Day 5
Blake
Remember all of that stuff I said yesterday about the hardest part being over? Ha! That'll teach you to believe me. What were you thinking?
The weird thing was, yesterday's troublesome spell came in a different spot than it had previously. Instead of feeling terrible from 3-4, I felt it between 11-1. Part of that last 30 minutes might have been just general post-nap grogginess. But still, it hit hard. After that, things cleared up a lot from and I did fine the rest of the night.
This morning was a little fuzzier than normal. I was still awake, but my eyes were heavier than they have been since the experiment started. I still managed to keep a good focus and do well in the first half of my work day.
The noon nap could not have been more welcome, though. I was very much ready for it. I'm hoping that means my body is starting to learn its new sleep schedule. Either way, I was happy to see it get here. I had no trouble at all falling asleep and woke up easily. After about 10 minutes and some lunch, I started to feel good again. Not that I felt terrible before, but I definitely started feeling my energy come back.
It looks like Caitlin and I are going to dive head first into the experiment now. For the past few nights I've been staying over at her place so that we could keep each other up. Tonight will be the first time that we try to make it separately. I'm really hoping my willpower can push through. Self-motivation for stuff like this isn't my historical strong point. Let's see how it goes. There's already been talk of another late night CK's run to get us through the 3 o'clock hour.
Here goes nothing.
Caitlin
Well. That was unexpected.
I was feeling pretty good about my midnight nap last night. Turns out that I was wrong about it. I was woken up by Blake around 1:15. I guess I missed my alarm. I went into the living room and sat down on the couch to wake up some, Blake ended up taking this his wife back to their place for the night, and I just simply passed out. I don't remember falling asleep, but I do remember waking back up around 7:30.
I was exhaused, so I crawled back into bed for some more sleep. I just started to realize just how much I missed cuddling with my sig fig. So I savored the sweet, sweet cuddles and extra sleep while I was already oversleeping. After I woke up around 10:30, I decided that I was pretty much done with this experiment. But after waking up some and thinking about why I originally wanted to do this, I decided to continue on for a little while longer.
I feel like crap today. And I really really want a Dr. Pepper. I barely slept during the noon nap, and I didn't sleep at all during my 6pm nap. And now I've got a headache. I can battle the sleepiness just fine; it's the feeling like crap that wears down my willpower. Also, I now understand why they said oversleeping sets you back a few days.
I've been trying to figure out ways to get back on track. How to do this transition correctly. I'm not really sleeping much through my naps (which is expected, but even after 4 days of this, I've only slept during a couple naps). So now I'm looking for ways to help me actually get to sleep during my naps. The no-sleeping during naps really contributes to the feeling-like-crap. Especially the midnight nap. Because I'll feel great and ready for the night, but then when I take the nap, I'll get up feeling like I almost got sleep, but not really, so I feel the opposite of rested; and that's why I'm having trouble with the 12:30-6am wake period.
For now, I'm continuing on. But if I don't start getting back into the swing of things in the next few days, I think I'm going to be ready to call it quits. I really did enjoy the feeling after the few successful naps that I have had so far. I can probably fix the waking up groggy while sleeping monophasically by looking into some of those cool iPhone apps that wake you up at the end of your closest REM to wake-up time, and finding my perfect sleep length. But the extra productivity time would be cool. And I was really looking forward the perception of time feeling like a continuous flow.
I knew this was going to get hard, but I'm tired of feeling like crap and not being able to sleep to help (usually sleep is my best medicine for a headache). We'll see what happens.
What generally determines how true a schedule is is where it falls on this curve http://cat.pdx.edu/~hunner/Polyphasic%20Sleep%20Theory.png and are based on *20 minute* naps. Uberman will leave you with the continuous-time-flow feeling, but frankly it's actually a rather unpleasant feeling.
Practice makes perfect, even when it comes to polysleep!
Are you polyphasic right now? If so, which schedule?
2nd 12am, didn't sleep
3rd 6am, slept 45 min
4th 12pm, slept 45 min
5th 6pm, slept 10 min
Growing up, I hated waking up for school, and I loved saying up late. I deliberately planned out my career so I would never have to wake up to an alarm or keep a fixed daily routine.
I cannot recall the last time I attempted to fall asleep without simply passing out with a book or watching a movie ... or drunk. Laying awake, with nothing to pay attention to except the vibrations in my body and the flitting images and words in my brain is unfamiliar territory. As I try to allow myself to drift to sleep, it's as if I'm leaning back in a chair that's about to tip over. It cycles over and over, I'm drifting, then I feel the tip, then I'm conscious again.
While contemplating this, I imagine that parachute exercise in elementary school, where the kids gather round and lift it up. I imagine the parachute as my conscious and the ground as my subconscious, and I let the parachute slowly fall to the ground, and when it touches I will be asleep. But something invades, a thought, an image, a sudden awareness of a muscle or tension in my body, and the parachute is lifted back up.
Things I'm trying:
1. Only eat right after nap time. Eat light, so that I'll be hungry again in six hours.
2. If feeling very tired, load up Civilization. Since childhood that game has been able to make me completely unaware of the passage of time.
3. Focus more on waking up on schedule rather than when I fall asleep. As I will spend at least 15 minutes (for now) waiting to fall asleep its ok to lay down 15 minutes early, but get up when the alarm goes off. I have it set for the 4 times every day recurring.
4. Falling asleep is meditation time, use it to help observe and listen to the body. Practice breathing (without hyperventilating).
5. If sleep doesn't come, picture a story. Creating a story is kind of like dreaming, and it feels like the subconscious is eager to pick it up, learn to let it.
Another one of my friends started the same schedule with me, but says the extra nap kept him from sleeping deeply enough and dropped down to the standard 3 naps. He says he feels much more energetic after that.
I also wanted to point you to a documentary, viewable on YouTube, about sleep deprivation. It's not about polyphasic but it IS about sleep. The documentary tells us about 1950's New York radio DJ Peter Tripp who stays awake for 201 hours for charity. I thought the documentary was a bit dramatic, but factually pretty scary. Again: not really relevant to polyphasic, but fascinating on the subject of sleep.
Search on YouTube for "Secrets of Sleep Peter Tripp".
I would definitely look into Everyman, the continuous feeling is pretty disturbing from what I understand. Having the longer core nap to separate yesterday from today is beneficial. From my research, most people who go completely polyphasic for a significant period of time switch back to monophasic because of this odd "time stretching" phenomenon.
@Hunner
Wow - your core nap is pretty much my entire sleep schedule! I typically sleep from 1 - 5 on weeknights, 1 - 8 on weekends. This has been working out pretty well for me, but every once in a while I will just crash hard and sleep-in longer than I originally intended. Hard to pin this on the sleep though as it usually occurs when I've had one (or six) too many drinks. Been on this schedule for about 7 years.
I've been thinking of mixing in an afternoon nap, something like 4-5PM nap, 1-5AM core to try and get on a more consistent schedule. Once I get my weekends on track I would drop my core sleep to 1-4AM, giving myself some exercise time in the mornings.
Hunner - Have you actually tried the Uberman out? What did you think of it?
Niels - Someone told us about that documentary, but we never got the name of it. Thanks so much. I'll definitely be checking that out.
At least for me, I really really have to get up when the alarm rings, and shouldn't go back to sleep for at least 2 hours. Otherwise I generally don't get up for 4+ hours and call it an "everyman day".
I end up with an everyman day about once a week, seems sufficient to break the time-as-a-flow feeling I'd gotten (which I find delicious, ymmv)