Going Polyphasic for the second time

[vuurstorm]

I had been keeping a strict polyphasic schedule for about 4 months since end of December. After 4 months I started getting sloppy and starting switching between mono and poly sleep, after getting sick all polyphasic sleep attempts stopped.

I have a little daughter of one year which requires a lot of attention and my hobby is creating 3D images which require a lot of time and since my poly sleep stopped my 3D hobby got to a standstill. Now finally being rid of the awful flue I’m about to start polyphasic for the second time.

Preparation:
I changed my diet by cutting meat from my diet and sticking to a 90% raw fruit diet this Monday to make my sleep adoption easier.
My polyphasic sleep is to start Wednesday night.
I still have to work on Thursday and Friday but have leave for Monday till Wednesday; Friday will be a challenge staying alert at work and hopefully I will be adjusted by next Thursday.

Schedule:
My schedule will be 25min of sleep at 5am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm and 2:30am. This schedule is similar to my previous one with a slight adjustment at 5am due to work hours. During work I will sleep for 25min max in my car.

Impact:
Because of my previous sleep schedules my family and friends are already aware of the fact that I will break for a half an hour nap during visits. My 6pm nap is the same time that my wife baths our baby and we usually go to bed about 10pm so my wife and baby should see almost no impact except for a zombie for a dad the first couple of days.

Lessons learned:
I have noticed from my previous experience that not eating meat plays a big role on the amount of sleep required, this time I plan to only eat meat once a week and not a big portion.
I will also not experiment with moving my schedules around before at least a month has passed.
I will not get sloppy again.
And most important of all - Get up when the alarm goes off.

[seeker5]

Cool! I look forward to your updates.

[Kaspian]

Good luck!

[vuurstorm]

As expected the first day on my new sleeping schedule wasn’t difficult at all. I went to bed at my planned times, mostly just lying with my eyes closed and rolling around struggling to fall asleep. Staying awake only became an issue between 2 and 5 am.
I spend most of my time just relaxing and watching movies. I plan on only starting a new project once I have passes the worst adaptation effects.

So far being sleep deprived is not my biggest concern. Here is South-Africa it is the middle of winter and as I found out last night it is extremely cold in the morning hours. Staying warm seems to be a bigger challenge than sleep deprivation at the moment.

[Calculusaurus]

Just curious, what sleep schedule are you following? And what schedule did you follow for those 4 months?

[vuurstorm]

Calculusaurus; as stated in my first post

My schedule will be 25min of sleep at 5am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm and 2:30am. This schedule is similar to my previous one with a slight adjustment at 5am due to work hours

Although I'm considering to drop one of my sleep sessions going from 6 sessions to 5 to make my polyphasic sleep more transparent at work as I currently have to sneak of twice for a nap. I am considering to increase wake time from 4 hours to 5.
New Schedule:
7am -before work
12pm - at work
17pm - after work
22pm - when my wife goes to sleep
03am.
I will stick to my current schedule and change to the new schedule on Monday.

[vuurstorm]

I’m finally starting to get some sleep in even if the quality of the sleep is not good. I don’t think I got any REM sleep yet. After waking I usually feel fine for about an hour and then I start getting very tired. My last nap before writing this post (2pm nap) gave me a huge headache upon wakeup and leaving extremely tired making concentration very difficult.

Feeling the way I am now I can sense that my state of being a Zombie and the battle to stay awake is getting closer. So far I haven’t had any oversleeping issues, still just using my cell phone alarm to wakeup. I downloaded a polyphasic ring tone which starts of softly and goes louder the longer it’s left on which works like a charm since I get to switch it of and get out of bed without waking my wife.

Battling the cold is still my biggest concern; this morning I used two blankets one for my legs and one for my upper body just to stay warm. I think the most difficult session to get up from tomorrow morning is not going to be the 1am session but the 5am one because I don’t have to get up for work tomorrow and it seems to be the coldest between 4am and 5am.

