I will try easing into this over a few days to see if that works. Since I'm doing the Everyman schedule, it is more flexible and forgiving than the Uberman, and in my estimation, less traumatic is better, in general. I will try gradually reducing the amount I sleep each night and the more I nap during the day, while trying to keep nap times fairly consistent in time of occurrence and duration.
Yesterday could count as a warm-up day, I got 6 hours of sleep because I had to get up early to catch a flight, then I napped on the plane.
Then, last night I retired at around 12 midnight, awoke at 3am as I sometimes do in the night, but instead of rolling over to go back to sleep, I elected to remain awake for an hour. I gave my SO a massage and browsed the net on my iPhone, then went back to sleep at 4am until about 7am, then napped for 45 minutes at 7:45. Total time so far is 6 hours 45 minutes, and I am only slightly bleary-eyed.
I should also mention that I am fairly addicted to caffeine, and regularly drink 3-4 cans of energy drinks in a day, along with 1-2 1500 mg of guarana and 2-4 500mg capsules of Yerba Matte in a day. I have stopped taking all of these as of today, and will avoid all caffeine and similar stimulants such as Yerba Matte, probably for the duration of this experiment. To avoid the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal which include unpleasant headaches, difficulty concentrating and muscle pains, I have had a couple of sips of black tea and will do so each day for a couple of days, because it contains caffeine, but yet lacks the stimulating effect of coffee and similar products.
It's 2 in the afternoon now. I napped for 20 minutes at 12:30. I now feel great. I actually started dreaming 5 times during that nap, and was awake 2 minutes before the alarm went off. Because I drempt, I think I may have achieved REM sleep even only lightly. I didn't think I would be able to sleep during my nap. Perhaps it was because I laid down, covered my eyes with a shirt to make it dark and put earplugs in so it was quiet. I have slept using earplugs for 20 years now - it is my usual way of sleeping.
I next took a nap at about 5:45 for 20 minutes, as the plane was taking off. Again a surprise that I could sleep since there was a bunch of girls near the back of the plane that were anything but quiet. I think the earplugs were the reason. I had bought a face mask for sleeping to close out the light and wore it as well, I deemed it worthwhile.
I was awake and alert until landing 5 hours later. Got sleepy at 10pm Denver time, (12pm east-coast time) tried to nap in the truck while the SO drove - unsuccessful - too bumpy. I kept my eyes closed and stayed quiet though for 20 minutes anyway - it seemed to help.
Got sleepy at 3-ish, pulled the truck over and had a successful 20-minute nap. Felt refreshed and continuted home.
Was alert until 4; went to bed at 4:30.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The First Post
Today I start on my polyphasic excursion. I only just came across mention of polyphasia yesterday at stevepavlina.com, polyphasic.blogspot.com, and everything2.com and did quite a bit of reading right away. Noticing that quite a number of people have written about it and tried it with success, and that some have tried it and failed, and being perfectly in tune with wanting more hours in a day since I was a child, I will try it.
Having always been a night-owl, and never having a sleep pattern that fits with others, I feel drawn to try it. I foresee a problem in that I have always felt that I need 8 hours of sleep per day, but on the other hand I can stay up until 5am without a problem when I am mentally engaged, so it has seemed to me for quite some time that a 28 or 29 hour day is what my system is tuned for.
The best results seem to be had by others with the Uberman so I would desperately like to try it. Uberman requires absolute strict adherence to sleep times for a couple of weeks until one's body has adapted, and my disposition is suited for it - I can stick to anything once I put my mind to it. However, from the writings of the failings of others, Uberman is intolerably inflexible, especially at the beginning - it seems the timing must be to the minute or one's body will revolt with a coma-like sleep that will last 4 to 5 hours or perhaps even longer. Naps that are late or missed wreak havoc with the mind and body of the adherent, so it is not conducive to a most ordinary job schedules. As I have a job as programmer my first reaction to the idea was that it would not fit into my work schedule and so was impossible for me. However there is a second polyphasic schedule known as the Everyman which consists of a core sleep period each night of 3 hours combined with 3 naps throughout the day, or a 1.5 hour nap with 4 to 5 naps throughout the day. The benefit to the Everyman schedule arises in that the nap times are more flexible and can vary up to an hour in either direction from their scheduled times, the downside being that there is more time slept each day. Since the adjustment for the Everyman is much less difficult and the failure rate lower, I will start with that one. It is less extreme and so appeals to me less, but I will think of it as a training-ground for the Uberman, which I will plan to graduate to in the future.
One problem I can foresee is that I have never been prone to napping; when I get up I want to keep going until I must sleep. I will need to adjust my thinking.
I am an instructor and programmer. As a programmer, I do not anticipate that taking a nap on the job will be an issue; whenever I work on-site I will simply tell them I am narcoleptic (or some such hooey) and require a nap at my desk at lunchtime and on breaks. People in IT are used to programmers being weird folk anyway; I have not been shaken by anyone's impression of me as being weird before; in all likelihood, this will fuel my inner oddball.
In fact, I can feel it energizing me already.
Having always been a night-owl, and never having a sleep pattern that fits with others, I feel drawn to try it. I foresee a problem in that I have always felt that I need 8 hours of sleep per day, but on the other hand I can stay up until 5am without a problem when I am mentally engaged, so it has seemed to me for quite some time that a 28 or 29 hour day is what my system is tuned for.
The best results seem to be had by others with the Uberman so I would desperately like to try it. Uberman requires absolute strict adherence to sleep times for a couple of weeks until one's body has adapted, and my disposition is suited for it - I can stick to anything once I put my mind to it. However, from the writings of the failings of others, Uberman is intolerably inflexible, especially at the beginning - it seems the timing must be to the minute or one's body will revolt with a coma-like sleep that will last 4 to 5 hours or perhaps even longer. Naps that are late or missed wreak havoc with the mind and body of the adherent, so it is not conducive to a most ordinary job schedules. As I have a job as programmer my first reaction to the idea was that it would not fit into my work schedule and so was impossible for me. However there is a second polyphasic schedule known as the Everyman which consists of a core sleep period each night of 3 hours combined with 3 naps throughout the day, or a 1.5 hour nap with 4 to 5 naps throughout the day. The benefit to the Everyman schedule arises in that the nap times are more flexible and can vary up to an hour in either direction from their scheduled times, the downside being that there is more time slept each day. Since the adjustment for the Everyman is much less difficult and the failure rate lower, I will start with that one. It is less extreme and so appeals to me less, but I will think of it as a training-ground for the Uberman, which I will plan to graduate to in the future.
One problem I can foresee is that I have never been prone to napping; when I get up I want to keep going until I must sleep. I will need to adjust my thinking.
I am an instructor and programmer. As a programmer, I do not anticipate that taking a nap on the job will be an issue; whenever I work on-site I will simply tell them I am narcoleptic (or some such hooey) and require a nap at my desk at lunchtime and on breaks. People in IT are used to programmers being weird folk anyway; I have not been shaken by anyone's impression of me as being weird before; in all likelihood, this will fuel my inner oddball.
In fact, I can feel it energizing me already.
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