Post your polyphasic sleep logs here

[David Hausladen]

This is a thread for anyone's personal day-by-day logs of their experiences with polyphasic sleep. I am intending to start polyphasic sleep tonight, and I believe micth has also expressed an intention to go polyphasic in the near future, so there should be at least two sets of logs here soon. There's an active discussion of polyphasic sleep (tips, debate, whatnot) in this thread*, so if you've got comments or ideas, please post them there! I'm looking forward to seeing how many people take the plunge and try out this schedule. For anyone looking for background information, I'd check out Steve Pavlina's posts about his experience (the first is here).

* Since this thread was started the original thread discussing polyphasic sleep has gone dormant. It's still a useful resource, though, for the advice posted there.

[David Hausladen]

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 0

I will be starting polyphasic sleep in about two-and-a-half hours, so I'm posting a brief description now of the method and strategies I'll be using.

The schedule will be Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion" sleep, which is four 30-minute naps per day. My naps will take place at 12am, 7am, 12pm, and 5pm--those times are slightly irregular, but they work best with my schedule. For each nap, I'll start three* alarms set for 30 minutes and each placed at a different place in my bedroom, and then go to bed. Following every nap, I'll immediately go outside for a quick 15-minute walk to keep me from falling asleep again and help me to wake up completely*.

My goal is to follow the schedule for at 30 days, from 2006-11-06 to 2006-12-05, and then evaluate whether it's been successful enough that I want to continue it long-term.

I should be posting the log for my first day in a little over 24 hours, once I've had the first four naps.

* Actually starting the schedule very quickly convinced me to make two minor alterations to the plan. First, two alarms is enough, especially if I place them on opposite ends of the room. Three alarms is overkill and it's too likely to wake my dear mother when I scramble to turn them all off at the end of the midnight nap. Second, following my naps can be any kind of activity, not just walking, as long as it gets me out of the bedroom immediately and wakes me up; it's somewhat impractical to walk at 12:30am, so I'll go down to the kitchen for a midnight snack instead. Similarly, after my 7am nap I can take a shower to ensure that I wake up. The critical point is that I get out of bed and don't fall back into it.

[David Hausladen]

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 1

Just a short while ago I awoke from my fourth and last nap for yesterday, successfully completing my first twenty-four hours on polyphasic sleep. On a scale of difficulty from 1 to 5, with 1 being trivial and 5 being near or at the limits of human capability, I'd put the difficulty of my first day at a 3. It required a fair amount of discipline and a bit of willpower, but I didn't feel at all stretched to my limits by today.

The first half of my day, I had sporadic bouts of drowsiness mixed with periods of alertness (but even during those I wasn't especially energetic). I had one 15-minute period of intense drowsiness from about 11am to 11:15am where my head was nodding even while I was sitting and reading at my computer. My solution to most of these periods of drowsiness was to get up and do something else; I think I got about five or six short 10-minute "refresher" walks today! The second half of my day, I was much more energetic, with only a couple periods of minor lethargy in the afternoon, and none at all in the evening.

I think keeping a log of my level of alertness, recorded in 15-minute chunks, may well be helping to keep me a little more alert than otherwise, since it means whenever I feel sleepy I immediately gauge the intensity of the feeling and record it before quickly determining how to deal with it.

Another helpful tactic that I neglected to mention in my "Day 0" post that I don't eat less than two hours before a nap--there's too much potential for body temperature/a blood sugar drop/digestion to cause me to oversleep. In general, I eat less than an hour after waking up so that the food provides me with energy during the cycle, but doesn't interfere with the subsequent nap. (I don't expect I'll always have to monitor things this closely; mostly I want to be as careful as possible during the adaptation period.)

[David Hausladen]

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 2

Day 2 would score a 4 out of 5 on the scale of difficulty mentioned earlier. It started off well enough, with just a little sluggishness in the early morning. However, from 4:30am to 11am, I experienced nearly irresistable drowsiness--even when I used walks and activities to try to resist them--to the point where the last couple hours of that time period included two unplanned short naps. The good news is that after the second unplanned nap I was pretty much okay for the rest of the day; as with Day 1, the afternoon and evening were pretty much free of tiredness.

I'm not too concerned about the extreme lethargy and unplanned naps I experienced--it's only the second day of the schedule, and I'm pleased with the fact that the majority of the sleep deprivation has thus far restricted itself to half my day or less. I expect that if I haven't yet experienced the worst of it, I will have by the end of Day 3 or 4, and from that point it's all downhill (i.e. my body's continually improving adaptation will make my naps more and more restorative so that sleep deprivation becomes less and less prevalent).

