Wide Awake Living

finally....

2006-02-23T03:03:00.000+11:00

It's about time I got around to this. It doesn't feel like it's been that long since my last post, but it's been quite busy. In short, holidays, a funeral, an extremely busy period at work, house and mortgage hunting have played havoc with my schedule. Missing a few naps here and there is very destructive to polyphasic sleep.

As a result, I've been a strange mix of mono- and polyphasic for the past week or two, which has been interesting - at first you feel pretty cruddy (physically) after getting extra sleep, but that smoothes out after a while. If I'm completely honest, it's gone on a little longer than necessary, primarily due to laziness on my part. But I did have some lovely sleeps.

So I'm back on the PS drug again, with tonight being the first full night in several days, and so far there's no issues (yes, it's early days yet!). I've been vaguely concerned that I might have to go through the transition phase again, but this is highly unlikely as

I never went completely back to monophasic sleep and
My body has learned to get quality sleep from naps

Speaking of naps, I did keep them up even when I had had extra sleep the night before, and I did notice a slightly different quality to them - they were lighter for a start, I was more likely to remember dreams, and also more likely to wake up before the alarm.

Anyway, if you take anything away from this, it should be that busy schedules and polyphasic sleep are difficult combinations to make work - miss one nap and you'll find it difficult, miss the second and you'll crash hard.

haven't

2006-02-18T16:37:00.000+11:00

No, I haven't forgotten. I'll post soon. I promise.

Health Concerns

2006-02-07T16:10:00.000+11:00

Continuing with the monophasic sleep patterns throughout the day (this being day two) have highlighted some issues.

First off, I'm generally feeling quite bad. Grogginess and inability to think very clearly are the main symptoms, meaning that I have to push hard to maintain any levels of productivity.

I'm also experiencing a very uncomfortable tightness around my head (not quite a headache), adding to the general difficulty in progressing with this.

In short, this monophasic sleep does not seem to be very good for me mentally or physically, and I'm starting to become concerned about the long-term health consequences of continuing with it.

I'm going to terminate this trial immediately, and switch back to polyphasic sleep - monophasic sleep is obviously a fad, as well as being clearly unnatural. One big chunk of sleep per day? How did that get sold to anybody?

In retrospect, it seems like such a stupid idea - it's also throwing away 40 hours of consciousness every week, for no real benefit.

Looking forward to my next nap!

Slow

2006-02-07T11:06:00.000+11:00

You might have noticed that I've been posting less entries over the past few days - things have been very busy at work and at home, and I've also relaxed somewhat with my sleep; I've had two large chunks of sleep over the past two nights. The is for a variety of reasons, including ..... I don't remember ;o)

Anyway, yesterday after my first chunk of sleep was just the same as previous times - I was able to continue through the day without being tired or requiring any naps. This again shows that the schedule can be relatively flexible if you need to take a day off from it.

Today however, after another chunk of sleep (4-5 hours) I'm much more groggy. Definitely not at my best. The extra sleep was somehow un-wholesome - like eating cardboard.

So it's back to full polyphasic for me, with a renewed focus on getting through my list of things to do. I can't stress how important it is to be motivated to do the tasks that you set yourself, otherwise the temptation to read, watch junk on tv, websurf randomly or generally just waste time is too strong - any or all of these then lead to drowsiness and inevitably, sleep.

Week 6 Stats

2006-02-05T20:57:00.000+11:00

If you remember, last week was fraught with oversleep issues, which I'm glad to say, I have successfully overcome. A lot of it was due to my getting a bit too relaxed with the whole thing. The main points that I addressed were

getting up off my ass the second an alarm goes off, and
keeping physically active any time that I'm drowsy

Thus the stats for this week are:

1207 minutes slept
2.87 average hours sleep per day

...which makes it the best week since I started, 6 weeks ago.

Here's the previous weeks' averages:
Week 1: 4.38
Week 2: 3.75
Week 3: 4.02
Week 4: 3.88
Week 5: 5.41
Week 6: 2.87

Coffee

2006-02-03T20:31:00.000+11:00

Over the past few days, I've started to re-introduce coffee into my system. This had to happen, because I like coffee a lot. A very big lot. So much so that my wife despairs at the vast amount of coffee related apparatus that I've acquired over the years.

For the moment I've settled on a relatively good espresso machine, a very good burr grinder (the experts often say that the grinder is more important than the espresso machine) and an air popcorn popper.

You might we wondering what the popcorn popper is doing in that list - it's for roasting coffee, and it does a great job! Batches are small, but the whole process is fascinating and fun - I recommend that anybody give it a go if you really want to know what 'freshly-roasted' means. Google it.

Back to the point - I started by taking a coffee just after my 1pm nap at work, and had no issues getting to sleep for the next nap of the day. So far so good.

Next, I decided to have a coffee after my 1am nap, which also had no ill-effects, in fact it probably helped through that difficult part of the night - and let's face it, nothing's going to prevent me from getting to sleep for my 5am nap.

Other coffees after various naps have also shown no problems, but I have been careful to avoid them coming up to a given nap, especially during the day.

I hope this gives some encouragement to those of you out there who may be considering PS but don't want to give up coffee long term. Depending on your constitution, you may even get away with drinking coffee during the initial few weeks of the transition, providing you limit it to just after your naps.

Good luck!

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Various

2006-02-03T04:56:00.000+11:00

Still going well, with only a small hiccup on Thursday - I made the mistake of skipping my additional 11pm nap in favour of fixing a wireless network problem - I just couldn't leave it alone. By the time it got to 2am I was un-recoverably tired, despite going for a brisk walk. I don't remember approaching the couch, but obviously we worked out some arrangement that allowed me to 'just relax for a minute' for about 3 hours.

So, Chris, while this still doesn't help much with our parallel experimentation into the benefits of core sleep versus additional napping, at least it doesn't prove me incorrect.

Fabs (an avid reader) has sent in a picture of something he invented. It's called the fabs-keep-o-wake and it looks very promising. Especially if you need a suntan. This is in relation to comments he posted here.

Thanks Fabs!

Another reader has sent in the following article:

A small study of 16 volunteers found that exposure to short-wavelength light, or blue light, perked them up immediately.

I'm going to make a full-screen image consisting of a solid blue colour, and see if it has any affect.
I'll let you know!

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going good...

2006-02-01T05:02:00.000+11:00

That's two perfect nights under my belt now, and tonight is shaping up to be a third, with relative ease.

I do say 'relative' for a reason, more on that shortly.

Today was a busy and stressful day at work - careful readers might note that the last two times I mentioned that were immediately followed by hard crashes. But not today - I was more aware of my tiredness, which probably helped, as it let me plan for additional naps.

The first of these was an accidental 5 or 10 minute snooze in front of the tv just after my 9pm nap (Reminder to self: no couch, no tv when tired!!!). I awoke from this feeling surprisingly refreshed and 'satisfied'. So no issues there.

Regardless of this impromptu 'napette', I still felt it wise to take an 'official' additional nap at 11pm, which I did. It was uneventful, but I do now feel as if I've pulled myself further away from the edge of sleep deprivation.

I promised that I would elaborate on my earlier choice of the word 'relative' which I used to describe how easy the nights are. It's become apparent to me that surviving this week with some good sleep stats to show for it is now merely a matter of applying the 'keep active' formula. And that's fine, even heartening.

What I have to struggle with every night (at least when I'm tired - when I'm not tired Wil should be love sen.

......

It's now a few hours later, and I've left the above as an interesting example of what happens if you try too hard to continue blogging while you're nodding off. I've only just noticed it now while finishing this entry. I don't have a clue how the thought that I was trying to communicate got mashed into what you see above, but it is interesting how I somehow managed to include the word 'love'. Anyway, I noticed myself nodding off, at which point I got up and did some cleaning to keep myself busy.

The point I was trying to make is that, at night, when you're tired, you really miss sleeping, and beds, and the freedom to lie down and relax. It's actually quite difficult. But this only happens when you're tired - you don't miss those things at all when you're alert, active, and awake as you would be during any normal day. I have to remind myself at the time that one of the main goals of this transition is to eliminate these 'tired' periods.

Time for my 5am nap...

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Update

2006-01-30T23:35:00.000+11:00

Ok, last night went very well, as you would expect given that there should be plenty in my sleep bank. Tonight has also started out well, I don't have the tiredness that plagued me the previous nights - my naps over the past 24 hours have been quite satisfactory.

I've been thinking about the additional nap theory to get around the crash-cycle, and have decided to make them short naps, or 'power naps', of approximately 10 minutes in duration. I do find these quite refreshing, and they have the added benefit of having close to zero sleep inertia attached, which I consider very important given my issues of the past week. Coincidentally, it's time for my first one now.....

.... and I'm back (that's right folks, you're getting live-action poly-napping, right here on wideawakeliving!!). I awoke with only minimal disorientation, but I wouldn't actually describe myself as 'refreshed'. Pity, I was hoping for more from the power naps. Perhaps I'll try 15 minute power naps, to accomodate the few minutes it takes to drift off....

In relation to last week, it's become quite clear to me that the root cause of the issue was the fact that I let my guard down - I got 'cocky' about the whole thing - after all I had just achieved four weeks of very successful polyphasic sleep, and it was only going to get easier, right? So I relaxed, took the pressure off, and things started to fall apart.

It's absolutely critical that you keep yourself moving and busy if you get tired or drowsy, even after four weeks - always have a list of things to do. My mistake was to keep reading or using the computer until I got so drowsy and mentally fatigued that sleep was too easy an option. In fact, I'm feeling a bit that way now, so I'm gonna get off my ass and start into the washing-up.

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Week Five Stats

2006-01-30T22:53:00.000+11:00

Ok, due to popular demand (1 vote counts for a lot around here) here they are, and despite all the spreadsheet cells filled with 60's, it's not as bad as I expected:

2272 minutes slept
168 hours in week
37.87 hours slept
4.44 ratio
5.41 hours average per day

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Week Five - No Stats

2006-01-30T01:54:00.000+11:00

I won't be posting stats this week - needless to say they're crap. I even stopped recording them at one point.

Looking back at the week, the issue seems to revolve around an initial oversleep, usually my 1am nap which extends for an hour in total. Upon waking from this, my mental state (due to sleep inertia?) is apparently quite susceptible to suggestion - the night seems spoiled and un-redeemable - so at some stage within the next hour I succumb to a quick nap from which I wake at 5:30 or 6am.