[vuurstorm]

I am now on my 9th day of my polyphasic schedule. The adjustment was a lot easier than I could ever have imagined.

Day 3 had my worst adjustment changes. After I woke up from my 18:00 nap I felt very tired and had a slight headache, still it was bearable and I could continue normally. After my 22:00 sleep session I felt terrible. I felt very tired, I had a terrible headache and felt like I was about to throw up. I felt so terrible that I couldn’t do anything. After 2 hours I started feeling better. I went for my 2am nap and felt refreshed after that. Since then I didn’t have any sleep depression signs and being on day 9 I think that I have adjusted.

I am quite amazed on how easy adjusting to polyphasic is the second time round. Only half a day of feeling miserable; I am still a bit tired an hour before sleep time but only 9 days in that can be expected.

New Schedule:
Today I have started my new sleeping schedule of cutting down on one session and now only sleeping 5 sessions instead of 6 being: 07:00, 12:00, 17:00, 22:00 and 03:00. I will post an update a couple of days into the new schedule.
Who knows if all goes well I might cut one more down going on 4 sessions being a Dimaxian schedule.

[Ilya]

Good achievement vuustorm. Go easy on cutting down the seemingly unnecessary sessions. It edges with sloppiness and can cause a sudden crash.
And I second the fact that second time around adaptation is much easier. The body kind of knows what do we want from it.

[vuurstorm]

I have a question for all the seasoned poly nappers.

Almost 30% of the time I wake after just 15 minutes of sleep. What would be the best action to take; Get up or sleep for another 10 minutes ?

[Ilya]

I'd say, try to go back to sleep. At first, I was saying "wow! maybe I just need 15 minutes naps" and started calculating, how much time this will save me in 30 years. Then I would crash.
But you can try. Aim for your usual nap length, but if you woke up early, wake up and pay attention to your state. Is your waking period after the 15 min. nap is different from your usual nap. Are you alert? Are you feeling unusual urge to sleep in the middle of waking period? If you see that your performance suffers, stick with the longer naps. If you are ok, aim for long, but let yourself to get up if you wake up early. If you are consistantly waking up after 15 mins. and feel fine, try to make it your standard nap. But don't be surprised if an oversleep happens.
Also don't confuse real wake up, with a just-in-case wake up that your subconscious does sometimes to check that you are safe in this strange thing you are doing. After a real wake up it is somewhat hard to go back to sleep.

[vuurstorm]

Ilya, I agree with that it might be a subconscious check, usually what happens is I wake after 15 minutes and it feels that I have been sleeping for ages thinking that I may have overslept, I then look at the watch and notice that I have been sleeping for only 15 minutes. At that moment I feel fully awake but so far always decided to go back to sleep and then fell asleep instantly.

Now that I think of it, it mostly happens just during my daytime naps. My night time naps are usually a lot more intense and I rarely wake before the alarm clock goes off

With the weekend coming up I will get up if that happens again to see what effect it has on my wake time.

[Calculusaurus]

Originally Posted by vuurstorm

I have a question for all the seasoned poly nappers.

Almost 30% of the time I wake after just 15 minutes of sleep. What would be the best action to take; Get up or sleep for another 10 minutes ?

When I first started polyphasic sleep I often woke up after just 10m of sleep. Sometimes I would stay up, sometimes I would go back to sleep.

IMO, it's better to go back to sleep. I know the hip mantra is "quality over quantity," but in my adaptation experiences I've found that a little bit of extra quantity can help a lot.

I think one of my main problems during my first adaptation attempt was that I was too concerned about nap lengths, and I often experimented with 15-20m naps (even 10m sometimes, if I woke up naturally). Setting my alarm for 30m flat made the transition easier. I'm not sure, but I think that once I'm 100% adapted, I can experiment with ~15m naps, but for now I'm finding little harm in taking the safe route of 25-30m naps.