I've started with the
Uberman sleep schedule on July 1st 2009, the nap hours of my schedule are as follows:
02:00 am & pm
06:00 am & pm
10:00 am & pm
-> 20 minutes per nap
I first started out with the
Everyman schedule 2 days prior to July but quickly gave that up because I couldn't even hold that schedule the very first day.
I then quickly decided to "full hardcore".
The decision woth only logical for me because one of the main reasons for switching to a polyphasic sleep schedule for me was so that I have more time to learn for my upcoming exams.
Normally - on a monophasic schedule - I'd go to bed very late (around 1-2 am) since I'm a nite owl and I always had trouble falling to sleep. Usually I'd have around 11-15 hours waking time from which only 8-10 hours were productive.
The rest of the time I'd either get too tired to concentrate on learning or simply didn't feel like learning.
So I thought having a polyphasic schedule could help me with a lot of my problems:
- Falling asleep more easily
- Feeling more refreshed and energized after sleeping
- Having a day with 22 hours awake time could certainly give at least a minimum of around 15 hours
Regarding the pessimism of my last point (only 15h productive work time): My motto is "Hope for nothing, plan for the worst".^^
Note: I differentiate days on this schedule differently than on the monophasic schedule, i.e. for me Day 1 didn't end at midnight but only then when the sun came out again.
But for clarification let's say for this log a day starts AFTER 6am and ends at 6am the next day.
So essentially I'm just pushing "midnight" to 6am. I feel this is a better way to differentiate between days, because this way I better know how much days have passed.
First there are the light hours of day X, then there are the dark hours of day X.
And as soon as the sun comes out again, THEN it's day Y.
I hope this doesn't sound too confusing, it's pretty easy and actually comes quite naturally if you sleep on a polyphasic pattern.
Alright, let's get to it then.
DAY 1
Ok, my first nap I started in the middle of day one at 2 pm (I had other naps from the transition of the
Everyman schedule before, so I didn't feel like "cheating").
I can't remember every details from that day but I can say that the time between the 2am and 6am naps was very difficult, but nothing I couldn't handle.
Regarding the naps I didn't fall asleep as soon as I laid down, but eventually I could calm myself enough to get to sleep.
It took maybe 2 naps to finally remember that I dreamt (but not what).
DAY 2
Again nothing special and nor real problems, until the night.
I very quickly recognized my "Hell hours" are the time between the 2am and 6am naps.
This time it was really hard to keep awake, my first zombie-state experience.
So I went outside and kept myself busy with walking and listening to fast and energizing music.
After my 6am nap it didn't really get better until shortly before my 10am nap.
From that point on I didn't have to fight sleep again for the rest of the daytime (which was day 3 already, woot!).
DAY 3
I can't really say that I was capable to do anything that needed concentration until now, but I already expected that and know that this probably won't change until I'm adapted to the schedule. During the whole day I always had to think about the coming hell hours of the night and actually feared them a little bit.^^
But I kept myself motivated and said to myself that this will prove to myself how strong of a will I can have, which could also give me some self-confidence.
This time I already felt very drowsy after my 10pm nap but not that I'd have to fight the sleep like with these damn eye-shutter moments in the hell hours.
Although I was tired already I could easily get up after my 2am nap, but shortly after that I transformed to a zombie again.
To fight it I had to get out again. I took a little something to snack with me. Nothing heavy, mind you, only some crackers. Since it rained a couple hours before it was refreshingly cool and a light mist hung around everything.
I particularly was fond of the cool temperatures since were I live we are in the deepest of summer.
I found a nice and calm spot with a bit nature around me and sat down, eating some of my crackers and thinking about some stuff. Although this was the worst zombie time since day 1, I surprisingly felt no tiredness at all during the time sitting there. It was a very refreshing and contemplative 3 hours.
I made my way back then and took my next nap at 6am, convinced that I would get easier from now on.
DAY 4
But that positive feeling immediatly vanished when I woke up after my 6am nap. And this was paricularly... strange.