On the nights after an oversleep, it's very easy to stick to schedule - they're very productive nights with no tiredness. Then the next night, the naptime double-up happens again - last night it was my 9pm nap (that's never happened before!), and then my 1am as well.

Needless to say this is very frustrating.

So some resolutions:

Get the hell up as soon as the alarm goes off - it's possible that I may have woken at the correct time during the doubled-up naps, turned off the alarm while still lying down, and relaxed for just a moment........ It seems I wouldn't remember waking either - this memory-gap seems to be a recurring item in people's reports.
Be very strict about keeping active during 'tired' periods - don't let my mind linger on how comfortable the couch looks
Oversleeping during a nap is not an excuse to give up on the rest of the night

I've also changed my alarm to be quite a bit louder, and have started setting multiple alarms - one at my wake-up time, and two more at 5-minute intervals after that. This is in addition to the countdown alarm which is set to go off a minute or two after the very first alarm.

Also, Chris, in relation to my earlier post about testing the difference between core sleeps and additional naps, I've messed up a bit, and will have to postpone ;o)

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Contact

2006-01-28T03:02:00.000+11:00

One thing that I've not mentioned before is the fact that I wear contact lenses. Why would I? What's that got to do with the whole PS thing? Shut up with your damn questions, I'm getting to that!

Contact lenses are a godsend. I used to wear glasses when I was a teenager, the big horrible, then fashionable (so I'm assured) aviator shaped ones that cover half your face. As some of you may know, Ireland is quite a cold country (don't argue with me, I'm in Australia - Ireland is bloody cold!). Indoors by contrast, is generally quite warm, so making the transition between outside and inside causes glasses to instantly fog up - foomp! You have to take them off, wipe them with your lens-cloth, and replace them on your face - foomp! - it happens again. This cycle continues until the glass has warmed to the same temperature as the room, and moisture from the air no longer condenses on the lens.

The people in the room watch curiously.

At a certain point I recognised the need to be somewhat 'cooler', and my parents thankfully funded my move to contact lenses. Contact lenses at this time were somewhat barbaric - little disks of glass that could easily be smashed by a passing ruffian, piercing your eyeball and causing hideous pain and damage. Even when they weren't floating around on your cornea in little shards, they were quite uncomfortable. The things we do to be cool, eh? Anyway, it worked - I joined a metal band as a lead guitarist and rocked the parish.

After a few years the eyeball boffins invented soft contact lenses, although I believe I carried on in ignorance with the hard contact lenses for far longer than necessary. This invention was a good thing - they were so much more comfortable - you could rub your eyes, take a poke from a passing ruffian and so on. Just as importantly, they also let more oxygen through to the cornea.

As you may be aware, the cornea is quite unique - the only part of the body in which the cells are not fed oxygen via the bloodstream. Obviously you can't have blood vessels in your cornea, it needs to be transparent so that you can see. Instead, the cells of the cornea absorb oxygen from the air.

So contact lenses are designed to be 'gas-permeable', which means that they let the oxygen through to the cornea, at least to some degree. Some contact lenses are more gas-permeable than others. My original hard contact lenses weren't very good at this, and I had constant warnings from my optometrist that one day I wouldn't be able to wear them any more, that my eyes would give up. Only wear them for a few hours every day she said. I wore them all day, every day, only taking hem out to sleep at night. For years. Thankfully, the technology of contact lenses moved faster than my eyes deteriorated.

However, they're still not perfect, which brings me in a long-winded fashion to the 'point' of this post - the process of transitioning to PS, staying up all night with my contacts in (I have no spectacles) has not been kind to my eyes. They're getting bloodshot around the cornea as my eyes attempt to divert more oxygen to the right areas.

Dryness is another problem associated with long wear of contact lenses, and at its worst it can be extremely uncomfortable. Napping seems to trigger this with some efficiently. This can make the lenses stick like glue to the surface of your eye, and removing them is a painful exercise in eyeball-scraping.

Enjoying this so far?

Today, I went to my super optometrist. He looked at my eyes through various spikey beige chunks of instrumentalia and noted all of the symptoms of what I described above. An explanation of the cause as well as the point of my visit was all that was required to stop the inevitable beating. He also noted that my eyesight was improving, and further reduced the strength of my prescription.

"Wait a minute," I hear you say - "improving? They're not improving. You're myopic (short-sighted), yes? Your eyes will continue deteriorating for the rest of your life. You must be mistaken. Get used to it, or get laser surgery."

Well, that's why I called him my super optometrist. He's a behavioral optometrist, and has a slightly different approach to things. In relation to my eye-sight improving, consider the following: your right arm is a bit tired one particular day. On that same day you happen to be having a right-arm-strength-test, courtesy of your local well-meaning rightarmetometrist, who notes that the strength of your right arm is not what it should be (you're tired, remember?).

"You'll be needing an assistive exo-skeleton there", he says. "Noooo," you whine, "only the nerds have them, I'll look stupid!!". "Stop your whining you little brat!". That was your mother, smacking you in the head. "Listen to the rightarmetometrist, he knows best!" Smack! (That was another one for good measure).

So, on the appointed day, you head up to the rightarmetometrist and have your new assistive exo-skeleton fitted, all the while dreading going back out into the street, back to school, back to the inevitable staring, poking and laughing. The exo-skeleton kicks in whenever you go to move your arm, giving you normal,or just above normal strength in your arm.

It assists your muscles, letting them take it easy. They get very little exercise, nothing strenuous, and slowly begin to waste away. Soon you notice that the strength in your arm is waning. That's ok, the rightarmetometrist said that this would happen. All you have to do is pop back for another visit (pay the money) and he will 'up' your prescription. Thus is the spiral of degeneration and dependency on the palliative joined....

That seems to be one of the core practices of conventional optometry, which treats myopia as something akin to a disease, rather than viewing (hah) the weakness as something that can be addressed with some exercise. That's how your eye focuses - the lens in your eye is pulled by muscles into the correct shape in order to focus on the object that you're viewing. If this muscle is weak - perhaps you read too many books as a kid, and didn't spend enough time focusing on objects further away - shouldn't it be strengthened by working it out???

When I first came to Australia, my vision was something like -6 and -5 (that's diopters if you're interested: a -5 is the same as 20/600 vision), which is pretty bad. Now both my lenses (as of today) are -2.5. My vision with them in is less than perfect, which is the whole point - they have to do the work to adjust to something closer to 20/20. To be more precise, he keeps my vision at just above what is legally required to be able to drive a vehicle (the third line on the chart - if you can't read that for your driving test you're in trouble). It's not a very fast process, but your mileage may vary - I typically don't do the exercises, thus dragging out the entire process. But there's been steady improvement over the years.

How did I find out about this? A book by Jacob Liberman, called Take off your glasses and see which talks about the very strong link between suggestion, mental and physical stress and eyesight, and which also listed my optometrist as a practitioner. So I looked him up and made an appointment.

And that's it.

For now, I have to take it easy with the contact lenses - wear them as little as possible over the next few days, and not at all at night. My new specs won't be ready for at least a week, so in the meantime I've reduced the resolution and increased the font-size on my laptop. And I've to do my eye-exercises, which is one of the basics of behavioral optometry. At least I've got the time now ;o)

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mess

2006-01-28T00:45:00.001+11:00

Well, the last few days have been a bit of a mess. It happened again last night, with my 1am nap continuing until 3am, at which point I was woken by my wife. Both alarms had failed to wake me - or at least they had succeeded in waking just enough of my brain required to switch them off. No measurable amount of consciousness seems to be required to do this.

Subsequent efforts on her part to convince me to stay up and do something, or at the very least set my alarm for a nap were met (reportedly) by some lame-ass half-asleep attempts at fooling either her or myself that I was already doing it, or it wasn't necessary, or that the alarm was set ("see?"). These attempts at subterfuge, she notes, weren't worthy of a dull 2-year-old.

Anyway, once you're in that state - having overslept by so much, in the midst of experiencing wrenching sleep inertia, and with the depressing feeling that you've already messed up the entire night hanging over you, the most logical and comforting decision to make is to write off tonight, and start afresh on this annoying PS thing tomorrow. Everything will be alright tomorrow.....

Even as these thoughts are creeping through your brain, the wispy strands of warm sleepiness are already reaching up to you from the bed, sucking you back; surrendering to this and sinking back down into the cozy comfort feels soooooooooooooooooooo damn good..........

The difference is stark - staying awake is akin to swimming upstream, against a murky foggy, muggy suffocating current, constantly working - the other is relaxing in the same current, instantly being swept away in the water which becomes a warm cocoon of intense contentment.

Perhaps I'm being a bit too 'wordy', but I have to try and get across just how amazing it feels to give in and get some free sleep after so much tension has been created in the opposite direction - it's the ultimate definition and extreme embodiment of the simple word relax.

Anyway, it's a good idea not to let this situation occur - the main culprit here is sleep inertia, caused by over-sleeping. Whether it's because your alarm didn't work, or because you were woken at the wrong point of your cycle, you'll get the same result. The only things that will save you at this point are resolve, commitment, or discipline. Otherwise, you won't even remember that you woke up at this stage, and in a few hours you'll wonder why both alarms have no batteries in them, and why you have banana smeared on the right side of your body.

Just ignore that last bit, and move on.

So, resolve, commitment, discipline - none of which I've had for the last few days. Why? Did I ever?

I did four weeks of polyphasic sleeping, and very successfully I thought.* Perhaps my thinking that was part of the problem. I started to let my guard down - perhaps I naively believed that I was now a pro, fully adjusted, and would wake up naturally after 25 minutes of sleep. As it turns out, I wasn't and I didn't.

Perhaps in conjunction with these hiccups, or because of them, the initial burst of energy that saw me through until now seems to have dissipated. And lacking that army-type discipline, that unthinking commitment to continue regardless of the circumstances, I find myself in the situation where simple arguments at 3am are enough to get me crawling back to bed.

So what to do?

* Shut yer hole Al, I am not a failure!

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Core sleep

2006-01-26T17:03:00.000+11:00

I saw this post from Chris Beams on the uberman group at yahoo today, in response to another poster announcing that they were about to add some core sleep into their schedule:

Timely that you mention you're adding a 1.5 hour core period. Just this morning, I've decided to do the same. I've discovered a pattern in my schedule that usually begins with a night of extreme tiredness and oversleeping, then follows with one night of alertness and on-time napping, followed by a night of mostly on-time naps with considerable struggle staying awake, followed by a night of extreme tiredness and oversleeping. This cycle then repeats itself.

It appears that on that every-third-night when I oversleep, I'm making a deposit in my 'sleep bank', and then spending that over the next two nights (I don't know that this is physiologically accurate, but it appears to be a useful metaphor).