I do think my situation this morning wasn't helped by the fact that my early and late morning meals (~2am and ~8am, respectively) were both lacking in protein. Incorporating more protein into my early and late morning meals should provide me with additional energy for the first half of my day, making this morning's scenario less likely.

[set]

well for me, failed on the first day. overslept after l listened to holosync CD

Last night was my second day and i went thru it with not much problem. on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the hardest its merely a 2 or 1 1/2. I only experience 1 REM out of 5 attempt sadly. ( for people who don't know, if you dream you're in REM)

Luckily I got the REM on my final sleep so i was able to wake up refreshed and now working at my 90% . Because of my lack of REM I'm going to expose myself to as much sunlight and heat possible to avoid sleepyness. (good thing i live in asia)

One thing I did that i think is going to help me tonight is I condition myself to wake up as soon as the alarm clock rings with deep emphasis to myself on no negotiation allowed. meaning i don't allow myself to talk myself into continue sleeping. So the 4 naps that didn't go into REM wasn't a waste.

What I did the whole night? I was basically listening to John Reese's Traffic secrets. It was interesting so i kept me alert until 5 am where i start to get a bit drowsy. I keep getting hungry the whole night so i kept eating grapes (read somewhere it helps)

It's been a successful night and from how it goes, will be a successful day 1

Hang on david and have a nice nap

[David Hausladen]

set: Great to see your first sleep log!

The sunlight and heat idea is an excellent one, and hopefully will be quite a bit of help to you. My intention in taking short walks all the time is basically working toward the same effect, using outdoor light and sensations to keep my body awake.

In terms of waking up, the "no negotiation" tactic is definitely a must! The other thing that helps is having your alarm(s) far out of reach of your bed.

Looking forward to seeing your next log. Keep it going!

[David Hausladen]

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 3

Difficulty 4 out of 5; while Day 3 was more difficult than Day 2, I was better prepared for it, having a better idea of what difficulties to expect and what tactics would help. Practically all of that difficulty of Day 3 came from the time from 4am to 12pm, which is now clearly defined as the main battleground for my polyphasic sleep adaptation. That makes sense to me, since those were almost exactly the hours during which I was sleeping monophasically before. I expect that over time my body will gradually realize that that's no longer time to sleep.

I managed to avoid unplanned naps through constant vigilance, though during the hardest part of the day I did zone out quite a bit (technically, I think my "zoning out" was involuntarily dropping into Stage 1 sleep for a few seconds at a time). I even discovered that when I feeling most exhausted, I could zone out while walking down the street! (This prompted me to decide it wasn't safe to go out walking during such times.) The crazy thing about this symptom is that it's one that I didn't experience even at the height of my bout with mononucleosis during high school--during which I fell asleep in practically every class, every day, no matter how hard I tried to resist. It's perversely fascinating to explore sleep deprivation at this depth, but I'll be very glad tomorrow or the next day when it begins to back off.

My report for Day 3 may sound predominantly negative, but I'm actually very optimistic about the present situation. I managed to not take any unplanned naps or oversleep despite the difficulties mentioned--this bodes very well for my long-term success, especially since I think I've gotten past the most difficult part. I'll know for sure in the next twenty-four hours.

[David Hausladen]

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 4

There's a lot of theories and conjecture in this report, since I'm thinking about causes and effects involved in the various aspects of polyphasic sleep adaptation. Feel free to respond with comments or criticism--I'm no scientist, and my ideas are mostly just guesses based on limited evidence. That said, on to the report...

Today was a difficulty 4--a little less intense than Day 3 but with several new variations and complications. As usual, practically all of the lethargy and drowsiness fell between 4am and 12pm. My 7am nap turned out badly--I woke up feeling worse than when I had fallen asleep--and around 8:45am I decided to take an extra half-hour nap. Strangely, the extra nap didn't seem to improve my energy level at all. This makes me think that maybe my morning tiredness is generally not because my naps don't provide me enough energy, but rather primarily because my body is used to sleeping during those hours. (This brings up a lot of interesting questions that I should probably explore in a separate post or maybe even a separate thread.)

On another note, an effect of sleep deprivation is a weakened immune system, and I think that's an indirect cause of several symptoms have cropped up just since I started this adaptation: a minor but significant outbreak of acne and mouth sores, both of which had been almost completely absent under my previous free-running sleep schedule; and today, an isolated episode of nausea lasting for most of the afternoon. I'm not saying that sleep deprivation caused these, but rather that by weakening my immune system it may have allowed them to take hold where they otherwise would have been resisted. If that's correct, then they should go away once the adaptation is complete (since that would remove the sleep deprivation, which would bring the immune system back up to full strength, which would fight off whatever's causing the symptoms).

