Posts Tagged ‘14’

3rd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 14, 15 and 16

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

Sorry in advance about not updating my blog on a daily basis. It will get back to that stage, be patient. So, what happened the last 3 days? Nothing good, that’s for sure.

Recently I have been struggling with my polyphasic sleep, oversleeping two nights in a row. Additionally, the oversleeps are so long it’s practically 2 monophasic days with naps in them, as the 2 am to 6:30 am awake time was being completely taken over by sleep. As you can imagine, it has not been pleasant.

Still, I’m learning things from this. The reasons as to why I have been oversleeping are my parents and family. I know that my dad is catching on to the fact that I don’t sleep properly, but I don’t want him to find out I’m polyphasic again (hence bad consequences). Because of this, on day 14 I decided to sleep with the lights off and in my bed. Bad idea. Awoke at about 6:15 am, feeling terrible. Holding off falling back to sleep for 15 minutes nearly killed me.

The next night I didn’t sleep in my bed, but I still ended up oversleeping badly. This time it was because we visited my grandma, who is in hospital right now. Unfortunately, by the time I got home it was 11:30 pm. At night I am highly dependent on getting a large amount of rest from my core naps. So, sadly enough I slept through my alarms… or should I say became semi-conscious and turned them all off? I don’t know. But I do know that I felt terrible afterwards.

The human brain is a cruel thing. When you try to make (dramatic) changes to your sleeping pattern, the brain doesn’t know what to do, and subsequently doesn’t get enough rest. When this happens, you get tired, as the sleep deprivation is a technique that the brain is using to get you to go back to sleep. With polyphasic sleep you can fight off sleep deprivation, but if you do make mistakes in your schedule and oversleep, you will become even more sleep deprived. This is because the brain thinks “Well, obviously this whole let’s-get-you-tired method of getting enough rest is working, so I better do it to a higher intensity.” Due to this, you may hear many polyphasers (including me) saying that they feel worse when they have had a full nights rest. This is because the brain is trying to make you readjust to your old sleeping habits, and makes the sleep dep symptoms worse when it realizes that it’s working.

Anyway, there is some good news to report. It’s 3:02 am, meaning that I managed to awake after my 11 pm nap. Hopefully I will be able to continue the schedule with no problems (but I doubt it. I have many events coming up soon), but that might be wishful thinking. Still, the fact that I can still get up at 2 am is something to be marveled at. :)

Anyways, better put this awake time to good use. Assignments and revision, here I come.

Raap!d

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2nd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 14, 15 and 16

Monday, January 11th, 2010

I am struggling right now. Not just struggling, but really stuggling with my pattern. Recently I can’t seem to stop myself oversleeping and more events are conflicting with nap times. These last three days have really tested my resolve, as they are some of my worst. Apologies once again for the posts clumped together, but the reasons for this are oversleeping and a broken internet modem.

Day 14

The great thing about not getting around to posting each day on time is that you find it really hard remembering what you did that day. On day 14 I was at a friends, like always. Holidays are the best time to go live at other’s houses I’ve found. I crashed that day at 6:00 am for about 3 hours, which wasn’t so bad, but didn’t help for what was to the day after. Also, on day 14 I found that I was more tired than usual, and more susceptible to falling asleep. The rest of the day was alright however, with all my other naps feeling slightly shorter than usual.

Day 15

Ah yes, this is where it gets bad. Really bad. I felt really tired at my 4:30 am nap, and my mobile phone ran out of batteries. This combination with the addition of me sleeping comfortably ontop of my bed ensured that I overslept for hours. Approximately 6 hours, which made me feel like death when I woke up. That in itself wasn’t the worst of it, but more the fact that I needed to attend a friend’s birthday party that day. The party went from 4 till 9pm, cutting into two of my nap times (5 and 9). It was a pool party, and due to the hot weather, it was a complete success. What was less successful was my 5 pm nap however, in which I needed to retreat to a deserted corner and close my eyes. Perhaps I slept, but I doubt it. I wanted to, but when you are covered in cold water, sitting on hard ground with people yelling ‘Marco Polo’ and loud music playing, well, there really wasn’t much hope. While you may think that it would all even out because I slept for so long in the morning, it just made everything worse. It felt like returning to the monophasic all of a sudden. I realised that I have been letting my guard down about napping, allowing exceptions to all my nap times, which is causing my struggles keeping myself awake.

I went back to my friend’s house at 9 pm, which was alright because it was a long drive home, allowing me to get a fair amount of sleep before arriving. Other friends decided to come over, and we all went down to the beach. Ocean water at 12:30 at night is seriously one of the best things in refreshing you, even if the salt burns your skin. I couldn’t take my 1 am nap on the beach.. I had no towel, and it really wasn’t comfortable enough. So I took my nap at 1:30 back at my friend’s house, which was better than nothing, despite friends forcing me to get up (which I thank them for). Not too bad from then on.

