Day 1
Blake
Ok, so one day into this experiment and I'm officially excited. So far I've had brief bouts of tiredness just before a few of my naps. Overall, though, my alertness and focus have been way higher than normal.
I cheated and started early. I tried to get a nap in at 6:00 Thursday. I don't think I slept, but Bethany feels like I did. It looks like it's the same kind of story for the midnight sleep. So as of right now, whether or not I slept during my first two naps is a mystery.
Once 5 a.m. hit, I was getting pretty sleepy. We managed to keep ourselves awake with a combo of video games, Reddit surfing and late night grocery store runs. That had all calmed down though, and I was nodding heavily. Once 6 that morning came, I slept hard.
The most awesome part of it was once I got to work. I was way more awake than I normally am right off the bat. I didn't feel like I needed coffee at all. I got the biggest part of my work done in record time which was really cool. I was just able to concentrate a lot better than I normally am. My lunchtime nap went as smooth as could be expected. One of my coworkers even played zen music for me while I slept. =)
This has been the most surprising part of the whole experiment so far. I was expecting the first few days to be really terrible. So far I haven't had any trouble adjusting. In fact quite the opposite. I've already seen improvements. Other than a few brief sleepy moments, I've had way more energy than I'm used to. I've actually wondered if I was going to be able to fall asleep for most of my naps.
I don't know if this is what I'm supposed to expect, or if this is just early adrenaline from excitement for the whole experiment, but I really hope this is the worse I see. Because it's totally worth it right now.
I keep catching myself expecting to finally go for my "real sleep." I'm so used to depending on long sleeps for my rest, that I still haven't quite grasped that these naps are all I need. I've even had to adjust how I look at the weekend. Saturday's have always been exciting for their sleep-in potential. This is the first time that I haven't been able to think of it that way. I'm addicted to the concept of sleep, whether or not I need it.
Anyway, so far I'm really happy to be doing this. I hope it keeps going this well.
Caitlin
As I expected, I didn't sleep at all during the first nap at midnight. Oh well. I actually woke up the previous day with a pretty bad headache, and slept late plus some more during day, which is probably why I felt a little off anyway during this first wake period.
My biggest struggle so far hasn't been trying to battle drowsiness, but I started to develop a headache around 3am. I think it was the same headache from the before. This is my biggest worry about changing my sleep cycle: dealing with my headaches. For now, the solution is to just deal with it.
I have decided that if it gets too bad, though, I will probably have to take an unscheduled nap. Extra sleep for being sick is necessary, and this counts. I remember from Steve Pavlina's sleep log that he actually did take a couple extra naps during his transition period when he felt super drowsy; he ended up cutting the extras out after he transitioned and didn't need them anymore. It might not be a horrible idea anyway.
After my 6am nap, I woke up with a pretty bad headache. I ended up taking medicine and just sat around for about a half hour, and it thankfully went away. Blake and I then made breakfast for our sig figs. It was pretty nice. We surprisingly felt awake after starting to cook breakfast.
At work, my energy lasted for a short while before I started to feel really sleepy. Although, despite the strong sleepiness, I was suprisingly productive, more than I have felt during the past couple weeks.
My noon nap went fine. Again, I woke up with a small headache. Not sure if it is caffeine related, sleep related, weather related, or otherwise (it could still be the same one from yesterday). I took some Excedrin which had a little bit of caffeine in it. After about a half hour, I started to feel a lot better.
It is starting to seem like the worst of this all is the first half hour after waking up. That first half hour is pretty brutal and I have very little willpower. After that first half hour, I start to feel alert and productive. And then, the last half hour before a nap is when I start to feel really sleepy and I deeply long for nap time. I imagine these effects will start to diminish as I start to get more REM sleep during my naps.
I'm also happy to report that after my 6pm nap, I woke up headache-free! Again, we just sat around for a half hour to wake up, but after we finally got around, we were feeling great and alert. I'm pretty ready for the post-nap grogginess to end, but if I can continue with the feeling good for the rest of the awake period, then it's fine. I think that this 6:30pm-12am awake period has been our best one yet. Probably because we got to spend it hanging out with our sig figs.
All in all, I think it's been a pretty good day 1.
I have the RSS feed linked to the site, so you should see it in the URL bar of your browser. But I'll go ahead an put a link to the feed in the footer, too.
I'll be reading along to see how you go. I hope you succeed as it will inspire me to try it too. :)