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David Hausladen · 11-12-2006, 04:57 AM

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 6

According to a certain cliche, death and taxes are supposed to be inevitable. Well, I'm here to say that under polyphasic sleep, oversleeping is almost as unavoidable.

I should have known something was up when I started getting intensely drowsy around 2am (normally this hadn't started until 4am, and the day before it waited until 6am). It was the opposite of what I expected to happen in my predictions from yesterday, and is the earliest in the morning I've ever had significant tiredness. I continued to experience this, on and off, from 2am until my 7am nap. At that point, I went to sleep as normal for my regular nap, but I woke up five hours later, at 12pm. What happened?

Checking the alarms after waking up, as well as my memories, confirm that both alarms were set correctly. I tested both alarms afterward and discovered that they both go off indefinitely. Therefore I must have gotten up, shut them off, and gone back to bed. In doing so, I was either totally unconscious the whole time or I was somewhat conscious, but not enough to remember the incident.

For better or for worse, it doesn't make a difference. There's almost nothing I can do to improve my oversleeping prevention, which is already good enough that I've gone almost a whole week before encountering a problem. And one bout of oversleeping in a week is not nearly enough to nullify my efforts at adaptation for that week. I expect that even if I encounter oversleeping again (which is likely), it will be less and less of a problem as time goes on and by body gets better at sleeping polyphasically. Also, I've thought about incorporating a planned core sleep every week or two, which would probably help to prevent oversleeping.

For the record, my day after oversleeping was predictably easy, with practically no lethargy. The only nap I skipped was the 12pm one, since that's the time that I woke up from the oversleep. The 5pm and 12am naps went smoothly and normally.

Despite the unexpected difficulties of today, I think I'm still moving smoothly toward a successful adaptation, and expect to be there soon.

11-12-2006, 04:57 AM	#17 (permalink)
David Hausladen Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 201	Polyphasic Sleep, Day 6 According to a certain cliche, death and taxes are supposed to be inevitable. Well, I'm here to say that under polyphasic sleep, oversleeping is almost as unavoidable. I should have known something was up when I started getting intensely drowsy around 2am (normally this hadn't started until 4am, and the day before it waited until 6am). It was the opposite of what I expected to happen in my predictions from yesterday, and is the earliest in the morning I've ever had significant tiredness. I continued to experience this, on and off, from 2am until my 7am nap. At that point, I went to sleep as normal for my regular nap, but I woke up five hours later, at 12pm. What happened? Checking the alarms after waking up, as well as my memories, confirm that both alarms were set correctly. I tested both alarms afterward and discovered that they both go off indefinitely. Therefore I must have gotten up, shut them off, and gone back to bed. In doing so, I was either totally unconscious the whole time or I was somewhat conscious, but not enough to remember the incident. For better or for worse, it doesn't make a difference. There's almost nothing I can do to improve my oversleeping prevention, which is already good enough that I've gone almost a whole week before encountering a problem. And one bout of oversleeping in a week is not nearly enough to nullify my efforts at adaptation for that week. I expect that even if I encounter oversleeping again (which is likely), it will be less and less of a problem as time goes on and by body gets better at sleeping polyphasically. Also, I've thought about incorporating a planned core sleep every week or two, which would probably help to prevent oversleeping. For the record, my day after oversleeping was predictably easy, with practically no lethargy. The only nap I skipped was the 12pm one, since that's the time that I woke up from the oversleep. The 5pm and 12am naps went smoothly and normally. Despite the unexpected difficulties of today, I think I'm still moving smoothly toward a successful adaptation, and expect to be there soon.