I think from here on out every day will get a little easier than the last as my body gradually adjusts its circadian rhythm to match the demands of the new sleep schedule. Once I'm completely adapted, it might be interesting to figure out how my body temperature rhythm (the primary factor in daily sleep patterns) acts once I'm completely adapted.

[micth]

Originally Posted by David Hausladen

micth has also expressed an intention to go polyphasic in the near future, so there should be at least two sets of logs here soon.

Near future = in about a month
I've got exams + turning 18 coming up... plus i wanna spend about a week before hand getting totally prepared for it, so i'll probably start around 10th of December.

I'll be looking forward to reading your log though, should be interesting... good luck with it

[set]

i've done polyphasic sleep before and end up in frustration because of my inflexible schedule. I think most people need 6 set of REM so the four 30 min nap would be interesting to watch.

After reading all these posts about sleeping less i got inspired and decided that i'm going to do this no matter what! I'm not sure how is this going to turn out but here's my plan

I will squeeze 5 sets of 20 to 30 min nap (20 min works best for me last time i check) at night in 8 hours time.

scheduled 11, 1, 3, 5, 7

then a nap at 5:30 evening

that way i can keep my schedule and polyphasic at the same time. I plan to dedicate the nights to learning and working on my internet business. When the time is right for me to quit my job i plan to migrate to normal polyphasic or the 4 nap plan. (or maybe if this work out because it might go better with the monophasic sleep the world is in)

Good luck to myself.

[David Hausladen]

set, that's an interesting schedule. I'm not sure whether one can put all the naps in the evening, but if you could it opens up a lot of new possibilities!

It's really hard to work out a polyphasic schedule that works with a "9-to-5" job or school commitment. The ones that I've seen that are most promising for that are triphasic (three evenly spaced 45- or 90-minute naps) and the "core" sleep schedules (3 or 4.5 hours at night and then two or three 20- or 30-minute naps during the day). Your idea is very interesting, since it would work with a "9-to-5" job and still keep sleep down to 2 to 3 hours total.

Good luck with it--looking forward to seeing how it goes!

[MercuryLime]

Originally Posted by David Hausladen

It's really hard to work out a polyphasic schedule that works with a "9-to-5" job or school commitment.

I think it'd be interesting to try going polyphasic before I get out of high school. I would schedule it naps at: 2:00am, 7:00am, 12:00am (nap during lunchtime), 5:00pm (convienently after sport practices), and 10:00pm. It seems like it could somehow work out, leaving me with a lot of extra time for a job or homework.

[LesGawn]

Hi everyone.

I have been fascinated to read about all the experiences people have had with polyphasic sleep. I have been determined for some time to improve the way I use sleep to increase productivity and well-being.

What helps is an ability to sleep virtually anywhere almost on cue.

Before the experiment I would routinely fall asleep within minutes, sometimes seconds of switching out the light and putting my head on the pillow. My wife would often think I was joking when I was so quickly under.

At various times I have also enjoyed naps - and could usually be off within minutes, conscious of REM when I awoke 10 to 15 minutes later.

I regularly 'doze off' in the evening - particularly in front of the television. My greatest 'claim to fame' though was a family trip to the cinema to watch 'Pirates of the Caribbean II'. Despite the noise of the sound track I slept (verified by my wife and my 12-year old nephew) for about an hour and 40 minutes of it!

I also decided that my love for strong ground coffee was going to complicate things so I switched to decaffeinated and no other caffeine other than weak tea about two weeks before the new sleep routine.

In determining which sleep pattern to adopt, I realised that full Dymaxion / Uberman 6 X 20 was not going to be practical.

The best fit for me was the 3-hour block with 3 supplemental naps. To help, I created a spreadsheet showing my sleep times and how tired I felt on a scale of 1 (least) to 5 (most) in between.

I began my schedule on Saturday 6th January 2008.

Initial adjustment did not seem too hard - started off with ...

Main Sleep Block 3-6; then 20-30 minute naps in late morning, (10:30) mid afternoon, (2:30) late evening. 10:30).

I wasn't 100% rigid from the start as I was determined to see if I could find a natural rhythm within a range of times - focussing on good quality naps when I did take them and moved rapidly to Main 4:30 - 7:30 with naps at around 12:30, 6:00 and 11:30.

I missed my midday nap completely on day 6 and I overslept at the end of the morning by an hour on days 7 and 8.

Now I am on day 9, and feel I have hit a wall. Last night I just could not get up again at midnight, so decided to continue and take my 3 hours then. Great - woke up just a few minutes before my alarm.

For the first hour quite alert - but during the last couple (it is now 5:15 am) I have felt physically nauseous with the effort of staying awake. This is where the ability to sleep sitting up in a chair is possibly a bit of a disadvantage. I am also feeling cold - something I rarely have a problem with and even getting up and moving around the house a bit (being careful not to wake wife, father-in-law or 3 dogs of course) has had only a limited effect. A chocolate bar and another walk around just now seem to have lifted me slightly from the absolute pit - but this is a major struggle today!

