Posts Tagged ‘10’

3rd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 9, 10 and 11

Monday, April 19th, 2010

I really need to get around to updating this blog more frequently. That’s the thing about a polyphasic sleeping blog; it needs to be updated daily so that people can see how I am going currently, and so that I don’t forget what happened a few days ago. I suppose that I am taking a much less rigid approach to polyphasic sleep now. I don’t mean how I nap, or how serious I am about polyphasic sleep, just more on the information side. I suppose that I feel I can put this blog off because I already know what’s going on (and it doesn’t get that many hits anyway :) ). Also, I haven’t been keeping any records of how long I have been sleeping for, but this shouldn’t be a problem as my oversleeps are stored in my blog anyway.

Alright, so Day 9 got off to a very heart -crushing soul-wrenching start. I overslept to 6:30 am, which is now my worst oversleep in this experiment. I do have many things I could blame it for. Adelaide, which is the capital of South Australia, is where I reside. On my 9th polyphasic day, we had our first earthquake in over 20 years. The earthquake (more like a tremor) was only about 3 on the Richter Scale, so it was nothing serious.

However, it did make me rouse (I shouldn’t say wake up, as I sort of flopped around for a bit and started drifting off again) about 30 minutes into my nap. After the earthquake, which felt like a really loud train in my sleepy state, my dad came and talked to me about it briefly, and then a friend called me. So, by the time I went back to bed it was 20 minutes later. I think that this was probably the main reason as to why I didn’t wake up when my alarms went off. Additionally, I was exhausted from getting poor quality sleep the day before, so it shouldn’t be surprising.

Day 10 was fine, despite the fact that I was tired as all hell. As I found out in my Uberman schedule, once you oversleep, you feel so much worse. Essentually the theory is that the brain isn’t going to change how you sleep unless it 100% knows that you wont go back to sleeping normally. Until then, it will make up tired and sleep deprived. So, when you oversleep, your body detects that the tiredness is working, and then makes you tired for the next day to try and get the same result.

And here I am on Day 11. I had my 6:30 am nap about an hour and a half ago, and I’m feeling pretty good. Well, no, not really. I feel good because I got pretty much all of my holiday homework done in the early hours of the morning. Being productive is always a good thing :)

But now I feel really exhausted and sleep deprived, yawning and longing for sleep. Generally if I’m tempted to go back to bed again, I usually try to get me as far away as possible from any soft distractions… Oh god, I am starting to fall asleep now. If I can just get through tonight, I am sure that everything will be fire.

Until then, I really need to go. Apologies for my bad spelling.

Raap!d

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2nd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 10 + Summary

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Here I am, 10 days into the Uberman schedule, which is already half the time of my previous one. And guess what? I’m starting to love it again. Ok, sure, I’m really not a big fan of being exhausted all the time, but it feels like its starting to wear away, and the benefits are showing themselves more and more. My mood has probably increased somewhat, and my difficulties in getting to sleep have completely gone away.

Today I was back at a friend’s house again, although this time we were sleeping in bright rooms. Oh, and by ‘we’ I mean ‘I’, as he decided not to go to sleep for the whole night. With my friend staying up the whole night too, I obviously didn’t oversleep, and was rather entertained playing computer RPG’s. This obviously lead me to the conclusion that more people need to be polyphasic, as we can help out each other while having fun etc etc,  but the downside is that nobody can be bothered. So, hopefully when I adjust people become more interested and give it a try. Until then, I’ll just have to hope my friends will stay up all night with me.

I did oversleep today, which was disappointing, as I was doing so well, making a perfect day turn into an unsuccessful day. I overslept for 2 hours at my 1 pm nap, which is unfortunate as that is when my friend also fell asleep. My alarms either failed to wake me, or failed to work, but I awoke feeling much worse than before, and I have been struggling the rest of the day. Still, I have very high hopes in keeping awake tonight.

Summary:

Well, I said on Day 10 that I would give you some actual data, and graph it so that you can get a better idea on how I am actually going right now. So, here is my latest graph, and my first one for this attempt. Note that the orange line is the target line at three hours alseep. For it to be counted as a successful day, the hours slept line must be under it.

As you can see, after a bit of a bumpy start, my time asleep has been getting smaller and smaller, which is excellent. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find any good free graphing software, so I wont be able to do lines of best fit or anything at the moment. I will try to find one for the 20 day summary though.

I also found it interesting to compare my first Uberman attempt with this one:

As you can see, I am doing far better in this attempt, which is reassuring. Also, it feels like I am adapting quicker than the time before, which just reinforces the notion that the more strict you are with the schedule, the quicker you adapt. This could just be a fluke though, or it could be because I had attempted the sleeping pattern before. Regardless of the reasons of the better results, I am glad to see that I am on the right track. Despite me not being able to adapt as quickly as others, at least I know that I am getting there. Well, that’s about it for today. With some extra luck, hopefully I will be adjusted in the next 10 days. Who knows?