The reason me thinking that was that I DID dream, but directly after I was woken up by my alarm, I felt like somebody had rammed a pipe through my head and the inner side of my eye sockets were made of sand paper.
It felt like waking from a very deep sleep state, but that couldn't have been the case, since I am 100% positive I was in the middle of a dream when the alarm went of.
I even remembered the exact thing I was doing when suddenly I heard the alarm. Then my consciusness immediately was pulled back from the "dream-scene" and was awake.
But why did I feel like having a bad night of partying behind me?
I read somewhere that we don't necessarily dream only in the REM-phase but probably in other phases too, like in the Slow-Phase Sleep. Maybe I dreamed in said phase and awoke from that?
Would certainly explain why I felt the worst so far when awakening from a nap.
But if you really only dream in the REM-phase then I'm really wondering what in the hell happened?
Maybe all the accumulated sleep-deprivation hit me suddenly then? I have really no idea.
If anybody has a plausible theory, please let me know.
Btw. until now I always was able to get to sleep for each nap in around 1-4 minutes. And I didn't oversleep so far! Always got up after the alarm sounded.
Anyways, after I woke up at this time, I knew that all the other zombie-hell-times before were NOTHING compared to this. My body really... REALLY badly wanted to sleep.
Still I tried to remain resilient.
But believe me, this was absolutely not easy. My eyes uncontrollably fluttered, even though I splashed ice water in my face and on my arms. I stared directly into the brightest light, walked around, even spoke with my body and told him to f***ing obey me! There would be no sleep, damn it!
This felt like hours of torture. I couldn't imagine anything more torturing like that.
I just stepped into the next circle of hell.
But when I looked how much time has passed, it wasn't even half an hour since I awoke, OMG!
Many times my eyes closed while I was walking around for only a split second, I simply couldn't do anything about it.
And during that split second I imagined I was walking around at a different corner of my room, when in fact I was walking around somewhere else. The result of these split-second "dreams" was that I walked against some walls and other stuff.
So it wasn't really dreaming, more like hallucinations that made my brain think it I walked along a hallway, rather then against a wall.
What can I say, this was the first time I seriously wanted to give up. I asked myself what good is it when I absolutely have no progress? I can't wait another week, because I really have to get started learning soon.
So I was sitting down on my bed, took my alarm clock and said to myself "F**k it, I lost...".
Still sitting there with the alarm clock in my hand, I suddenly got defiant and angry. "No... no I WON'T give up! I can do this!"
So I walked around again, splashed myself with ice water look at the lights, did virtually everything.
But that damn pipe in my head and the sand paper that made my eyes shut all the time just didn't go away.
Rather that giving up I decided to take an extra nap.
When I started the
Uberman schedule I read that even Steve Pavlina (my
Uberman god^^) took some extra naps in the adaptation phase, but I wanted to prevent that, since I thought I'd adapt more quickly then.
After experiencing this near-coma-sleep-deprivation though I just wasn't able to hold myself together.
It was virtually physically impossible to hold myself together during this state, at least for a duration 3 hours!
No, I just knew I was gonna fall asleep sooner or later (sooner!) so at least I wanted to be in control when that happens.
So as I already said I decided to take an extra 20 minute nap.
I don't really know when exatly this was, but it couldn't have been any later than 6:45am or so, since time stretched ridiculously during my awake-coma-torture.
I was really a suffering piece of misery, it was just unbearable. If I beleived in hell then it would be like this, only that you wouldn't be able to fall asleep... :P
And then - I wasn't really surprised - it happened for the first time:
I overslept. 
I woke up around 12 o'clock, so I slept for about 5-6 hours.
What can I say? I just thought an emotionless "... sh*t".
Was that the end of it? I mean was I back at the beginning? Did I really have to begin at day 1 and go through all of this again?
This was when I thought about giving up for real, just out of resignation and tiredness (mental tiredness that is).
Because if I really had to start from the beginning, then how long would it take me to finally get adapted?
If I need until the end of the month then I would've actually lost a whole month I could've used to prepare for my exams (which are in September).
I just felt betrayed somehow, disappointed. Wanted to throw the towel.
(-cut-)