I will add to this post to report further, but at the moment am feeling a bit desperate!

[MJW]

Oi people. I am another new poster here who has recently attempted to adopt polyphasic sleep. It seems to me that it would be good to talk to other people who are interested in the matter. Do such still read this thread and/or forum?

My experience with polyphasic sleep pretty much matches that of Bruce Achterberg as he describes it here (How to get rid of sleep-o-holism?), in that I have the hardcore rigid conscious willpower to do this thing PERFECTLY! but then a few days into my current adoption effort, when I am 90% asleep and it is imperative that I refrain from going back to bed, the dreaded sleepohol completely deadens said willpower (along with every other aspect of my conscious personality) and I go back to bed like a chump, possibly without even knowing that I am doing it, because people who are 90% asleep are STUPID. And well I've been doing this for months. And it's probably hurting me, but I refuse to stop until I've accomplished something!

See my thing is that I need the extra time that a polyphasic sleep schedule would give me. I work, during the day, at a worthwhile (for now) but unfulfilling software development job, and I have to balance that out with creative work on projects of my own. This is not negotiable! Of course it would be silly for me to declare that polyphasic sleep is the one answer to my problems and that I absolutely must adopt it, since I have yet to prove that I'm actually capable of doing so. However I think it is perfectly reasonable for me to declare that since polyphasic sleep shows such potential to help me, I absolutely must at least try it, for the couple of weeks that it would take before I could say for sure that I was or wasn't capable of doing it.

Well according to various people in these threads, 90% of people just don't have the willpower etc. And Bruce Achterberg says the crux is that you've got to be motivated for the right reasons, and that the way to become so motivated is to like change yourself somehow, to find the real source of motivaton within yourself. This is where he loses me! For I am certain that the motivation could come from outside me. I'm a pragmatic person with a strong tendency to rely on automatic support from machines--if I can cobble together a gadget to maybe solve a problem, that's what I'll try first. I don't go straight for the introspective higher-self-finding stuff that seems to be more popular around here. So I've done the four-alarm-clocks thing and the drinking-tea-at-night thing and the always-have-something-in-the-oven-when-you-nap-so-you-feel-like-you-HAVE-to-get-up thing and various other kooky plans like that. And... yeah, none of it has worked consistently. But still I am completely confident that SOMEBODY on earth could devise a mechanical system that could keep me awake when my conscious self would want to be awake. The catch, of course, is that I may well not be that somebody....

So I turn in another direction for help. Again, I'm sure Mr. Achterberg has a point, but I'm not going to do what he suggests--I just don't know how to tackle that by myself. I rely too much on my conscious personality to just start working on the unconscious one and expect it to become sufficiently motivated for this effort in a timely fashion. That is maybe a fine cause in the long term but I want to follow a polyphasic sleep schedule starting NOW. So instead I wish to try a completely obvious potential solution that, bizarrely, no other would-be polyphasic sleeper I've read about has ever even suggested might be possible to do: Get a sleeping buddy! I want to find some other person--more than one if possible!--who wishes to adopt the schedule at the same time as I do, or who has already done so, and get them to telephone me when I am supposed to be waking up. Because (assuming I put enough protective tape over the vulnerable parts of my phone) that system would constitute an alarm clock I could not shut off: an intelligent mind that would know when I had not awakened fully, and that would just keep trying until I'd done so. (And then I could do the same for them.) That's what's missing for me--I've got the flow of wake-up signal from the alarm clock to my person, but the flow back from my person to the clock is incomplete. I need a clock that is smart, that observes what I'm doing and that can't be tricked. I need somebody who will hassle the crap out of me until they are sure that I'm speaking consciously to them and that the stupid sleepguy I sometimes become is no longer in charge. And in return I would hassle them back.

So I wonder whether anyone here would be interested in such a thing. And if not then do you know where I might find someone who was? I read something in one of these threads about a Yahoo! polyphasic sleep mailing list or some such--is that any good? Come on folks, we've got to support each other here!

[toasterwater]

--January... Yeah... for some reason this feels like a dead thread. But, I will post anyway!

I am on day 1 of biphasic sleeping. I know, it's not quite the undertaking that polyphasic sleep is, but it is what I can tolerate to risk right now in my life.

(BTW, please someone let me know if this thread has gone somewhere else, or if there is some better place to post my biphasic sleep log... )

Yesterday, day 0 if you will, I woke up from a good night's sleep [1000], I stayed awake all day long, and I went to sleep at about [0030]. I woke up with my alarm 4.5 hours later, and went running!

