Day 3
Blake
We still haven't solved the problem of sleepiness between midnight and 6 a.m. Last night we were feeling especially drowsy and went an adventuresome excursion to one of our nation's finer late-night retail establishments: Wal Mart. I don't even remember the last time I went to Wal Mart, but we needed a place to walk around and Wal Mart's possession of a toy section proved to be an overwhelming selling point.
Luckily Scout was heavily caffeinated and was able to drive us around town and entertain us with her antics. She also made Caitlin's feet do some pretty impressive dancing. Anyway, point is that there's no way we were in good shape to drive. It's nice to have a support group around.
It was the same story we've seen before; as long as we were moving around doing things, we were fine. As soon as we got back to the house and sat down on the couch, all the sleepiness set right back in. The last two hours before 6 we were just fighting to stay awake.
We made it to 6, but unfortunately when we fell asleep we stayed that way for a little too long. It wasn't a bad oversleeping, but I've been working really hard to avoid stuff like this. I've heard of people having an extra nap when they're in the transition phase of polyphasic sleep. I'm seriously considering taking one extra nap around 3 a.m. to help me get used to the new cycle. I think once my mind/body learns that it doesn't have to sleep all night to feel ok, the late nights will get easier and I can cut that extra nap out. It wasn't part of the original plan, but I'm trying to give myself the best possible shot. Plus it would be nice to actually feel productive at night instead of just doing epic battle against my eyelids.
We got a lot of good suggestions after our last post. We have a side project called TippJar that I'm going to try to work on tonight. Hopefully a computer screen will keep me awake. Also, I'm going to try to keep the room well lit. I think the more it looks like daytime, the better my body will react.
A really interesting discussion happened when someone posted our link on Hacker News. There were some really good insights and a lot of worthwhile questions. We've been trying to get in there and answer everything we can. It also completely exploded some people's brains to find out that we weren't actual, literal kids (from the description on our homepage). All in all though, it's really fun to have people following the experiment. It's a lot of extra motivation to keep going, and it's exciting to see interest grow.
Thanks for reading!
Caitlin
Today seemed like it was a pretty rough day. We are really starting to feel the sleep deprivation. Hopefully now is the time that our bodies start to grab REM sleep when we take our naps.
The first awake period today was pretty rough. I don't think I ever quite fully woke up. Scout actually stayed up with us and kept us awake through this period. Both of us would have probably passed out around 2am if she hadn't been there to keep us active. She eventually took us to Wal Mart, which helped us finish out that cycle. At times, it was really really hard to not give up and say, "Meh, time to go to sleep for a very long time now." I probably would have given up if it weren't for this following that we have watching us. That, and I really do believe that it will start to get better soon.
I don't really know what happened after the 6am nap. I remember waking up, but I do not remember falling back asleep. And all of the sudden it was 9am. I asked Blake, he seems to have had some missing time, too. This really bums me out that some oversleeping is happening, as that's what causes some people to never adjust. Or maybe, it's actually better to have extra sleep at first, and then transition out of that. (A new commenter and fellow polyphaser mentions he slept 3 hours the first week, and moved it to 2. Also, as I've mentioned before, Steve Pavlina did the same.)
My noon nap was awesome, though. I went to sleep, and woke up feeling like I had hardly fallen asleep. It worried me at first, but I realized that I was feeling really refreshed. And then I noticed I had remembered a lot of my dreaming from that nap. All good signs of REM, which was exciting. The rest of that wake period went pretty smooth.
I don't think I slept at all during my 6pm nap, which kind of sucks. And I've developed a pretty bad headache since dinner. It won't seem to go away. It feels like my normal headaches though, and definitely not a sign of my body telling me that I really need sleep (aside from the fact that I need sleep, if that makes sense); it's hard to explain. I guess I'm trying to say that I get this type of sick-feeling often on normal days, too. I may have to take that extra nap around 3am, or maybe even an extended core sleep to help recover from this headache. I can handle trying to keep myself from falling asleep, but it's pretty difficult to purposefully handle the pain from headaches.
We'll see how it goes. We'll also see how going back to work tomorrow goes.
Something a lot of people get wrong about sleep is that, as far as anyone knows, only NREM sleep is restorative (particularly SWS, the deepest stage); REM sleep is not. That is, if you wake people up every time they enter REM, they will be just fine. But, if you do the same for SWS then they suffer sleep deprivation. Also, if you restrict sleep then REM is reduced, but not SWS; when people rebound after deprivation, they only really make up the SWS time.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.117.2800&rep=rep1&type=pdf
It seems reasonable that once you settle onto your schedule, most of the sleep time will be in SWS. So, you should dream only occasionally.
As for memory, here's some reading material you may find interesting:
http://www.eimoe.tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/fakultaet_mathematik_und_naturwissenschaften/fachrichtung_psychologie/i1/allgpsy/mitarbeiter/ruge-ordner/dat/lehr/rasch2007.pdf
It shows that declarative memory (basically what a layman calls 'memories') are consolidated (stored) during slow-wave sleep. Procedural memories (memories for physical skills), on the other hand, are consolidated during REM. It's a brilliantly conceived study.
So you may have trouble learning a new sport on this schedule, but normal learning should be okay.
W.r.t. the daylight lamp, you won't have any good effects unless you're looking into the equivalent of 500-700W of conventional light source, equal to a 75W CFL lamp.
Then, if you don't know it, there's a book on polyphasic sleep, called "Why we nap". It's about the only solid scientific information on the subject that I could find.