: 6 hrs

Sun 7/27/08

wake 8:00 am (6 hrs)
Nap 7:00 pm (20 min)

Total: 6.3 hrs

(nap taken to try and make it easier to get up after 4.5 hrs sleep - not taken because of tiredness)

Woke up: 8:30 (6 hrs)
Naps: None

Total 6 hrs

Recap Mon (7/21/08)

Woke up: 6:00 (4.5 hrs)
Nap 1: 1:00 pm
Nap 2: 10:30 pm

Total: 5.2 hrs

Switched right back into the 4.5 hr schedule with 2 naps. Felt great all day and quickly fell asleep for both naps (didn’t even really want to take the last one, but did it to negate tiredness for the following day).

It appears that after a relatively short break (4 weeks) from strict polyphasic, a once polyphasic sleeper can quickly re-adapt to a new schedule with minimal negative effects. Yay!

Recap of yesterday (7/16/08):

Woke up: 5:00 am (4.5 hrs sleep)
Nap 1: 10:40 am (20 min)
Nap 2: 5:20 pm (2o min)

Total 5.2 hrs

Yesterday notes (7/15/08):

Woke up: 5:00 am (4.5 hrs sleep)
Nap 1: 10:30 am (20 min)
Nap 2: 8:30 pm (20 min)

Total: 5.17 hrs

The first nap was at the office in the new room. I just used a backpacking sleeping pad which works well, but I can’t wait to get a cot!

After a month of being off my regularly scheduled polyphasic program, I’m finally back to blogging and getting ready to start up my sleep schedule anew. I’ve missed my sleep schedule sooo much.

First, quickly what went down: June 16th, moved out to Atlanta for business and proceeded to work two 100 hour work weeks (by choice; more work = more reward in this job). My sleep discipline was a lifesaver; as I was well prepared to function with very little core sleep. Sadly, the new environment and lack of sleeping areas made naps hard to come by.

Fortuitously, our operation just moved into a new, much larger office space. Since there happens to be a couple of us who are more productive on a polyphasic schedule, the overlords offered to reserve a room specifically for napping (i guess they like getting as much work out of us as possible).

Anyway, today it begins.

Got up at 5:00 am after four-and-a-half glorious hours of sleep. My new plan will be 4.5 hr core sleep, with 2 naps plus an optional one. This will wind up netting between 5 and 6 hrs of sleep per day. I found this distribution of sleep to be the least resistant and the easiest one to maintain.

As for my previous expereinces, I will (at some point) put up the rest of my data. I made it well over 10 weeks, averaging under 6 hrs of sleep a night. I believe my goal of 3 hr core w/ 3 x 20 min naps was a bit lofty with such a variable work/life schedule (as will be seen in the data; even with sleep-ins and mistakes, I still averaged around 5.7 hrs of sleep a day though ).

Well here goes, good luck me and everyone else working to be polyphasic!

Data from week 5, just for you:

Day - Core Sleep - Nap Total

• Day 29 (5/6/08) - 3.75 hrs - 1.67 hrs
• Day 30 (5/7/08) - 3.0 hrs - 1.0 hrs
• Day 31 (5/8/08) - 5.5 hrs - 1.0 hrs
• Day 32 (5/9/08) - 3.5 hrs - 1.0 hrs
• Day 33 (5/10/08)* - 3.5 hrs - 2.08 hrs
• Day 34 (5/11/08) * - 6.0 hrs - 0.33 hrs
• Day 35 (5/12/08) * - 7.0 hrs - 0 hrs

Average core = 4.61 hrs / day

Average nap total = 1.01 hr / day

4.61 hrs + 1.01 hrs = 5.62 hrs sleep / day

Skipped naps = 6 / 21

*DC Business Trip

The DC trip was the first major test for my sleep discipline. First, since I had become a proficient napper, I was able to take advantage the plane flight and managed to get four 20 minute naps on the way there. During the stay, however, Martin and I were so busy that I only managed to sneak in one nap the entire time. Fortunately, I was able to adapt nicely; I got more core sleep (6 then 7 hrs) and felt fine the whole time. Additionally, being able to fall asleep nearly at-will negated any adverse effects from jet-lag.

On the flight to DC, I decided to use the placebo sleep track to cover the background noise of the flight - and it was great. It not only blocked out the sound, but it would lull me to sleep and gently wake me up with chicken clucking and other minimally intrusive sounds.

5.62 hrs sleep / day seems like a very reasonable average, especially when a business trip is included into the mix. I am extremely pleased with the results of my polyphasic sleep experiment thus far.

I have made it to the 4 week checkpoint. The data from week 4 is as follows:

Day - Core Sleep - Nap Total

• Day 22 (4/29/08) - 3 hrs - 1 hrs
• Day 23 (4/30/08) - 3.5 hrs - 1.33 hrs
• Day 24 (5/1/08) - 3.25 hrs - 1.33 hrs
• Day 25 (5/2/08) - 3 hrs - 0.33 hrs
• Day 26 (5/3/08) - 7.5 hrs - 0.67 hrs
• Day 27 (5/4/08) - 7.5 hrs - 0.67 hrs
• Day 28 (5/5/08) - 3.25 hrs - 1 hrs

Average core = 4.43 hrs / day

Average nap total = 0.9 hr / day

4.43 hrs + 0.9 hrs = 5.33 hrs sleep / day

Skipped naps = 4 / 21

I successfully brought my daily average down for this week. If it weren’t for the two days where I accidentally slept in, my daily average would have been much closer to 4 or 4.5 hrs / per day.

Day - Core Sleep - Nap Total

• Day 15 (4/22/08) - 4 hrs - 1.25 hrs
• Day 16 (4/23/08)* - 3.75 hrs - 2.75 hrs
• Day 17 (4/24/08) - 4.75 hrs - 0.75 hrs
• Day 18 (4/25/08) - 3.75 hrs - 0.67 hrs
• Day 19 (4/26/08)** - 5.5 hrs - 1 hrs
• Day 20 (4/27/08)** - 5 hrs - 0.75 hrs
• Day 21 (4/28/08) - 4 hrs - 1.33 hrs

Average core = 4.4 hrs / day

Average nap total = 1.2 hr / day

4.4 hrs + 1.2 hrs = 5.6 hrs sleep / day

Skipped naps = 3 / 21

*On the late nap I set my alarm for the wrong time - slept for 2 hrs before waking.
**Went to bed 90 min early to make up for a missed nap earlier that day

Snoozing issue and alarm setting mistakes and recovery sleep (see **) have accounted for the excess time this week ( 4.4 hrs core / day rather than the target 3 hrs). I’m pretty happy with 5.6 total hours however. Hopefully it gets easier in the following weeks.