The period of time (so far) today where I have felt tired was during the 2.5-3 hours that I was waiting for a haircut. I was trying to sit and read my book, but it was not keeping me awake. This tiredness I will attribute to at least the fact that it is boring to sit in line for 3 hours, and maybe also to the fact that I had just finished eating a footlong Chicken, Bacon, Ranch from subway...

anyway, it is only 1330 right now, on day one, but I feel like I've been awake for a while, and done alot. I'm not sure when I am going to take my nap in the evening, but I am going to try for at least after 1700 (because that is when I can reasonably expect to get a nap in on a normal working day). I'm sure my body will tell me when it's time to nap!


MJW-

"Get a sleeping buddy!"

I actually just finished watching the 4 weeks worth of "The Uberman Project" and I imagined myself trying this with my best friend, using that same concept. I think there is real potential behind that idea. 2 wills are better than 1!

[toasterwater]

Wierd... the 1st 90 minute nap that I attempted to take [1700] and I overslept by 1 whole sleep cycle...

I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I don't think I woke up at all until 3 hours later [2000]. Next time I will have to set more than just my phone alarm!

Interestingly, a few minutes after waking up and realizing that I had overslept, my brain seems to have conjured some kind of explanation for why I overslept. I was actually comforted by this explanation thinking "well, I overslept, but it wasn't my fault because of x". But shortly thereafter I realized that there couldn't possibly be any viable excuse... and then I realized that I had no idea what it was I was thinking about or remembering and all traces of that explanation vanished from my brain. Very wierd... I wonder if it was a dream....

[WeiQiangsheng]

Today is my 4th day of using polyphasic sleep. I am using the Dymaxion Sleep Schedule which calls for 4 naps each 24 hour period and 30 minutes during each nap. Thus, I sleep for 2 hours every "day." So far, I have felt great. My mental and physical capabilities have been stellar, and of course I have had a ridiculous amount of free time which I love. Please come learn more about Polyphasic Sleeping by visiting my page at John.Williford.blogspot.com

you can also track my detailed day to day progress on my website

Polyphasic Sleep

best wishes everyone

[thefictionxwelive]

My schedule:
I sleep from 9:45-10:15 and from 3:45-4:15.
So whenever those times come around, I get to disappear for half an hour. :P

I was going to begin a couple days ago, but I ended up hitting the snooze button four times and eventually turning it off. That ended up not being such a bad thing, though, as I got called in to work for someone later that day.
So, I began nearly five hours ago, my next nap being in forty minutes.

I may have to push it for an hour or two because of work, but I don't think it will pose a problem.


Edit: Just had my second nap. It's taking me a while to fall asleep; then again, it's always taken me a long time. It seems whenever I have five minutes left, I start to doze. I believe I'll make progress, though.

I'm going to keep my sleep log on LiveJournal, probably. I'll post it here once I make it.


Edit two: I had my third nap, but overslept. I ended up sleeping about two hours. I think, though, if you make the decision to just jump right in to something like instead of letting your body gradually adjust to it, it will gradually adjust for you. I believe the occasional oversleeping is necessary.


-Pan

[lasti]

Originally Posted by thefictionxwelive

I believe the occasional oversleeping is necessary.

Oversleeping messes with your plans, even if you body may need it because of sleep deprivation. Oversleeping is your biggest enemy when you're trying to adjust to a polyphasic sleep schedule.

[thefictionxwelive]

Originally Posted by lasti

Oversleeping messes with your plans, even if you body may need it because of sleep deprivation. Oversleeping is your biggest enemy when you're trying to adjust to a polyphasic sleep schedule.

I meant during the first week of adjusting, and as long as it doesn't go over ninety minutes. Today I went over that.
You need to let your body adjust to a change like this. Maybe one time of oversleeping at the very beginning is what I need to "reset" things.

[lasti]

Originally Posted by thefictionxwelive

I meant during the first week of adjusting, and as long as it doesn't go over ninety minutes. Today I went over that.
You need to let your body adjust to a change like this. Maybe one time of oversleeping at the very beginning is what I need to "reset" things.

I'm not sure about that. Well, as long as you still manage to adjust...

[aslkdzm]

Ok. I am..

Country : Malaysia
Age : 21
Gender : Male
Occupation : Student
Time flexibility : Rather flexible

I will start my Polyphasic sleeping pattern today.
DAY : 0

I have search throughout the web, but it seems that only a small number of experimenter persists on it, mostly gave up.

And sadly, due to no apparent reason, there is no even a single serious reasearch done on this topic, which may benefit a particular band of mankind ( except that of Mr.Stampi ).
I have no blog, so yup, I will have my progession updated here.