Data

Day Total Hours Slept Target
Mood Tiredness Fog of Brain
Day 1 2.67 3 7 5 4
Day 2 7.5 3 6 8 8
Day 3 9.08 3 4 10 10
Day 4 4.58 3 6 7 6
Day 5 3.42 3 7 6 5
Day 6 4.92 3 6 9 8
Day 7 2 3 8 6 4
Day 8 6 3 7 7 6
Day 9 2.3 3 7 7 5
Day 10 3.83 3 8 8 6

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Polyphasic Sleeping Data: Day 10

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

At the beginning of my polyphasic experiment I had the idea that it would be good to record data of my sleeping, or more specifically when I sleep and how much I sleep. In hindsight, I probably should have also recorded my mood for each day accurately, so I could compare that to how much sleep I got in that day. Then again, some other polyphasic sleeper might record his/her mood, you never know…

 

Sleep Intervals Chart

Day 10 Sleep

This is the chart of all my sleeps over 10 days. Quite self explanitory, the blue bars are when I am alseep. While this is obviously a rough estimate of how much sleep I actually get, it is good to see how I am going. A few obvious things to point out are my ‘multi-naps’ (don’t do this!) on Nov 7, and obviously my irregularities in sleeping. As you can see, my afternoon naps are almost perfect, while I tend to oversleep dramatically in the mornings. I wonder if this is an indication that I should be trying the Everyman schedule.

(Ironically, I am using software supplied by supermemo.com to graph my progress. Their website denies that polyphasic sleep is sustainable, good for you, or beneficial in any way, and that most people can simply not achieve it. We’ll see about that =D )

 

Graphs

Day10GraphDay10GraphAv

These graphs are created from how many minutes I slept in total each day. My target (the red lines) is 200 minutes (3.33 hours) maximum  of sleep each day. As you can see, I have had lots of trouble trying to get my sleeping hours down, with dips and spikes everywhere. On this you can also see my best day (day 3) where I easily went below the line. Unfortunately, that was more of me being sleep deprived than an actual improvement.

On the positive side, the average graph shows a smooth line of best fit (x^3 actually) and I am starting to sleep slightly less. Of course these graphs don’t really prove anything, but it is nice to see how I have been going in a graphical format.

 

Data

Day Minutes Hours
Day 1 506 8.43
Day 2 284 4.73
Day 3 122 2.03
Day 4 455 7.58
Day 5 405 6.75
Day 6 402 6.7
Day 7 548 9.13
Day 8 361 6.02
Day 9 365 6.08
Day 10 278 4.63

(in case you are interested)

 

I’ll put up more statistics in another 10 days to keep tracking my progress. Hopefully I will be comfortably under the red line in that time.

Jimmi.

 

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Polyphasic Sleep: Day 10

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Today was rather an interesting day, although I am not too sure what to make of it. My 1 am nap was good, per usual, but not highly resorative. Working on some assignments, and generally just mucking around on the computer (games, reading blogs etc.) I heard a tapping at my window. “Jimmi!” a voice wispered.

Turns out it was two of my friends, one of them doing the same polyphasic shedule as me (I showed him and got him inspired, and now I think that he is adjusting far better than me) and the other one an insomniac. I went outside and met them, and then snuck out. We had a deadline for being back home, which was 5 am, as we needed to nap and get home before parents woke up. Funnily enough, this is the first time that I have snuck out of my house. I really just don’t usually see the attraction in it. Anyway, our adventure wasn’t that fun. We had to go back to our homes to get money to buy some food, found out that everything except service stations are closed, that 24-Hour Subway doesn’t run for 24 hours on a Monday (outrage!), and a black cat bit me.

However, it was interesting to note the strange feeling of being polyphasic in a monophasic world. We were walking lots, so I didn’t feel tired, and this seemed a strange comparison to all the people sleeping soundly, awaiting the next day. I didn’t really understand (apart from strict schedules) why people like Steve Pavlima and PureDoxyk (wow, just realised how to pronounce that!) stopped their polyphasic sleep routines, but got a feeling of how it would be. I am a bit of an intravert by nature, especially at night, so that isn’t much of a problem, but for all the people who feed off social situations and need other people, polyphasic sleeping really isn’t for you. Not only that, but you are always doing things when everyone else is sleeping (I imagine the novelty wears off after a while, but it seems pretty awesome right now), and the polyphasic schedule can interrupt social events (eg. movies, Star Wars marathons).

I managed to get back home for my 5 am nap, but did my sleep conpensation habit, which I know is one I need to get rid of. When I wake up and feel absolutely dead inside, I have a tendancy to set my alarm for another 30 minutes, and go to sleep again. While you may think this is beneficial, it really doesn’t help the polyphasic sleeping, and after I do this more than once in a row, I tend to sleep through the alarm. Perhaps it would be better if I slept once every hour or hour and a half when I get really tired. This could help, as it would train me to get more REM from naps, while counteracting oversleeping. I’ll try this tomorrow night, but tonight I need to focus on my Specialist Maths (test tomorrow!). So, I awoke at about 7.30, which wasn’t all that bad. When I got to school I managed to still have a nap in the morning, making sure I still kept to schedule.

My 1 pm was fine, as always, but I crashed when I got to 5 pm. I don’t know what happened. I vaugely remember talking to my girlfriend on the phone, but I imagine that I probably sounded like a very unhappy drunk cat (note to self: email apology). When I woke up, it was 8.15. I do not remember when I fell alseep, but I do remember that I woke up after my 5 pm nap, even if it was for a very short time. Subsequently, I did not sleep well at 9 pm, barely hitting REM. Oh well…

Apart from these few stumbles, I am quite happy with how things are progressing. It just shows how helpful other people are at keeping you awake and moving, with the addition of physical excercise. I do not think I could’ve survived from 2 to 5 without falling asleep unintentionally. So tonight I will also try and keep myself up by doing physical excercise (rigorous training, as we call it) every half hour or so. God, I need to be awake, otherwise I will fail the test tomorrow =( .

Next post is all my sleep data and statistics, in case you were wondering how much I have improved.

 

Jimmi.

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