I, like you, am hopeful that injecting a 1.5 hour core sleep period in the early morning hours will help to regulate my need for extra sleep, and do away the unproductive and frustrating nights of oversleeping.

I've noticed I have a similar cycle, although mine is stretched over a few more days, and doesn't seem to be quite as severe as Chris'. Now, I don't really like the idea of adding core sleep - I think that it can be a little counter-productive in that it sends confusing signals to the body.

If we accept the theory that the reason we get tired is that the body hasn't yet become proficient at getting the required amount of REM sleep out of our naps, it's safe to say that I need to get more practice at napping.

So, we have the same problem, but my solution is this: add more naps - this means that
a) I get more sleep, and eliminate the crash-cycle (it's just not core sleep)
b) The body gets more practice at napping

Once the extra napping practice starts to pay off, I should be able to remove those additional naps one at a time. In this way, I continue toward my ideal goal, which is to be as close to pure polyphasic sleep as is comfortable and practical.

Anyway, I don't know if my way is better than Chris'. What to do? If only we could both try a method each so we could compare the results....

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... and two steps back

2006-01-26T16:13:00.000+11:00

I don't know what it is, maybe it's related to commitment or tiredness or self-control, but last night I let myself go, and slept for about 8 hours. Now, apart from being very well rested, I feel a bit dull and groggy - definitely too much sleep. (note: this is clearing as I go through the day).

I do intend to get back on the horse immediately, I've invested to much time in this to give up now. I've made a lot of progress, and feel that I'm down to the final few tweaks to make this work properly. In general these are

1) getting the most from my naps
2) getting over the drowsy period in the middle of the night - this may be achieved (at least partially) by achieving #1, and from working in additional naps as per my previous post.
3) integrating PS more with my 'day-job' - at this stage of the transition (at least I hope it's limited to the transition), any 'upsets' at work that upset or derail the nap schedule still have quite an impact.

Perhaps I just needed a break - moving to PS is hard work, and now that I've treated myself (with last night's sleep, and a delicious coffee this morning) I do feel somewhat more able to dive back in.

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Results

2006-01-26T16:11:00.000+11:00

This has taken a bit longer to post for a few reasons, some of which I may inadvertently touch upon here or in future posts. As far as the results go, they may not be worth the wait, however they were quite pleasing..

Between 1am and 3am, I was productive, yet a little tired - standard fare for anybody doing this type of thing - you can tell that it's the middle of the night, you're not at 100%.

The difference after the 3am nap, however were stark. At 3:30, it became daytime. I don't mean literally - you would have read about that in the papers - "DAYTIME COMES EARLY IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - SCIENTISTS ASTONISHED", "END OF WORLD PREDICTED, STARTING NOW". I mean that as far as my body and mind were concerned, I was at 100% (or higher) capacity. I had full energy, concentration, awareness and absolutely no tiredness or grogginess. It was obvious that this was how it was supposed to be.

Sounds simple, but sometimes these simple things can be overlooked in the midst of all the ruckus involved with transitioning to PS. I did post previously about getting extra naps to help avoid crashing, but I've never had such a good result in relation to general wellbeing and productivity.

So, a step forward...

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Tactics

2006-01-25T06:13:00.000+11:00

I was somewhat disheartened yesterday, so decided to change tactics somewhat. I developed a plan - a simple plan, but a plan nonetheless, and it was this: get more sleep.

No sooner said than done, I swung my plan into action, all of its intricate parts flowing together like the precise workings of a gentleman's carrying-clock. The risk was enormous, and I honestly didn't think I was going to make it for a while, but through some series of unaccountable miracles, it worked. I got more sleep.

How did I pull this off you might ask? And as you would expect, the devil's in the details. So here, they are, horns and all:

9pm Standard Nap, yet carefully considered in the light of what's to come
10pm Power Nap! The audacity! Never before attempted, yet through sheer force of will I pulled it off
11pm Additional Standard Nap. So soon, I hear you cry?? Yes. I make no excuses, it's in the plan.
1am Standard Nap. Yes Sir, I can still nap. I still have that special something, as the French say, a little "I don't know what".
3am Additional Nap. What?? Surely you can't be serious!! Yes I am. The non-believers may step outside at this point.
5am Standard Nap. And it goes on. How can he take it, you ask yourselves? The answer is in the stars......

As I write this, the experiment is over. Not the entire polyphasic sleep experiment, only this super condensed napping experiment. It had to end - the risk of destroying lives was far too real.

And the results? You'll have to wait for the...

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Bad day, Bad night

2006-01-24T07:06:00.000+11:00

Yesterday was a busy and stressful day at work. My 1pm nap was pretty unsuccessful, I probably got about 5 minutes of quality sleep during it. Additionally, I was delayed at work, so my 5pm was then pushed back by 2 hours. I felt pretty rough by then, with 'tight' feeling around the back of my head. Despite this, I had no problem performing or thinking well at work, it just didn't make for a comfortable experience.

So as I said, bad day, bad night - this all translated into another mysterious double-up of my 1am nap, after which I tried to do some work (work work, from work, you know?), but found myself spending more time fighting sleep than being productive. Then I just 'rested my eyes' for 3 hours.

Managed to be productive with some of the work work this morning (from 6am onwards). Bet you normal monophasic sleepers can't do that! Oh wait, you can. Bully for me.

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Week Four Stats

2006-01-23T23:00:00.000+11:00

Week four already, eh? Here's the stats, slightly better than last week:

minutes slept during week

1630

total hours in week (you could have worked this out yourself!)

total hours slept during week

27.17

awake:asleep ratio

6.18

average hours asleep per day

3.88

In case anybody's interested, here's a screenshot of the spreadsheet I use to track my sleep times...

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Double alarm 'malfunction'

2006-01-23T04:12:00.000+11:00

Nothing serious, but worrying nonetheless. As I was settling in (on the living-room carpet) for my 1am nap, I set my phone alarm for 28 minutes from now (1:25am - I remember), and set the countdown timer for 28 minutes.

Moments later, I awoke to the countdown timer alarm, which never happens - I always wake at the phone alarm and turn both alarms off. Stopping the countdown alarm, I check the time - 2am!!! WTF??

My phone alarm (which is still in my hand - usually the vibrations wake me before the 'ding's) doesn't seem to have gone off, and the screen doesn't have the alarm notification on it either. The alarm on it is still set for 1:25am too.

So I slept for 2 naps, back-to-back. I've no other explanation except that I must have woken, turned off the phone alarm and reset the countdown timer. Then I obviously drove downtown, woke up the local hypnotist, had all memory of the event removed from my mind, drove back to the apartment and slipped back into my nap as if nothing had happened.

So tomorrow night, I'll have somebody hide the car keys.

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Clarify

2006-01-22T08:47:00.000+11:00

I just wanted to clarify something from my resolve post - the extra sleep was not a crash -I didn't hit a sleep-deprivation wall that meant I couldn't go on, or have such a level of tiredness that I decided to give in - I just relaxed a bit too much, didn't focus on the goal, and thought it would be ok to get comfy on the couch for a few minutes.

So this was more due to a general lack of resolve and mental clarity - when I say mental clarity, I mean that my mind should be very aware of the rules surrounding the transition at all times - for some reason this rule had been relaxed recently.

I think I've sorted out the crash scenario with extra 'preventative naps' (assuming I'm able to see a crash coming!). What I need to do now is to follow through on my resolve to stick to the schedule like glue for the next week, and get over those tired periods that I have at night time - it's in those 'dark' periods that the bad voodoo happens.....

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Juicer

2006-01-22T08:17:00.000+11:00

We bought a juicer! It's a Sunbeam Cafe Series, with a 1000W motor, while most other juicers on the market tend to be sub-500W motors. So it's very heavy duty - it's even warrantied for commercial use. One of the first juices we tried consisted of beetroot, celery, apple, carrot and some ginger, and it turned out to be delicious.

So the fridge is now bulging with extra fruit and vegetables that we intend on using during the week - we even got some mint and coriander that can be thrown in to add some additional zing. Speaking of zing, I wonder if I can add chilli? Don't see why not - I could probably concoct some sort of indian-style vegetable curry juice. Or maybe not.

In my pre-health-kick days, I always thought that juicers were a bit silly- lots of people buy them, go nuts for a week, and then never use them again. I've since discovered that there's no easier way of getting lots of raw vegetables into your system, and if you're serious about your long-term health, this is up there on the list with cutting out processed carbs and sugar.

The only down-side to juicers - at least the only one I can see at the moment (we've had it for a week now) is having to clean it afterwards - this takes a bit of time and effort, however it fits neatly in with my recent love-affair for doing the washing-up (there's nothing better to help overcome sleep inertia). So I can see how other people get annoyed/discouraged having to wash so many bits every time they want an apple juice. I guess it's just a matter of weighing up the pros and cons.

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Resolve

2006-01-22T07:13:00.000+11:00

I'm a bit annoyed - woke up on the couch at about 6am. I vaguely remember part of my brain thinking this was acceptable at the time - clearly (to me now, at least) it was not.

This is the result of a lack of resolve, a slackening off or relaxing, when what I need is exactly the opposite - extra effort to push myself over the final hump.

And it's so close - I'm nearly there. It may not even take a huge amount of effort, but if I don't keep applying the pressure at this point, I'll always exist in the twilight of nearly being a polyphasic sleeper, something that was interesting but didn't quite work out. I don't want that.

Tiredness was also a factor last night, perhaps a carry-on from the day before, but also perhaps due to the fact that I've changed my nap-countdown-timer from 25 minutes to 20 minutes. This has been in effect since Thursday, and while it might be appropriate if I fall asleep immediately, if there's any delay it may be cutting out 5 minutes of vital REM sleep. I think I'll try changing it to 28 minutes, and see how that goes. If I wake up before it goes off, all the better.

So, today I'll be firming up my resolve, removing any potential obstacles, and planning ahead to ensure that everything is in place for those times of night when my commitment may be waning. One week from now I expect to see dramatic improvement across all areas of PS, especially night-time alertness and productivity and a general sense of well-restedness.

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Naparama

2006-01-21T15:25:00.000+11:00

I've been taking it easy today - I found I needed several additional naps to catch up, and not feel as if I'm dragging myself through the day. After each of these naps I've felt much better - 'wholer' in fact. I'm a bit surprised that missing 2 naps yesterday would have such an effect on my level of tiredness today, especially after having the additional REM stored up from the crash the day before.

