Going Poly

[Parthon]

Polyphasic Sleep that is.

Due to circumstances, I find myself with a lot of free time, no fixed schedule, lots of project work to be done and a messed up sleep cycle. So I decided I may as well try out polyphasic sleep. I've wanted to do it since Steve first mentioned it back in 2k5, it sounded so fascinating. So now that I can, I'm attempting it, just to see what it's like, and what will happen. Even if I fail, at least I learn something about sleep, my body and life in general, right?

I'm following the Dymaxion sleep schedule: 30 minutes every 6 hours, to see how I go. If after a week I fail, I'll try the Uberman, as it seems more people have more success with that one. First day was today, after only a 30 minute nap at midnight last night and 6am this morning. I felt really groggy so I had another nap at 9am, but then at 1pm, my nap went for 3 hours. Blah. I slept right through the alarm. I will need to get one that's louder and furthur away from my bed. Right now, I'm feeling kinda foggy, like I'm tired, but without the lethargy and lack of energy. It's more like my brain is telling my body is sleepy but my body is all "Nups, I'm good to go." It would be facinating if the only reason why we sleep for so long is so our minds can take time to memory dump at the end of each day, because then it would make sense that it would adjust to a nap schedule.

Anyways, at midnight again it's time for a 30 minute nap. Lets see how it goes.

ps. This will also be posted at my blog.

[khed]

This is a fun thing to try if you have the time. I gave it a go last fall and lasted 7 days. Oversleeping your naps is your worst enemy, try to avoid it at all costs. My experience was that the first phase is essentially pretty serious sleep deprivation. You need to be pretty sleep deprived to force your body into REM in the first few minutes of your nap. Once you habituate quick REM things get easier. I found myself adding in additional naps (but never over sleeping) which I think was actually helpful as long as I didn't add in so many that I wasn't still tired (I'm only talking about the beginning phase as I didn't make it past that). It takes a certain amount of naps to train your body to recover in a short period of time, the more naps you have the more practice your body gets.

I started to feel better (less sleep deprived) around day 5, and had a fairly normal day on day 6, dropped my guard a little that night and slept all day on day 7. :-(

A long sleep like that will effectively destroy all the work you've done up till that point. Not only will you be starting over from scratch, but it will be worse as your body will be convinced that it can "store" up its sleep needs until it can force a long sleep, so the naps will be less effective. So my advice is that everything you do should be geared toward not oversleeping the naps. Take more naps if you have to, but don't oversleep them.

I'd like to try again sometime but haven't been in the right place in my life since. I'd like to head up above the arctic circle and give it a go during a perma-day, I think it'd be a great fit. :-)

Good Luck!

[Parthon]

Thanks for the heads up about oversleeping.

I just woke up 2 minutes early from one, which is good. I'm looking at getting a loud portable timer instead of my hard to set clock. Easier that way.

Right now I'm feeling a bit groggy, and sort of woozy, but also feeling rather buzzed, it's weird.

[Parthon]

Wow, this is hard. One of the hardest things I've done. It's day 5, from when I started, unfortunately I crashed hard on day 3, sleeping through my alarm in the morning for a total of 7 hours. That will set me back, but I'm not sure by how much.

Right now I'm kind of going between really, really lethargic to normal and back again. I'm falling asleep fast during the naps, and I wake up fast too, often 1-2 minutes before the alarm goes off, but I can really tell that my body/mind hasn't adjusted yet.

The suprising thing is the psychological impact. There's no more break between the days, that's the most weird part. Life now feels like one continuous stream, rather than being broken up into a series of days or weeks. The question is then: "What am I going to do right now?" instead of "What am I going to do today?", because without a nightly reboot, time just keeps going. The naps feel more like time outs than proper sleeps, but perhaps when I'm adjusted to them, they'll be a little more concrete. If this is the case, then days, nights, and planning over a period of months is just a mind construct made to prevent us from being as effective as possible. I know that the present moment is the only one we can actually use to make a difference, but now I'm intensly starting to experience it.

The other thing I noticed, like when I was on the raw diet, your mind likes to play tricks on you, test your resolve. Giving you lines like "This could be bad for you!" or "Just sleep for another couple of hours, noone will know." Right now I think the main thing that's keeping me going through all of the lethargy and tiredness is knowing that there's an end, and getting there requires being present and taking it one moment at a time. I know I won't consciously sabotage myself at this point, but lets see what's stronger: my will, or my subconscious.

Also: Yes, if this does get too much, or I break down, I will quit, but I'm nowhere near that point yet. Right now I'm focussing on using all of my will to keep to the schedule and all of my presense to listen to my body. So it's going really well, but it's still hard, as all the best things in life are.