Day 16

Day 16 was a huge pain. I managed to keep myself awake barely through the early hours of the morning thanks to my friend staying up with me watching TV series… which is a shame because I went and ruined it all by taking my 1 pm nap without my phone, because it died, and expecting either my lappy or my friend to wake me. Turns out that my lappy failed to have an effect on me, as did my friend (because he fell asleep too. I suppose I can’t blame him. Monophasic is hell like that =P). The rest of the day was alright, but didn’t really make me feel any better about a 2 and a half hour sleep.

So, it’s been a struggle maintaining this, almost all thanks to friends. I suddenly and sharply understand why polyphasic can be a huge problem for some social people. Napping can become really inconvenient. I mean, I’m not a particularly social person, and I make close relationships with friends, so it’s not particularly hard to go off to nap somewhere in private.

…but I can see the problem tomorrow (today). Due to my compulsary Australian Studies subject (which was completely pointless, didn’t teach me anything) that I had to complete, I couldn’t do Chemistry. However, Chemistry is a two semester subject, but Australian Studies is only one. So, they say I can do Chem in year 12 if I do a summer course (1 1/2 days to do 2 semesters work… really shows how hard the education system is working), which is great. But my nap times conflict with it quite painfully… It’s going to be another one of these obstacles to overcome. Once overcome however, there shouldn’t be anything to stop me from continuing my adaptation. And from now on, I plan to treat my naps with more respect. We’ll see how fast I adjust now =)

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Polyphasic Sleep: Day 13 and 14

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Firstly, I must apologize for not posting yesterday. I’m sure it would have been a big disapointment to you all =). The main reason for this, apart from sheer laziness and oversleeping, is due to the fact that I was considering quitting the Uberman sleeping schedule. Before you cry out with a “Please don’t” and a “I wont love you anymore”, don’t worry, I’ll still go on with it, but there are various factors that do want to make me quit.

The awesome thing about polyphasic sleep is that you have so much time. So much! With a potential 40+ hours per week, there is so much more that you can get done, and makes the unhappy hard worker into the highly successful socialite (well, probably not, but you get the idea). This sleeping, when perfected of course, makes you fully alert all the time, getting more REM sleep than on monophasic sleep.

The disadvantages are the worst part of polyphasic sleeping, and the worst being that adaptation. If you can stay awake for 3 days and still feel fully awake and alert, you probably wont have much trouble with it. If you are a normal human being, it will hit you like a ton of bricks. In my opinion, it is actually worse than not sleeping, because once you do go to sleep, your body wants to keep sleeping, and consequently getting yourself up is more than a challenge. Apart from that, there is no known health issues associated with polyphasic sleeping, so you could be killing yourself unknowingly. That extra time awake might not be extra time at all. Finally, it doesn’t always fit in with your schedule, and you may become the intravert you have always feared because you can’t go anywhere without having to sleep.

So, the oversleeping and crashing is the main reason for me wanting to quit. For the past two days I have overslept, with my worst one today, sleeping from 2:30 till 12, waking up wrecked and feeling like death. It still just feels like I am staying awake nights on end, which does not feel healthy nor make me happy. In addition to this, I have exams coming up, and I want to do well. If I am completely sleep deprived, I doubt I will do well. Strangely, I feel better if I don’t sleep long. I wonder if this is me adjusting, or something else strange.

However, I will not be quitting or swapping to the Everyman schedule, which does seem rather tempting. Instead, I will suffer, determined not to be one of the so many polyphasic bloggers who have failed. Besides, I said I would do this for 31 days, and I plan on sticking to it.

So, for day 13 and 14, apart from oversleeping in the early hours of the morning, they were very similar to all my other days. I still feel rather rested from my naps, but start to become tired again after 1 or 2 hours of being awake, which is rather a problem. Additionally, I’ve been quite bored and miserable. The boredom I am pretty sure is due to me not having enough of a variety of things to do, with homework and suchlike seeming even more disinteresting due to the sleep deprivation and difficulty to concentrate. The unhappiness is due to the boredom, but I’ve got a feeling it is also due to wasted time (yeah, I know that is silly) and not seeing enough of my girlfriend (I hope that I find things to do, because I don’t get to see her this week).

So, I am soldiering on with the Uberman. Hopefully I can muster up the energy to not oversleep for 2 days, finally getting over the hump. Hopefully the weekend will provide the motivation. And yes, I will be doing my information and guide on polypahsic sleeping and the Uberman schedule. Be patient. I might even get around to doing it in my spare time, who knows?

Jimmi

Ps. I might be getting my own domain, thanks to a friend. If this happens, I’ll host this blog there. I plan on it being www.raapid.com. Any suggestions would be welcome!

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