So that's a potential drawback to taking free sleep in order to skip naps the next day, but one that can easily be remedied if you have the time to take in some extra naps.

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And lucky too...

2006-01-21T02:14:00.000+11:00

Well, today was interesting. I've learned a lot about how to deal with polyphasic sleep in the real world, and how flexible I can be.

After the extra sleep I got last night, I wasn't able to get to sleep for my 9am nap. I lay there for the entire time though, and found it quite relaxing. I felt it was important to do so, in order to help maintain the nap routine for the body.

Missing the 9am nap didn't seem to have any effect on my morning, everything went as if it was a normal day. I did feel slightly different, it's hard to describe, but I did feel somehow less 'flexible' during the morning.

For various reasons, I wasn't able to get my 1pm nap at work. Perhaps I didn't push it because I knew that I had the sleep banked, however things were extremely busy and it didn't seem viable at the time. I was however, interested to see what kind of effect this nap would have on me during the rest of the day - I was going to be in a 'danger' situation - an off-site meeting with other company managers for the entire evening.

One point to note is that my body did produce strong 'nap now' signals around lunchtime, but these subsided after a while, only to come back even stronger as it approached 5pm. These feel like a gentle tightening of the head and/or eyes - not uncomfortable really, but definitely noticeable. It was easy to ignore them and work on through - I didn't notice any degradation of my performance during the day.

Interestingly enough, I see tired people around me all the time - it's stunning to think that they're getting 6, 7,8 or more hours of sleep every night and still come to work yawning, slow, and sucking down coffee to get started at the day. Then they eat a bunch of sugars and carbs for lunch, peak for a while and crash again at around 3pm, at which point they require more coffee, carbs and a good smack around the face to keep going for the rest of the day.

That was me a while ago ;o)

But, as they say in many cultures, and many languages, with different inflections and tonal qualities which depend on the mood of the talker and the emotional ambiance of the situation that they're currently operating under, I digress.

My 5pm nap was then delayed until 7pm. Sleep didn't come as easily as usual for this either, but things started to slip back into place for the 9pm and 1am naps. During this time, I haven't felt quite as good physically and mentally, as I did before last night's crash - indeed, a lot of people have noted that they feel terrible during periods like this, or after switching back to monophasic sleep.

If you're an avid reader (and I've been assured that I have at least 2) you might recall that I had a previous crash just before a day where I had to fly to a client for an all-day meeting - both that instance and this are very good indications that if you have a situation coming up that will require your concentration for a day, without naps, a few hours of free sleep beforehand will help you through it with little or no trouble.

That should be useful to many people who are considering taking up polyphasic sleeping, but who have busy lives and difficult scheduling restrictions. I don't get the sense that it's something that you could do very frequently; it feels like a bit of a stretch.

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Crash some more

2006-01-20T07:56:00.000+11:00

I crashed again last night, and some extra naps couldn't fend it off, so I gave in and relented to some 'free' sleep, without alarms with the idea that I'd wake up naturally when I'd had enough rest. Perhaps optimistically, I hoped this would be after about 90 minutes, which is one standard sleep cycle, however I didn't wake until 6:30am (after about 6 hours sleep = 4 sleep cycles). So my sleep bank should be well and truly topped up.

I awoke feeling well rested and without grogginess. I was also quite positive about it all, aside from an brief spasm of dismay that I'd slept that long; this was offset by how good I was feeling in general. This is enhanced when I consider that the time between crashes is increasing, as well as when I consider how good the last 5 days have been.

So, once again into the breach, with continual progress in mind.

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Coffee

2006-01-19T08:03:00.000+11:00

I forgot to mention - I had my first coffee in 3 weeks, yesterday. And it was delicious. There's a Brazilian guy working in the ground floor restaurant of our building who does great espresso, so that's where I went.

This was right after my 1pm nap - I thought it would be a good time, being far enough (5 hours) from my 6pm not to affect it. It still seems like a good time, however it did take me longer to get to sleep at 6 - a coincidence I (desperately) hope. But in the name of science, I'll have to test and re-test until a repeatable pattern emerges ;o)

On the other hand, it was my first coffee in 3 weeks, and would have had a much stronger affect on me because my body's not used to it - if I do re-introduce coffee and my body becomes accustomed to it, subsequent cups shouldn't have as much an effect on my naps. Let's see.

Did I mention I like coffee?

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Day 25

2006-01-19T00:29:00.001+11:00

... has just started. It's a nice figure, with a clunky feel that slots neatly into one hundred. And for that precise reason, I'm going to give a general update on the PS experiment.

I mentioned that I had a beer and a glass of wine (didn't I mention the wine?) last night, and things seemed relatively good at the time I posted last night. The social requirements had required that I move my 9pm nap to around 10:15pm, which worked without any problems, and things went well until just after my 3am (additional) nap. I woke from this quite groggily, and didn't really recover at all - the rest of the night was an unproductive morass of drowsiness and a brief and wonderful surrender to the couch at around 4:20 am. How much of this was due to the alcohol? It's very hard to tell unfortunately. Perhaps I'll have to do some more experimentation ;o)

Also, I don't know what sort of special hormones or chemicals the body has designed for this situation, but they're amazing - after a large buildup of the tiredness 'tension' brought on by refusing sleep, the feeling of relief and wonderfulness you get on the point of surrender to a comfy couch or bed is really something else. The brain must really be pumping some special jollies around as a reward for getting some sleep. I don't get this even remotely when I set my alarms and go down for a scheduled nap - why???

Anyway, the past few nights have been a bit higgeldy-piggeldy as far as the sleep schedule goes, although the total minutes of sleep are staying around the 200 mark. I'm going to rein things in a bit and focus more on keeping busy with the right sort of work at the right times, and no more television - it's really easy to inadvertently snooze while watching some late-night crap.

So I've got a bunch of paperwork to do tonight, which means that I won't have to do everything on the laptop, which can make the eyes tired sometimes.

Physically and mentally, I'm consistently at 100% (or sometimes better) during the day. Nighttime still poses some challenges, most in the form of drowsy 'periods' or sleep inertia after naps. I'm expecting this drowsy period (which is currently from around 3am - 6am) to move around a bit before it eventually dissipates, so until then I'll just have to buckle down and try not to do anything that may hinder my transition.

I had a sore throat for a few days last week, but that fixed itself - so anybody worried about the effects of polyphasic sleep on the body's healing process can rest easy (har har). As I type this I've noticed my eyes closing themselves - I look at the clock and lo! Tis 5 minutes before my nap.

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Tea, beer, food & friends

2006-01-18T01:05:00.000+11:00

I'm due a nap now, but I'd like to get a quick post off before then.

Today was great, best day I've had since I started this experiment. Last night was good too - that run seems to be continuing, even on to tonight. It's amazing how quickly things fell together once I started adding in the extra naps.

I've also started slowly introducing some old friends back into my diet - I had my first mug of green tea yesterday, and it was great. Far better than the dandelion filth I'm trying to appreciate.

And I had a beer, in the pub, after a meal out with some friends. I was late for my nap by an hour and a quarter, however I was fully functional and capable even though I could feel the pressure to go get some sleep.

There seems to have been no effects from any of the above, which is great.

That's enough for now, need nap.

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Third Night

2006-01-17T01:42:00.000+11:00

This is the third night running that I'm up, able and willing to do work other than menial labor.

While on one hand I feel that this is great progress, I've also found that it's necessary to have a planned set of activities prepared for every night. If a night comes along where you've nothing on your list, nothing planned, and you're already tired and drowsy, it's an immediate recipe for un-scheduled sleep.

So the time as come to develop my own set of projects (some big, some small) that will be the ongoing impetus for continuing this polyphasic lifestyle. Without that, I'll just be wasting my time.

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Week Three Stats

2006-01-16T22:37:00.000+11:00

So here's week three's stats, a little later than usual (I've really set standards so far!) and a little behind last week in terms of performance. When I put it in those terms, it strikes me that it's not all about achieving less sleep than last week - it's about adopting these new patterns of sleep, and finding the right amount of sleep appropriate for you.

So in terms of performance, I'm ahead - I'm more adjusted to PS this week, with more productivity at night-time, and generally feeling better during the day and night.

minutes slept during week

1687

total hours in week (you could have worked this out yourself!)

total hours slept during week

28.12

awake:asleep ratio

5.98

average hours asleep per day

4.02

Cycle

2006-01-15T16:02:00.000+11:00

So last night was the second "good-night-you-have-after-a-crash-of-the-night-before". It makes sense that you'll have an easier time if you're well rested up. In order to halt the cycle and prevent another crash tonight, I've been taking extra naps to build up 'savings' in my sleep bank. In the future this will be very useful, as it means that unexpected alterations to the nap schedule can be easily accommodated. Right now, it means that I should be able to fend off any crashes associated with sleep deprivation.

While last night was pretty good, I was still quite drowsy - perhaps this a factor of the quality of the previous night's crash. So the extra naps were very welcome, and I'm doing quite well today. I would hazard to guess that I'm operating at close to 100% (although I was slow to start this morning, as my wife would no doubt point out ;o)

On that point, I would like to point out how utterly necessary it is to have a supportive partner while attempting a change like this. A non-supportive partner could easily find any number of ways to trip you up, while a supportive partner must actually go out of their way to accommodate you, even to the point of making sacrifices in their own life to do so. So thank you Gillian, my wonderful wife, for helping me achieve this, and putting up with yet another of my 'weird' ideas.

So this is it, coming to the end of week 3, and my stats aren't as good as I'd hoped them to be. (Hey! That rhymes).
I'll post them here later, for you all to see, you can compare them to last weeks, and then you'll agree;
this polyphasic sleep thing, this impulse, this fad, is harder to adjust to than people had said.
But I'll keep on going, I will persevere, and some day I'll get there, and there'll be nights without bleer (???)

Stupid.

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Or not....

2006-01-14T15:48:00.000+11:00

Well, it wasn't a taste of things to come straight away - my energy only lasted so long. Last night, after attempting to fend off the increasing drowsiness with an additional nap (11pm) I gave in and crashed for about 5 hours.

I suppose I could have attempted to claw myself back from the brink of sleep deprivation by strict adherence to the schedule, along with some additional naps, but this option didn't occur to me last night. My attitude at the time was "get some bloody sleep, and figure a way of making this work once you feel a bit better".

So that's what I have to do now. My first observation is that my naps don't seem to be giving me the amount or quality of sleep needed to sustain me through my waking hours (with night-time being the worst).