If I am not mistaken, there are 3 kinds of Polyphasic sleep pattern, namely,
1. Everyman
2. Uberman
3. Dymaxion
Dymaxion can be considered as the most extreme form of practice, the pattern is 4 times of 30mins sleep distributed throughout the day (4x30mins), and what now I am aiming to do is to adopt this pattern.

From my medical and biology knowledge and the whole bunch of information garner from the Internet, I think it is rather plausible for mankind to adopt this practice.

It is just that our cultural context limited polyphasic sleeper from doing so, since you will be labelled as weirdo among your peers.
It also requires great amount of courage to live quite a "different" way from the whole society, so to speak.

Thinking about the extra time. Well, as every wiseman know that time is the most valuable asset, even the Christian Bible dictates us to treasure the time.
I am planning to use the extra time ( if I successfully adopt this lifestyle throughout my whole life), to read more books, help others and achieve much more things, and this is the reason why I want to try this out.

Okay my schedule will be estimately like this :

7.00AM - 1.00PM (Working hour. For everybody, this is primetime,nobody seems to get away from work at this point)

1.00PM - 1.30PM (Sleep. Commonly,I believe that most of us will be spared from our work to take a break, lunch or something else at this point, so if you are able to squeeze in a sleeping period here will be awesome, but the problem keeps bothering me is - I don't have anything like portable bed ( haven't created on earth), am I really expected to sleep on the sofa/chair found in office/school/organization or even any eating table in the cafeteria? Luckily now I am in a holiday, so I don't have to bother it right now)

1.30PM - 7.30PM (Working hour. This is still prime time,though some occupation like morning section school teachers are off)

7.30PM - 8.00PM (Sleep. I try to have my dinner about 6pm-7pm, and most of us already get home at this moment, so a comfortable bed is easily accessible for you to sleep.)

8.00PM - 2.00AM (Working hour. This is the treasure time and most tempted time. Treasure because others will be resting and playing and mixing with friends/ socializing, your hardwork at this point will definitely paid off. On the other hand it is very tempting since you can easily slacken at this moment if your are not alert.)

2.00AM - 2.30AM (Sleep. I called this the ENDING POINT of the whole cycle - this is very important, I will give the reason later. Ok, I think this is the easiest part in the whole process,unless you have a night shift or you occupation working time is at night, then you have to adjust your schedule accordingly. MAKE SURE I/YOU SLEEP DEEPLY this step, plus most of the medical knowledge state that this is part of the time period when your inner organ get recover and rest completely (somewhere around 12am-3am), so it is of utter importance to get sleep here.)

2.30AM - 6.30AM (Working hour. This is the STARTING POINT. The silence of the enviroment make you focus, thus the best time to work, and note, this step is not the usual 6 hours but only 4 hours, you can't fit the whole cycle if you insist on 6 hours )

6.30AM -7.00AM (Sleep. For most of us, we are still at home in this point ,unless you are some News anchor need to host an early program or the like, most probably you will still at home and the bed is accessible, so...sleep.

I think I have to remind myself :
For most polyphasic sleeper, it is important to view the length of time as a unit of day. Meaning: many polyphasic sleeper will fall into the trap that as if the time is, in a sense, continuous, rather than viewing them as a day discretly. It is important to realize that we must hold the concept of there is a new begining of the day and an ending of that same day, you can't view the time from a standpoint that it is continuous, without a new starting day and a closing end.
This is quite psychological. We, as human being, tend to find it challenging if we start a new and fresh day, and knowing that it has an end. Without knowing this and treat the time "continuously" without the seperation of one day from another, you will most probably doom to fail to adopt this sleep pattern.
So a fresh and new start of the day is 2:30 AM, and the end of that day is 2:00AM.

So from now on I will post updates here daily, as long as there is no accident event or any computer crash-down.

I hope my personal experiment can somehow become first-hand data and contribute to the knowledge pool on the research of Polyphasic Sleep, since research knowledges in this aspect are scarce.

Peace

[dharmajanitor]

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 "... ♥♥♥♥♥".
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-)

[dharmajanitor]

(-continued-)
But quickly after some consideration I thought: Other people have overslept, made extra naps AND did eventally get thorugh the adaptation period. And still rather quickly as well, like Steve Pavlina for example.

I mean I didn't slip up so far, not the slightest actually. No oversleeping, no extra naps, etc.
Until the day 3/4 mark! So even though this is a little setback in itself, isn't it also a little success overall since it only occured now? Hmm, I don't really know, but nonetheless:
I continued!