Is this because I haven't fully adapted to this type of sleep cycle yet? After approx. 20 days with quite strict adherence to the schedule this is somewhat worrying. But it's still possible that there's further adjustment to be done - any comments welcome (very).

So I'll give it at least another week, perhaps two before making any rash decisions. I'll keep the extra naps in the schedule in the short term also - there doesn't seem to be any down-sides to them.

After this time, if I have still failed to adjust, some alternative solutions to this would be

adding in some core sleep on a nightly basis - probably 90 minutes early in the morning (1am or 3am).
permanently moving from 6 to 7 or 8 naps per day

Let's see how it goes.

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A taste of things to come...

2006-01-13T06:35:00.000+11:00

It's now 6:36am and I've had the best night so far. Little or no drowsiness with continuous productivity and focus. I got work done. I got personal tasks & chores done. More work. Then an enjoyable jog, a nice shower, and soon, some relaxing time on the balcony before I start to get organised for work (in the office, with those strange people who were unconscious all night - weird!). This is what it's supposed to be like.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that I'm suddenly over some 'hump', and that it's going to be a breeze from here on - this is most definitely related to extra naps I've been taking when tired, and of course that core sleep I got the previous night.

I'm sure I'll have to continue to tweak the process, and will have the odd crash here and there, but it's a positive step forward, and just at the right time to restore my confidence in the whole process. A very nice taste of what's to come.

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It trixed usss!

2006-01-13T00:51:00.000+11:00

So, as I mentioned, I was cautiously confident that I was going to have a good night, even though I was quite tired from the day of patchy naps. From now onwards, I think I'm going to note down each time that I wake from a nap and I'm not somewhat rejuvenated - a few of these in a row and it's pretty obvious that you're on a path towards crashing.

And that's precisely what I did. It wasn't particularly spectacular as far as crashes go; there was no momentous struggle between myself and the spectre of sleep, no face-slapping and mutterings of "stay awake, dammit! awake!". None of that was necessary last night - because I was tricked.

Yes, tricked! A diabolical mind-trick that only my own traitorous sub-consciousness could play on me - it pulled the old "the universe is reversed" one. If you're not familiar with this, or how sneaky the mind can be (ever given up smoking?), here it is - for a brief moment last night, and believe you me, it didn't need to be long at all, my mind reversed the polarity on the universe, so that lying down on that awfully attractive bed, without my alarms, and at a time other than my scheduled nap-time, was exactly, precisely and unequivocally what was needed to continue on my successful path toward polyphasic sleeping.

There was no question about it being wrong, no struggle, no second consideration - all portions of my consciousness gratefully agreed: This is what must be done. And I woke up at 6:30am wondering what the hell had happened. Why was it bright outside? Where were my alarms? Why am I on the bed? Shit, have I missed my flight???

I didn't have any time to think about it, it was all hands on deck to get washed, dressed and to the airport on time. Got there, but couldn't nap on the 'plane - in fact I didn't need to, the usual 'nap now' signals weren't there. As the morning rolled on, there was no fatigue or drowsiness, and there were no problems at lunchtime either. I did start to feel the pressure to nap at about 3pm, however I didn't feel that my clarity or performance were affected in any way.

A very brief nap on the flight back (one of those ones where time has passed, but you don't remember sleeping or waking up) and I was full of energy all evening. My 9pm nap was more restful, as was my 1am. Here I am now, more wide awake and productive than I've been for a long time (for this time of night).

So, in conclusion, a lump of core sleep in advance of a difficult day is really beneficial. It also tops up the sleep-bank if your naps have been less than optimum.

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Shazam!

2006-01-12T19:17:00.000+11:00

Well, the last day and a half have been very interesting. Yesterday was a busy and stressful day, during which I found it difficult to have my lunchtime nap. I left work and went home to catch up, but that was difficult too - it may have been stress related, although I didn't feel particularly stressed. Anyway, it resulted in my nap starting and finishing late (although I didn't oversleep), after which I stumbled out the door to a gaming 'appointment'.

Needless to say, by the time I got home (around 11pm) I was pretty tired, but cautiously confident that I would be able to have a good night, with enough naptime recuperation to be able to handle the next day's business visit to the country's capital.

Now, this involved an 8:45am flight lasting 50 minutes, and a return flight at 5pm, again lasting 50 minutes. I expected to be able to grab some time on each flight to cover off my 9am and 5pm naps, but I wasn't sure how I was going to tackle the lunchtime nap - there was a lot resting on this client meeting, and I suspected that it might not look too professional to say "excuse me, I'm just popping out to the park bench for a nap".

Perhaps I could make some other excuse - a slight case of food poisoning? That might gain me 20 minutes in the bathroom. It is getting a bit silly though - I'm not sure if this type of thing is workable going forward.

I'll continue this later - have to go out for a meal. When I get back I'll write up how I managed to miss my 9am and 1pm naps, have a very dubious 5pm nap and still feel good about it all.

Caio.

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Find the Line

2006-01-10T09:46:00.000+11:00

Ok, I think I'm probably erring too close on the side of crashing as opposed to cruising - see this post if you don't know what I mean. In the same post I suggest that we can move away from the crashing side of the line by taking 'core' sleep at intervals, however now I'd like to suggest something different: more naps.

I would suggest that these naps also need to be taken at the correct time of day in order to help break out of the old circadian rhythm - if you take them at the lowest point (which is the point at which you would previously be sleeping on a monophasic schedule) you're just reinforcing the old rhythm.

Now I've chosen my language carefully here - I'm not exactly sure what the 'new' circadian rhythm would be. If you became a night-shift worker for example, after a while you would adjust, meaning your circadian rhythm would invert itself. It's 'alert' period would move to night-time rather than day-time.

At the moment, my circadian rhythm seems to still be in a monophasic 'day-is-active' mode. So night time is difficult for me currently, all my bodily functions are running slow - in sleep mode. The hormones being released are all saying 'go to sleep', 'forget this polyphasic madness' and other seditious mutterings.

So I assume the polyphasic version of a circadian rhythm must be flattened out, reduced in intensity, or split up into the various nap times. Dunno. But I need to adjust, and re-reinforcing the old rhythm won't work. My current nap times are 1, 5 and 9, so I'll add new naps at the following times: 11pm and 7am. These are 'awake' times as far as the circadian rhythm is concerned, but the extra sleep will stave off crashes, and hopefully make the night times more bearable.

If this doesn't make sense, try reading it again. If it still doesn't, perhaps I'm talking shite.

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Sleep Inertia

2006-01-10T06:33:00.000+11:00

I'd heard it mentioned, but I only really became acquainted with it last night. Sleep Inertia is the grogginess and disorientation that you feel upon waking from a nap. The longer the nap, the worse the Sleep Inertia can be. Also, the bigger a sleep-debt a person has before the nap also has a direct effect on how bad the SI is and how long it lasts. Do a google search and you'll come up with a lot of good articles (I did!).

It appears that I had both of the pre-requisites necessary to induce a very nasty case of SI (a longer nap, and an empty sleep-bank). After my 1am - 2:10am oversleep, I found it extremely difficult to get moving. I kept finding myself staring dumbly at the floor and completely unable to focus on what I was doing. I could feel this incredibly strong 'bed-suction' effect, in which my bed is actively trying to suck me back into the room, under the covers and down to sweet sweet sleep.....

While typing the previous blog, my eyes kept sliding down to the bottom of the screen and closing. After a few more moments I might start leaning sideways in the chair before catching myself falling off the chair with a jerk. No amount of moving around the apartment, stretching, eating seemed to shift it. This 'condition' went on for over an hour, at which point I went outside and had a very brisk walk.

I know what you're thinking - this sounds like standard sleep deprivation. Well, in one sense it is - at least it's related. Sleep deprivation is a pre-requisite for this type of condition, and it 'feels' different too.

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Minor Crash

2006-01-10T03:44:00.000+11:00

I could tell that there was one coming - all the signs were there. I attempted to fend it off by taking additional naps, so I took one at 11pm also. I then pottered around, keeping myself busy until my 1am nap.

1am seemed a long time away, and I was having difficulty staying awake - my drowsiness made computer work or reading impossible. In retrospect I should have invested more in menial tasks at this time. Eventually nap time came along, and I lay down on the living-room carpet with my two alarms....

....and woke up some unknown amount of time later, both my alarms silent and looking as if they had been cast aside. A quick scrabble showed the time to be 2:10am, meaning I had overslept by approx 45mins. I have no recollection of waking at the end of the 1.30 nap and turning off both alarms.

A note on taking additional naps during the transition period: I suggest that these not be taken during the most difficult period of the day or night, which for most people is the hours around 3pm and 3am. These times are in line with the body's circadian rhythm, and any naps taken around these times will only reinforce the old rhythm. I suggest scheduling these additional naps at various other times of the day.

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Cat

2006-01-09T20:43:00.000+11:00

Well, the cat's out of the bag at work - I had been trying to keep this whole thing low-key so as not to attract critical attention at the wrong times (like when I'm tired), but today one of the guys spilt the beans in front of the CEO and one of the Directors. Nice one Al!!! Now everybody's going to be watching me, waiting for me to fall asleep in meetings!

Anyway, today was interesting - I was pretty tired, but productive all the same. The tiredness may have been due to the extra-strict day I had yesterday, or the jog I had this morning (very enjoyable again). It also didn't help that my lunchtime nap was very short and un-restful. I was nodding off repeatedly by the time I got on the ferry home - this may have provided some amusement to those seated around me.

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Week Two Stats

2006-01-08T17:48:00.000+11:00

Here's a rough estimate of my sleeping hours for week 2 (assuming I don't mess up between now and 1am):

minutes slept during week

1575

total hours in week (you could have worked this out yourself!)

total hours slept during week

26.25

awake:asleep ratio

56.4

average hours asleep per day

3.75

A nice improvement on last week's 4.38 average per day! If I take out the oversleeps and additional naps, the minimum I'm getting in a day is 2.5 hours (6 x 25min naps). Unfortunately there's only been 1 day this week where there were no oversleeps or additional naps - today.

The weather's a bit muggy today, and I'm finding it hard to get motivated - a very lazy day indeed.

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Day 14

2006-01-08T14:12:00.000+11:00

Yesterday and last night went very well. All-round improvement against previous days. All naps were taken on schedule and with no major oversleeps. I say 'major' because I did sleep for an extra 15 mins or so at my 5pm nap - this may have been something to do with a beer that I snuck in during that period.

It was only a small beer, a small oversleep, and the two may not even be related, but it would be remiss of me not to mention it here. I have previously had a glass of wine one evening, (it's all coming out now, isn't it?) but there were no noticeable effects from that.

The mental fog is continuing to lift and energy levels are high. I'm getting more productive at night-time (which means that I'll have to move it and start defining some projects to work on). I also went for my scheduled jog this morning, and felt very good after it.

One thing that I've not heard other people talk about is how relaxing this whole thing can be - there's so much extra time to do the little things you want to get done. This really takes the pressure off - there's little or no rushing around, and you always have everything prepared.

So things are continuing to look positive for the polyphasic sleep style of living - and next week should be a busy week at work, so I will continue to 'push the envelope'.

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Article

2006-01-07T12:29:00.000+11:00

Here's a good article, written from a slightly more scientific perspective. It has some very interesting information on the various stages of sleep, and says that these phases get spread out over the different naps, so that for your first nap you might be experiencing REM sleep, for your second NREM (stage x) etc...

I'll have to think about that some more - it may be possible to discern the sleep types from how we feel after each nap....

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Oversleep

2006-01-07T11:36:00.000+11:00

Well, my positive attitude kept me going for quite a while - I must've been more tired than I thought, as I started having microsleeps after my 1am nap, which probably indicates a certain amount of sleep deprivation. Needless to say, I felt extremely tired, and decided to have an intermediate nap, shortly after 2am....

.... and woke up at 6am. Not exactly sure what happened, I have very foggy recollections of poking at the alarm (was I trying to reset it?), but that's really about it. Anyway, the small foam mattress that I'm currently using for naps was obviously too comfortable, so for future night-time naps I think I'll just use the carpet.

This doesn't bother me at all, I've always been able to sleep practically anywhere. Removing some of the comfort will however reduce the tendency to oversleep. For anybody who's thinking of starting out, don't nap in your bed - you will oversleep again and again. It's way too comfortable, and it holds a high level of association with monophasic sleeping. These thoughts are currently being discussed in the Yahoo! uberman group.

Anyway, the fact that I overslept is somewhat annoying, but I'll just tweak the process and continue. Overall I'm still improving, and sticking to the schedule will help continue this progress.

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Day 12

2006-01-06T14:33:00.000+11:00

Last night and today have been the best so far. While there were certain periods last night where I was drowsy, they didn't last, and I found myself able to focus on using the computer and reading - essentially working towards more productive tasks.

The fogginess is also gone today, although I suspect that it may revisit in ever decreasing amounts over the next few days. My energy levels have been much higher today also, and I find myself much more productive at work.

I also went for a jog this morning as per schedule, and it was almost relaxing in comparison to my first jog early this week. Definite progress there.

It does seem to be tied into the quality of the naps that I was having yesterday (from 5pm onwards and through the night). They seemed much more restful than usual - perhaps my body has finally 'twigged' and is doing the right thing.

So for the moment at least, everything's looking rosy and I've a very positive attitude to the entire experience.

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Crying

2006-01-06T04:04:00.000+11:00

This is one of the posts from a blog that I initially found so depressing that I nearly didn't embark on this project.

Reading it now, I find it hilarious - so funny in fact that I'm crying with laughter (sorry Manish). I'm not really laughing at the guy as much as at myself - now that I've been through some of that (admittedly to a much smaller extent) I can relate to his anguish and frustration.

I'm also humbled by his dedication.

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Sacrifice

2006-01-06T03:05:00.000+11:00

I've been reading some other blogs by people who are also attempting this, and one thing keeps standing out - very few of these people made a lot of compromises (if any) with their lifestyles before setting out on this path.

Given the very high failure rate of people successfully transitioning to Polyphasic Sleep, I thought it would be best if I removed any factors that might make the process more difficult.

More importantly for me though, was the following: I didn't want these available as excuses if at any time I felt it was getting too hard. During the most difficult period of sleep deprivation, I could well imagine how seductive it would be to be able to say "this isn't working, I shouldn't have had that beer - I'll quit this experiment now, and know better next time".

I felt that leaving coffee, alcohol and bad foods in my diet were like leaving "back doors" that I could later use if the going got too tough - by removing these potential obstacles, all that's left is me. It just becomes a matter of will-power, and I've nobody but myself to blame if I call it quits. And knowing this only makes me more determined.

Is it a big sacrifice? Hell yes! I love beer! I drink Guinness (being Irish), and German wheat beers (delicious), as well as some stunningly good Australian beers - there's one in particular called Little Creatures that is absolutely fantastic. Not to mention that giving up alcohol at Christmas and New Years raised a few eyebrows - I went to the parties but only drank water :o(

And don't get me started on coffee. I roast my own beans for god's sake! I've been gagging for a coffee all week at work, just to clear the fogginess from my head.

I don't have much trouble with food - I am a bit of a foodie, but I've managed to turn myself into a sort of health-food foodie, if that makes any sense - actually this was quite easy to do once I was aware of the health benefits of natural fresh, un-processed food. So no big sacrifice on the food front.

I will, of course, re-introduce coffee & beer into my diet once things have settled down. But that's another blog entry.

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Fine Line

2006-01-05T10:37:00.000+11:00

I've previously talked about the process of training the body to enter REM sleep immediately upon beginning a nap - essentially it entails depriving the body of sleep in general, so that it is forced to adopt or learn this technique in order to survive. 'Survive' may sound harsh, but the simple fact is that forced deprivation of REM sleep kills rats in labs after a certain amount of days.

The survival mechanism that the human body uses during our attempts to transition to Polyphasic Sleep is to 'crash'; the body forces sleep upon us in order to get its fix of REM.

It would seem that we can reduce the severity of these crashes, or even eliminate them completely by the judicious application of core sleep at the correct times during this period. But how much core sleep is required? At what point does it interfere with the body's adaptation to REM napping? How frequently should we get core sleep? Every day? Every 4 days? Something in between?

So the trick is trying to find the line between nasty crashes, and forcing the body to adjust. Where is this line? Is it close to the crash side? By this I mean, do we have to force the body into a relatively harsh state of sleep-deprivation in order for it to adjust? Or is it on the 'cruising' side - can we liberally apply core sleep, have no crashes, and practice
napping in our spare time so that the body catches on?

I suspect that it's somewhere in the middle - a gentle amount of pressure needs to be applied to make the body adjust, this pressure being in the form of mild sleep deprivation. Perhaps the amount of pressure has a direct correlation on the speed of transition? This may account for how some people are transitioning over a very long period of time (have these been successful?).

So maybe it's not such a fine line, since the effect of stepping either side of the line may only result in a longer or shorter transition - this would ultimately be up to the novice to decide. And I can stop worrying so much about it.

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Crash Residue

2006-01-05T10:21:00.000+11:00

After the previous night's crash, I expected last night to be a breeze, and it was until a certain point. At about 4am I started to get very tired again - some additional brief naps didn't seem to help much either - the tiredness continued until 7:30 or so.

I find this quite interesting, as it would appear to indicate how much core sleep is necessary to

initially recover from sleep deprivation, and
start to deposit REM sleep in the sleep bank

In my case, it would seem that only a very small amount went into the sleep bank, and the REM sleep that I notched up in my subsequent naps yesterday only covered me until 4am.

Of course it is very probably the case that x hours of core sleep does not always produce y amount of REM sleep - from what I've read it appears that you can even have core sleep with out any REM, much as you can have naps without REM.

So it's going to be a very in-exact science to say the least, although it would be nice to gather enough data so that a general 'rule-of-thumb' can be applied....

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Crash

2006-01-04T10:03:00.000+11:00

Well, as can probably be expected from my last post, I went down hard for just over 4 hours. It had gotten to the point where I was completely non-functional. They say it's inevitable during the transition period, but I was hoping that the extra sleep I got during my camping trip would pre-compensate for it.

Anyway, this crash has made me spend some time thinking about the mechanics of sleep during the transition period, and I've come to the following realisations:

During the transition period, your body is not yet fully trained to immediately slip into REM sleep, thus
You will start to use up the REM that your body has 'banked', usually over the first two days.
The ongoing 20-30 minute naps (only some of which will consist of REM sleep) will not completely fulfill your sleep requirements.
You will begin to suffer from symptoms of sleep deprivation during this period.
Your ability to attain REM sleep quickly will determine the extent of your sleep deprivation during this period.
Everybody will be sleep-deprived to some degree or another during the transition

This means that two main factors will be responsible for determining when you first 'crash', and how often you crash. These are

how soon you gain the ability to get adequate REM sleep during your naps, and
when you've attained enough REM sleep to top-up your 'sleep bank'.

If the above is acceptable, it means that some core sleep will be required during the transition (even Steve Pavlina overslept on occasion). Thus the transition period may be eased by

Core sleep (sleeping for a few solid hours at various periods during the transition). This will top-up your 'sleep-bank' and prevent difficult crashes.
Strict scheduling of naps for the entire period of the transition, with large periods wherein you have no core sleep.

The reason for this is that regular core sleep would hinder the body's ability to learn REM napping, and thus should not be done nightly - perhaps only every few days.

Note that the above may not be strictly true - but it looks pretty close from where I'm standing now - I'd welcome your opinion on the matter. For example, I know that some people are taking core sleep every night, but I'm not sure how successful they've been.

Last night was horrible, but I'm really enjoying this entire experience - it's fascinating and exciting and difficult and wonderful.

Today the weather's not so good - might have to make alternative napping arrangements.

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Super tired

2006-01-04T00:27:00.000+11:00

The last few hours have been extremly difficult. For some reason, after my 9pm nap I've found it next to impossible to stay awake. I'm even having trouble typing this now! This is getting silly - I'll go and have a sleep.

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Lunch Nap

2006-01-03T14:10:00.000+11:00

Well, my first ever work-lunchtime-polyphasic-sleep-nap has been successfully completed! This is a big mental step for me, since it was the first hurdle I considered way back when I first heard of polyphasic sleep. Many people seem to get over this by sleeping in their car, however I don't drive to work so that's out of the question.

My options for napping were limited to

a bench in the nearby park
sitting at my desk
curled up under my desk
the shower at the bottom of this building
the company reception area

This is a very busy office; options 2,3 and 5 are probably out. If I'm really stuck 5 may be a final resort. The most feasible options currently are 1 and 4 - today I took my nap on the bench in the park. It went very well, and I awoke before the alarm (my phone) went off, getting approx 10 mins REM.