As of this writing it's exactly... 3:35 pm, roughly 3 1/2 hours since I woke up from "the incidence".
I took my 2pm nap as usual, although it naturally took a few minutes more to fall asleep.
But I dreamed regardless, so I guess this is a good sign.
I really don't know what to expect this night, but I try to manage no matter what happens.
Since I don't want to oversleep anymore, the moment I feel like last night before 6am, I'll plan for an extra 20 minute MUCH EARLIER than the last time.

Since I never did polyphasic sleeping before I wonder how long it will take for me to finally don't have to fight sleep at the nighttimes anymore. From all the blogs of the successful it sounds like it "only" needs roughly a week.
But I didn't feel any progress therefore I have some questions to all of you who ever succeeded with Uberman:

• Will the nighttime zombie-sleepiness fade gradually over the days, or will there be some magical boundary after a few days where it suddenly turns from zombie-sleepiness to only light sleepiness (but none you have to fight hard against anymore)?
• How long will it take until I can actually lean at night? And I'm speaking of being able to comprehend mathematics and IT stuff. If it needs weeks to be able to conentrate for something like that at night, then... well that wouldn't be what I expected.^^
• Will my oversleeping of 5-6 hours from ca. 6-12am have a huge impact on my adaptation phase? Am I at square one?

And finally:

• Do you have the slightest idea what in the hell that was after my 6am nap?

Why did I on the one hand awake from dreaming but on the other hand feel the worst so far in terms of sleep-deprivation right after awakening?
I even had the feeling that a specific part of my brain began to hurt when I forced my eyes open through willpower.
Oh man, I guess I now know how narcolepsy feels if you would fight it.^^

Alrighty, it's 3:50 now, I feel like a 5 from a scale of 1-10. Not really able to concentrate on anything mentally, but not particularly tired either. It's still roughly 2 hours before my next nap.

Even though I had this lapsus, I still consider this DAY 4. Not an optimal day 4, but still.
I hope everything was understandable, if anything was unclear or you have a question in general, don't hesitate to ask.
Wish me luck, especially to get though this damn adaptation phase.

Greetings,
Edward

P.S.: And apologies for the long post, I had one of my rare "flow momoments" and couldn't stop typing. I hope you don't mind.

[dharmajanitor]

Hey all,
just wanted to update my status since my faux pas from yesterday (DAY 4).

DAY 5
Since I almost wanted to give up yesterday at one of my worst zombie moments and after that even overslept, everything seemed fine this night.
In fact this was the first night ever without as much as a mild tiredness.
At first, when I woke up at 2am I was insanely tired again and wanted to end it right there again, can you believe it?
I told myself that it just wouldn't make any sense to keeo this going if every night would be torturing and I don't seem to make any progress.
So I sat at the edge of my bed hating the situation and pondering if I really should quit or not (while feeling like ♥♥♥♥♥).
But then something changed inside of me, I became angered and defiant.
So I gritted my teeth and stood up to stay awake and fight the drowsiness as best I could, even though it'd be a torture.

And now the most wonderous thing happened:
As soon as I stood up and walked about 3 steps... my zombie-tiredness completely vanished !?
And, as I mentioned already at the beginning of this post, the result of this 2am-6am cycle was that I was completely and without any effort... awake!
I just couldn't believe it, I was so happy that I went outside talking a refreshing walk and watching the sun come out.

Since I'm always trying not to draw conclusions too quickly (especially if they are too good to be true) I thought about why this was and I came up with 2 explanations. A positive one and a pessimistic one.

The first obvious one would be:
Adaptation just began to kick in!
That would be the best thing if that's really what's going on and it would give me a TREMENDOUS motivational push.

The second (pessimistic) explanation:
As I overslept for 5-6 hours on DAY 4 this could've just given me enough energy to "make through the night" more effortlessly.
So it could very well be that the next night won't be as pleasant as today.
But this time I allow myself to have some hope.

One argument I came up with to support the adaptation-is-kicking-in explanation would be that even though I overslept it didn't happen during the cycle from 2am-6am, but during 6am-12am. Well, whatever the case may be tomorrow I will be the wiser.

As for now I felt a little bit groggy after my 6am nap but a few minutes later remained the light tiredness from before without any torturous experiences.
I think I'll experiment a little bit with the lengths of my naps. Yesterday I've watched a vlog from this (seemingly) french guy who also tried the uberman schedule and made interesting videos, even showing himself in zombie-mode and giving a few insights along with that.
The most interesting thing I got from his videos was that after about 2 weeks he suddenly found something that finally got him to adapt:
The solution for him was just 2 Minutes... 2 Minutes!
He previously slept for... I think it was 23 Minutes and then, after 2 weeks, when he added 2 more minutes he suddenly would wake up everytime and would mostly be a little tired, but no zombie-mode anymore!

So there you have it, sometimes it's the small things that can make a huge difference.

I felt a little more tired an hour ago, but it's still bearable.
My next nap (10am) is coming up and if anything deviates from the positive feelings after the naps I had so far then I'll update this post.
If there won't be anything special then I'll be back with my report of DAY 6 (especially to report if the nighttime went as smooth as the last time).

So long,
Edward

[Aleksander Krstic]

I tried polyphasic sleep once, but failed because I couldn't find any place to sleep at school.

[dharmajanitor]

DAY 6

• 2pm: feeling better directly after getting up than before
• 6pm: A little tired after getting up, but nothing seriouse. Went away after 1 minute.
• 10pm: Felt refreshed after getting up, around midnight felt the onset of fatigue. But since I'm not yet evenly adapted throughout each of the daily and nightly cycles, no wonders here.
  That'll be some sort of calibration process my body still has to go through until the difference between the night cycles
  and the day cycles will almost be not worth mentioning anymore.
• 2am: As I was getting more and more tired by the minute, I was happy to finally get this nap.

After waking up from that I felt veeeery tired again. Barely could keep my eyes open.
So I quickly put on my shoes and went outside for a walk.
But it wouldn't get better, I was in Zombie-mode again... drowsy, eyelid-fluttering and still 3 hours to go! *sigh*
So what did I do? Well believe it or not, I started to make push-ups on an abandoned parking lot.
And I felt immediately better, the rush of blood did the trick. But that only lasted for about 2 minutes, then the eyelids fluttered again.
Oh my, it was like hell again, I couldn't believe it. I just didn't know how to get past 3 hours in this state!
You see, The last time I succeeded and got to my 6am nap, but failed to wake up after that.
So this time I thought it might be best to take an an additional nap earlier inbetween, around 4am maybe.
Steve did it as well, so I thought it might be a good idea. Splitting it up a little bit might help the body to adjust to the night times better.
And as soon as that would happen, I could try to remove that extra nap from my schedule.

Alright, I walked back again, almost falling into some bushes a couple of times because I had micro-sleeps WHILE WALKING! Can you believe it!?
--intermission start--
How do the successful polyphasers get through SUCH tiredness!? I just can't seem to find anything to keep me awake during Zombie-mode at all.
Not even exercise seems to help. *sigh*
--intermission stop--
Well, I finally got back home and took the nap at 4am.
And then *BAM*... woke up at 10:20am, effectively oversleeping 6h 20min.....
I just wanted to cry, it was unbelievable, how in the hell can I get through this !&%$#ing lump of hellish Zombie-time?

Can any successful polyphaser out there give me some advice or tell me their "trick"?
I watched vlogs from 2 other successful uberman polyphasers, but they just seemed to pull through that phase "somehow".
You see, my problem is not my determination or willpower. I can stay awake, no problem. I just seem to oversleep after that, no matter what...

...Hmmm ...Well while writing this I guess I answered my own question.
All the time I didn't have any problem either falling asleep or waking up from naps, so I didn't thought about these two as problems and therefore they vanished from my brain.
I thought my problem was the Zombie-phase, because I perceived that as really, REALLY hard to get through.
But since I got through that phase 2 times already and still failed because I overslept after these phases it SHOULD've been obvious to me immediately that my lack of preperation to wake up after THESE naps was my problem.
Since I already thought I didn't have any problems there earlier I only concentrated my thoughts on making the Zombie-phase more comfortable and more easy to get by.

I see now that getting by that seems to be the lesser of two problems (even though it's still torturous as hell...).
Ok then, I still don't want to give up, I WANT this to work, I WANT the extra time, and I WANT to be refreshed, awake and alert after EVERY nap in the future, not just the daytime ones!

I think - judging from my last oversleeping experience - that I won't have any problems the next nighttime since I got some bloody "core sleep"... *hmph*
But the next night (DAY 7, i.e. tuesday) will probably be first Zombie-mode, followed by oversleeping.
So I have to prepare for that. I HAVE to wake myself up after that nap somehow.

But I have to admit that I'm a little bit afraid. I mean, let's assume I somehow manage to get up after the 6am nap.
Will I still feel like a Zombie? Will my eyelids still flutter, while I walk like a drowsy drunk?

To sum it up, it will probably go like this:

1. After the 2am nap on DAY 7 -> have to get through zombie phase ONE (torture)
2. get awake somehow from the following nap at 6am (not controllable through willpower alone, but external factors like water-shock)
3. and THEN I'll probably have to get through a SECOND Zombie-phase! (Do I?)

Oh my, that really doesn't sound like fun at all. And my problem is that motivation is getting more and more scarce, since I have no idea if it will fade during the day. How long can it prolong?
Any insights, tipps, advice would be greatly appreciated by anyone who successfully got through this phase!

Thanks in advance!

Greetings,
Edward