Sydney being a sunny city, this will be a pleasant option much of the time, however when the weather turns I'll have to consider the shower-room ;o)

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Week Two, Day Two

2006-01-03T10:54:00.000+11:00

Yesterday and last night went even better than the day before. I had higher energy levels, and shorter periods of drowsiness than previously. This is partially attributable to ensuring that I have a list of things with which to keep me busy, and partially due to progress through the transition phase (I hope!!).

Last night was also the first time that I (roughly) followed my new schedule, most importantly the period after the 5am nap, during which I went for a jog and prepared for a day at work (which is precisely where I am now).

The jog started out pretty tough - it took me a lot longer to get into the 'swing' of things than normal - almost 10 minutes rather than 1 or 2. I found this pretty surprising, since I wasn't pushing myself very hard, however I suspect that this is due to the fact that I was at my lowest point of the night - the very last thing my body expected to have to do was go for a jog! I'll keep an eye on that over the next week.

Still very foggy this morning, and as a result I'm quite unproductive at work, however the pressure's not exactly squeezing me at the moment, and that's usually when I get most done.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get organised before my lunchtime nap, which will probably be in the park since it's such a nice day.

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Schedule - v0.1

2006-01-02T22:20:00.000+11:00

As promised earlier, here's my first impression of a schedule to fill out all of those hours.

Time spent in the office is noted in blue, and my ideal nap times are highlighted in red (1, 5 & 9 am/pm). You'll note that the nap might sometimes be next to the 'ideal' time - as reported by Steve Pavlina the times can be flexible within certain boundaries.

Initial Schedule

1am: Nap, general cleaning/other menial tasks
2am: Work
3am: Work
4am: Projects
5am: Nap, Exercise - go for a jog
6am: Shower, rest
7am: Prepare food (lunch mainly)
8am: Prepare for work, Nap
9am: Work
10am: Work
11am: Work
12pm: Work
1pm: Lunch, Nap
2pm: Work
3pm: Work
4pm: Work
5pm: Travel home, Nap
6pm: Prepare dinner
7pm: Dinner
8pm: Relax, TV, quality time etc...
9pm: Nap, potter around
10pm: Reading
11pm: Writing
12am: Projects

Well, there you have it. First draft, subject to change. As you can see, much of it is quite general - for example I have these undefined 'Projects' that I have to complete, and then there's 'Reading' and 'Writing'. That's not very specific, is it? You might even get the impression that these items were just added to fill out the schedule - and you'd be correct.

Stepping back a bit and thinking about it, I guess I have two options -

Option 1: Continue on as previously, in an unstructured manner, and do whatever takes my fancy during all of the additional hours that PS has granted me. This means I don't have a solid short and long-term schedule, and essentially 'drift'. The risk here is that boredom creeps in, inactivity and eventual slippage back to a monophasic lifestyle.

Option 2: Structure my day, and actively pursue the tasks, projects and work that I've set out in the schedule. Continue in a polyphasic lifestyle and achieve all of the goals that I set myself.
Needless to say, this is easier said than done - in creating the schedule, it's become apparent that there are more hours in the day than I currently have projects!

Assuming we choose Option 2 (which I am, in case there's any doubt in the minds of those out there), there's a lot of background work to be done. Creating the schedule is only the tip of the iceberg - in order to fill out the schedule I need to start defining the projects that I want to start with, setting time-frames, planning, taking first steps and so on....

I have a lot of goals that I want to achieve, many projects to do and tasks to complete, but I've previously had the safety-net of being able to say "there's just not enough hours in the day". Well, I've just done myself out of that excuse! Time to bite the bullet and face this new lifestyle head-on.

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Week Two

2006-01-02T10:06:00.000+11:00

Ok, as of 1am this morning I'm officially into week two. That second nap that I said I would have didn't go so well - I sat on the sofa with my alarm and didn't wake until 6am. I was also very tired between 6am and my 9am nap despite the extra sleep. So that's approximately 2 hours sleeping over, in the first few hours of week two - good start, eh?

Actually, now that I think about it, I would have had to wake and turn off the alarm (it doesn't go off itself, and can't be turned off accidentally). Perhaps I should start using the second alarm when I know that I'm particularly tired. What else could have contributed to the whole scenario? Maybe a few points:

I did mention I was very tired, but would like to know more about why, even after the extra sleep
Heat - this may have been a contributing factor to my initial tiredness - 45 degrees all day is no joke
Lack of menial tasks - I must admit to being slightly less prepared with 'things-to-do' last night - there's much to do that requires the computer or reading, however I was so drowsy it wasn't possible to do any of these (I did try!)
It probably wasn't food - I had a vegetarian dinner, and a tuna salad lunch - relatively light eating with no meat

Anyway, there's no point on beating it to death - I'll scratch it up as experience and move on.

I would have liked things to go a little smoother in the last few days before I return to work, however it will be a fun experience regardless - even if I am a bit dazed at the office for a while. I have a new project manager starting next week so he'll be able to shoulder some of my current work burden (cue manic laughter).

Actually, getting past the first week is a big achievement - I'd like to take a moment to congratulate myself (Congratulations Rob!!! Thanks Rob! My pleasure Rob!). It is the most difficult week to actually get over. Going forward, I want to achieve a few things:

Less tiredness (and hence productivity) at night
Integration of naps with office/work schedule
Elimination of the general fogginess associated with the transition
A set schedule which integrates tasks, work, exercise, leisure time etc..

I'll set the (quite conservative I think) goal of achieving these by the end of week two, including a first draft of the schedule today.

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tough

2006-01-02T03:28:00.000+11:00

It's tough going tonight - feeling very drowsy at the moment, and finding it hard to focus on getting this out. This is despite an additional nap at 2am to try and brush it off - perhaps I should have another and see how that goes....

It has cooled down which helps- it's 22 degrees now rather than the 45 it was earlier.

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temp

2006-01-01T16:19:00.000+11:00

Now it's 45 degrees. Hot Hot Hot! There's a breeze, but when it blows, it blows even hotter air than the air around you.

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Some 1-week stats

2006-01-01T10:05:00.000+11:00

Here's a rough estimate of my sleeping hours for week 1:

minutes slept during week

1840

total hours in week (you could have worked this out yourself!)

total hours slept during week

30.67

awake:asleep ratio

5.48

average hours asleep per day

4.38

The figures are higher than they should be due to

Additional naps taken during the transitional phase
Bush camping sleep-overs (2 nights)

We should see the ratio drop next week.

On a side note, it's now 36 degrees, at 10:30am. Pool!

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Review

2006-01-01T09:52:00.000+11:00

Just reviewing Steve Pavlina's blog for day 7 (which is the day I'm up to now). Day 7 seems to be somewhat of a turning point for him - 1 week complete, and no more brain fog.

I'm half-way through day 7 already, and I don't think I'm as far along as Steve - still a bit tired, and some very definite brain fog. I expect the main reason for being behind is the 2 days of over-sleeping while camping in the bush. While I don't think that this would have reset the entire experiment, it would certainly mean a longer transition time.

Otherwise I'm very happy with my progress, and if I add another 2 days on to account for the camping issue, I expect to be where Steve is by day 9. Incidentally, that's the day I'm due back at work.

Steve suggests that diet plays a large part in easing the transition to PS - I can't really disagree with that since I do maintain quite a healthy diet - we'll need to find somebody who eats pizza and lots of junk food in order to do a better comparison.

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Another good night

2006-01-01T09:29:00.000+11:00

As the title says, another good night. No over-sleeps, naps are good with REM sleep, mostly lasting under 20 mins.

I find it fascinating that you can lie/sit down, fall (almost) instantly asleep and then wake up feeling refreshed within 15-20 mins as if no time had passed at all. While this isn't always the case at the moment, it's becoming more frequent the longer I continue this sleep cycle.

One thing that's made this hard, is the heat here at this time of year - especially at night. It really promotes drowsiness. It's 33 degrees Celsius here at the moment (9:40am on new year's day). Gonna be hot today!

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wagon

2005-12-31T11:13:00.000+11:00

Back on the wagon again - last night was good. I put it down to having lots of things to do, simple tasks that keep me moving around. Here's my list:

~~Do washing-up~~
~~Put on clothes washes (3 loads)~~
~~Hang out clothes~~
~~Prepare guest room~~
~~Make some marinade for the chicken~~
~~Water plants~~
Make a salad
~~Play sudoku~~
Wash car again
~~Shave~~

While I didn't quite get to every item in the list, they'll be handy for tonight - I will have to add more to the list. Incidentally, I was quite tired this morning, especially after the 9am nap, but that passed by 10:30.

Tonight is new year's eve by the way - I'll have to celebrate without drinking ;o(

Happy new year!

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bush napping some more

2005-12-31T00:18:00.000+11:00

.... where was I?

Yes, I remember having to turn off the light to stop the insects from pinging off the tent - I expect that from outside it looked like some type of giant melon, glowing softly in the darkness. Obviously it was irresistible to whatever types of insects these were (I never actually saw them), but judging from the way they were smacking off the tent, there must have been squadrons of them diving from above only to ricochet into the darkness for another attempt.

I have some vague memory of later turning off my mobile-phone alarm, and trying to do some puzzles or concentrate on the novel for a while. To cut a long story short, I woke up around 8am.

Napping was harder today, after 2 nights of 'core' sleep, but I managed to get them in anyway. We're home now, and more importantly I'm back in an environment which has multiple types of diversions with which to, er... divert myself. The trip itself was great, it was a fantastic opportunity to have - If I had known beforehand how it would interfere with the transition, I would still have gone.

I expect that those 2 nights with extra sleep will drag out the transition period, meaning that the night-time tiredness will continue a little longer (which at the moment is the most important thing for me to get over).

I'm going to spend more of my day-time organising tasks to keep me busy - at night when I ask my imagination to kindly stretch itself and come up with a few menial tasks to perform, it's about as useful as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking competition.

I feel a nap coming on....

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bush napping

2005-12-30T23:50:00.000+11:00

The day after my unproductive post was spent packing and then driving about 6 hours south to an Aboriginal camping ground in Narooma. My wife and I had been invited a few times previously and thought it would be good to finally take up the offer before they stopped inviting us.

I had some misgivings about the two-night trip, since I felt it had the possibility to interfere with the transition to polyphasic sleep. The journey down should not be a problem - I never have trouble sleeping while my chauffeur takes care of the driving. I thought that there might be issues at night time, since there might not be much to do. Well, I was right.

That day, all of my scheduled naps went off perfectly - I'd feel the need for a snooze at the right time, and a few minutes of restorative sleep set me up nicely for the next period. Once we got to our destination, there was no problem nipping off for 20 minutes to fulfill my schedule. The camp was relaxed, good food was enjoyed, and everybody was friendly and accommodating.

The problem really arose when the camp shut down for the night. Everybody drifted off to bed, the generator was turned off (no light) and my only company was the darkness, insects and the seemingly un-ending stretch of time until morning. I didn't have a hope in hell of staying awake. I think I slept from approx. midnight to 6am.

I chalked this up as experience, treated it as an extended nap, and stuck with the schedule for all of the next day - even though I had gotten the extra sleep, I still found the naps necessary.

The second night, I was somewhat more prepared. I felt familiar enough with the people and the settlement to acquire some 'provisions' - a chair, a light, a blanket, a highly addictive sudoku book and a fantasy novel by Stephen Donaldson. At 1am I settled in for my nap......

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bush

2005-12-30T22:08:00.000+11:00

Where's the updates? Well, I'm just back from 2 nights camping in the bush. Details to follow....

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Unproductive

2005-12-28T04:44:00.000+11:00

I have to say that my night-times are completely unproductive at the moment. I can't sit in front of a computer for more than 5 minutes without getting too drowsy to continue. The same is true for books (and I've a lot of books I want to read) and is probably true for TV too (I'm so sure of this I'm not even going to turn it on!).

That said, the apartment is very clean ;)

If this was to be the norm for polyphasic sleep it wouldn't be worth continuing. However it's obviously only a factor of the transition period, as noted by others.

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Night No. 3

2005-12-28T02:32:00.000+11:00

Well, it's night number 3, and I'm still truckin'. I had pretty good energy levels earlier today - things improved after the headache went away. At about 10pm I did start to get a bit tired, and had to start moving around to stop myself from nodding off, but keeping quite busy saw me through until my 1am nap.

Interestingly enough, I find that I'm not physically tired today, however I do feel very drowsy. If I don't concentrate on something interesting I quickly find myself nodding off. It should be pretty easy to fend that off until my next nap.

So I guess in general, things are going pretty smoothly - I've had no oversleeps, and the only changes have been some additional naps to fend off sleep deprivation insanity.

But, it's early days yet! Things can still go horribly wrong, leaving my entire readership (currently 1) sitting on the edge of his seat!

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Headache

2005-12-27T12:52:00.000+11:00

One thing I've done for this transition period is to attempt to remove any possible factors that could tilt the balance towards failure. An obvious one is caffeine, so I've cut out tea or coffee for the near future.

This morning I have a headache, which I expect is due to the lack of caffeine. I never usually get headaches so it was a bit of a surprise - at first I thought that it might be some strange side-effect of the PS transition, but Occam's Razor says it's the coffee.

Ok, time for a nap.

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Tired

2005-12-27T12:32:00.000+11:00

I'm shocked at how long the nights are. Last night, despite me taking additional naps at 3am and 7am (no oversleeping though!) I still had time to do a long list of 'menial' tasks - in fact I had no choice if I wanted to stay awake. I even washed the car as soon as it got light.

I did find that I had to push hard to ensure that I kept busy - I caught myself a few times, standing in the living room, staring at nothing while my mind tried to seduce me into giving in and going to bed.

So I'll have to spend some time today setting up tasks that I can spend time on tonight. Things that don't require activity are dangerous - watching TV, reading, surfing - it's a very, very slippery slope.

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Napfest

2005-12-27T04:12:00.000+11:00

Well, I immediately went and broke my own rule - my 1am nap didn't quite do it for me; I was still extremely tired and almost non-functional. I had to resort to manual tasks to try and stay awake - as a result, the kitchen drawers have all been cleaned out, re-ordered and re-packed.

Then I ran out of menial tasks, or at least the mental capacity to devise them. After a brief struggle with myself, I decided to go for a mid-period nap (3am).

So far it seems to have been the right decision - I'm feeling much more alert and capable. And most importantly, there's been no oversleeping. The excessive tiredness may be a case of being a bit behind on the minimum REM sleep required....

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Olives

2005-12-27T00:43:00.000+11:00

This has been the hardest so far, but that said it could have been much worse. It was nowhere near as bad as the tiredness I felt during a recent visit to the house of some friends of ours, where no amount of slapping, pinching, special breathing or brief trips to the bathroom could stop my eyes closing and my head from lolling forward at the table - a little show that many of the other guests found fascinating. That was before I even heard of polyphasic sleep.

So tonight, I kept myself busy by making olive tapenade (with chilli!). I'm very much Looking forward to my nap in a few minutes.

Others have advocated taking additional naps if tiredness becomes an issue, however I'm going to try and avoid that as the idea is to make the body adjust faster, and get to REM sleep as soon as possible during the naps.

Because I've been expecting it to get more difficult, I've set up a secondary alarm which is set to go off 5 minutes after the first. Until now I've just been using my mobile phone, which dings and vibrates enough to jerk me back to consciousness.

The dangers I see going forward are:

a) oversleeping - not hearing an alarm or hearing it, turning it off and going back to sleep
b) loosing confidence in the entire idea - all the negative aspects can get dangerously overblown due to tiredness, fatigue etc...

Naptime!

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A day of naps...

2005-12-26T22:28:00.000+11:00

Just coming up on 24 hours of continuous naps now, which started after a full 16-hour normal waking period. It seems like soooo much longer.

That's 6 20min naps, which amounts to 2 hours sleep in the last 40 hours. Each nap has been on schedule, with no over-sleeping. And I'm not feeling too shabby, although I'm looking forward to my next nap.

I do firmly believe that the secret to this is to be strict with the nap times - nothing over 20-30 mins, and stay on schedule while the body is moved into the new routine.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

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Interesting

2005-12-26T16:49:00.000+11:00

Just read here that:

Because REM sleep is so similar to being awake, it is much easier to wake from REM. People who are woken up during NREM feel groggy and sometimes nauseous

This agrees with what I mentioned earlier about not initially being able to achieve REM during my daytime naps (another of which is coming up, I note).

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What are you working on?

2005-12-26T15:43:00.000+11:00

I've just read an article about procrastination by Paul Graham that I found interesting, which contained the rather pointed question:

"What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

This is a question that most people will shy away from, as pointed out by the author. Normally that would include me, however after only a few moments considering it, I've realised that this transition to PS* is probably the most important thing I could be working on - at least as far as my life and personal development are concerned, which is all I'm interested in.

* PS=Polyphasic Sleep, in case you've been napping.

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Why mess with your sleep patterns?

2005-12-26T15:03:00.000+11:00

A better way to phrase, and indeed answer this would be "What are the advantages of this polyphasic sleep horsepuckery?"

Well, I need to answer the question, not only for you but most importantly for me. I need to remind myself why I'm doing this, because at 3:24am the self-doubt kicks in and that's a killer.

Reading this blog was so disheartening it nearly made me abandon the whole thing before I started. This guy tries so hard. He even goes to the extent of setting up motion detectors in his house, hooking up air compressors, stereos and communication systems to his computer which automatically sets them off if he's not moving around his apartment at the right times, and notifies his friends if he still doesn't get up.

And he sleeps through it all.

But back to the question - what are the advantages?

Let me make use of a bulleted list with which to tot them off:

Extra time to do many of the things I've always wanted to do but haven't had the time, such as starting a blog - check! I also have some writing projects that I want to get off the ground, and many miscellaneous things that I can now schedule and make happen.
Mental clarity - according to many who've tried polyphasic sleep, this comes as part of the package. It also happens to be something that I value highly.
Lucid dreaming - always been interested in this type of thing - fascinating!
General health - people have reported a much higher sense of health and wellbeing after transitioning to polyphasic sleep. This may be partially because they find themselves with more time to exercise and eat right, however the end-result is still the same.

There's more details on the benefits in Steve's blog, and more again in this article on kuro5hin. Read them or else!

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Waking

2005-12-26T14:43:00.000+11:00

Waking from the naps was much easier last night - during the 1am and 5am naps I had dreams (don't ask me to remember what they were about), but this gave the naps a more wholesome feel. After the 5am nap in particular I felt great, and was looking forward to the 9am one.

However, the daytime naps are not as restorative - I don't feel that I get any quality dreaming done, and waking seems an exercise in dragging my consciousness from some deep dark pit. Perhaps that makes it sound worse than it is, however it does take me a good 10 minutes of activity (and I mean forced activity) to get a grip on reality.

So at first glance, it looks like the body finds it easier to get to the REM stage at night than during the day, however it's probably a mistake to start defining rules like this at such an early stage.

It does seem a bit strange having a limit of 3.5 hours on any activities that I can partake in - hopefully this won't become an issue later on.

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Why "Wide Awake Living"

2005-12-26T12:52:00.000+11:00

People keep asking me why I called this blog space "Wide Awake Living" (actually they don't, but I wanted to talk about it).

My first choice was "Lucid Living", but somebody else has that. I then tried "Better than Life" but that was gone too. Wide Awake Living seemed a good compromise - it's specific enough to be easily tied to my polyphasic sleep experiment, and vague enough that I can talk about pretty much anything else I want ;o)

It's 12:59, so time to go for my next nap.

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Pushing on through

2005-12-26T11:25:00.000+11:00

It's 11:25am and I'm feeling pretty drowsy. I've chosen my sleep cycle to be as follows: 1am 5am 9am 1pm 5pm 9pm - this seems to me to be the most flexible in regards to work and personal time.

If you don't understand the reference to the sleep cycle, go and read the background information on Polyphasic sleep here - I don't want to cover too much old ground by repeating what's already been written.

Anyway, it's been pretty easy thus far - my first nap was at 1am last night after a full day out of the house. I kept myself busy by setting up this blog, playing my guitar, tidying around the apartment and attempting to keep focused on various tasks.

I've only started having difficulty in the past hour after being driven around Sydney in the heat (it's 27 degrees and rising right now). This caused me to get quite tired, although that's started to clear up somewhat now that I'm out of the car and doing things.

Might pop down for a dip in the pool now.....

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First Post!

2005-12-26T02:26:00.000+11:00

So I've started an experiment into polyphasic sleep. The goal is to reduce the amount of time I spend asleep from approx. 8 hours to about 2.5 hours per day.

Why? The obvious answer is more time to do the things I want to do. There are other advantages, but I'll get to them later. There are disadvantages too, such as a strict nap schedule which can interfere with your workday, and a rather difficult transition period as you make the change from mono-phasic sleep to polyphasic sleep.

Anyway, I'm going to keep this first post short (mainly so I can mess about with the blogging settings). If you're hanging on the edge of your seat have a look at Steve Pavlina's experience which is where I first came across this. Recommended reading!

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