Posts Tagged ‘Nap’

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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3rd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 13

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

You’ve got to be kidding. I awoke at 4:40. Goddamnit! *insert various foul language here*

Seriously, I have been going fantastically for 3 days straight, and then brought right back down. This is my no. 1 problem with polyphasic sleep: For the adaption, it’s relentless. You screw up once, it brings you back 2+ days of adaption, which is really hurts my motivation, making me cold, bitter, and just generally angry at the world. I suppose the issue is that it’s down to you failing, rather than anyone else, making it harder to bear. Still, early days yet. I don’t want to be in limbo much more, and I know it’s going to effect me detrimentally sometime in school, so I better adapt fast.

The main issue is my parents. They are 100% against the idea of polyphasic sleep, and think that it is unscientific/illogical/stupid. Subsequently, they try and keep me away from it (which I just can’t seem to do. Seriously, I can picture myself on my 15th or so polyphasic attempt before getting it right :P ). So, I tend to be holed away from the world at night, in my dark room (which is killing my adaption, I just know it) watching movies, doing work and playing computer games. I want to go out and get some exercise, but I know that I would get a serious talking to if I tried :[

Anyways, once again I have no idea what happened when I was sleeping. I just woke up at 4:40, with my alarm program turned off and my phone alarms disabled. Why does this keep happening? I really need to get a new method of waking up. I’m thinking the water pistol wake up alarm sounds pretty awesome, but as far as I know, no-one has made it apart from the person in the HowTo video. Bleh, I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Anyways, I haven’t given up yet, that’s for sure. I just hope I can get back on track before I jump off the polyphasic wagon altogether.

Raap!d

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3rd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 12

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

And I’m still alive. Alive and kicking actually. It was a real challenge getting up from my core nap, which was no surprise. I was happy though, as I got up and after about 30 minutes of awake time, I was feeling alive again. I feel like I am making good progress on Everyman right now, as I have not overslept for 3 nights in a row now. It may be wishful thinking to hope that I make it to the end of the week, but it feels more possible than ever before.

I had some serious sleep deprivation today, the most which I have had over this entire attempt. It started in probably the early morning, and progressively got worse. I managed to put off my nap until the appropriate time, but it was a challenge. I suppose I really haven’t been tested by Everyman until now, where I spent most of the morning trying to watch movies or play computer games while poking myself with a pin. I find that a pin works rather well to jolt you back into the land of the living, but you eventually get used to it. To counteract this, I suppose I could poke myself harder, but I don’t really like the idea of that. :)

I was practically narcoleptic in the morning, and I was trying to do anything I could to stay awake. I ran and jumped around, had a cold shower, had some tea (and burnt myself, which in turn probably helped a lot) and forced myself to eat breakfast standing up. That’s the thing about sleep deprivation, it really can’t get you until you are sitting down. Lying down is just asking for it. I started waking up mentally about an hour after my nap, just in time for my first day back at school. Now, being sleep deprived at school is less than fun. People tease you when you micro-sleep, teachers find you annoying, you don’t retain any information, and I thought that this was exactly how today was going to be… but it wasn’t.

Well, it was like that for a bit. We had an assembly in the morning, with many students and teachers welcoming everyone back and speaking motivationally. I’m sure it was very interesting, but I really don’t remember much of it. Luckily I was sitting behind many people, so my micro-sleeps where only detected by one of my friends, who hit me whenever I started to drift off. It’s surprisingly effective.

Apart from the assembly in the morning, I think that I did very well. On Uberman at school, half the time was spent in complete agony trying to stay conscious. Here, it was just a little nagging thing in the back of my mind. So, school went on, and I hid myself away from everyone else at lunchtime to have my nap. I naturally assumed it was going to be poor quality sleep, but it wasn’t. Also, nobody disturbed me. Today was full of surprises :]

So, here I am, updating my blog before doing some more work.. and then it’s off to dreamland for 3 hours. I am desperately wanting to get through this adaptation period, and I know that if I can just resist oversleeping for another 4 more days, then I will have no problem… it’s just a matter of willpower now :]

God, I really don’t want to screw up now…

Raap!d

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3rd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 2 and 3

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

Bleh. Here I am again, half-successful polyphasic sleep. For the past two days I have been staying at a friends house, and I have found out from this that Everyman is far more accessible to people as it doesn’t isolate you from society in the same way as Uberman does… Well, I should probably rephrase that. Everyman has less naps in the day time, allowing you to do things for longer periods of time.

The great thing about my polyphasic attempts is that they teach me so much about my body. I am on school holidays at the moment, so I would go to bed at about 1 or 2 in the morning on average. And this means that I am having trouble falling asleep at my 11 pm nap. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel tired and needing sleep, but I just can’t fall to sleep as easily. Apart from the core nap my schedule is moving in the right direction.

But here is the major problem: I can’ t wake up.

No, I seriously can’t. For the last two days of polyphasic sleep, I have awoken at 5 am instead of 2 am. No, my phone and computer alarms have the correct times… I seem to be doing the whole unconscious behavior thing. When I do finally wake up, I find that neither of my alarms are ringing, and that my computers volume is muted. The major issue with this is that I can’t recall me turning off any of my alarms.

… So I am at a obstacle already. At least in my last 2 attempts I woke up, even if it was to just fall back to sleep. This time I just can’t be woken. I suppose this is due to the fact that I fall into deep sleep, and need to be pulled back into wakefulness. Perhaps I’ll tape my phone to my body. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

But yeah, the flip-side of this is that I really am not tired. And hopefully I wont once I get rid of another 3 hours of sleep.

Until next,

Raap!d

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3rd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 1

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Well, here I am. I said I would be back, and here I am.

It’s now about 4:40 am (on April 9) now, and I can proudly say that I am officially polyphasic again. Yesterday I woke up around 5 am just to get my 6:30 nap, and since then everything has been going as planned.

But I’d better get into all the juicy details now, shouldn’t I? I have just started Everyman3, and I must say that I am terribly excited. Having so much free time is damn addictive :) . In case you don’t already know, the Everyman sleeping schedule differs from other polyphasic sleeping schedules as it has a ‘core nap’, that is, a nap (usually taken at night) that generally lasts for anywhere between 1.5 hours and 4.5 hours, as well as having 2 – 5 naps around the clock. Due to this, there is quite a lot of variation between different Everyman schedules, but the proven schedules are the 1.5 hour core with 4 – 5 naps, 4.5 hour core with 1 – 2 naps, and a 3 hour core with 3 naps, which is the schedule I decided on.

So, my sleeping schedule is as follows:

  • 20 minute nap at 6:30 am
  • 20 minute nap at 1 pm
  • 20 minute nap at 5:30 pm
  • 3 hour core at 11pm

…which obviously gives me, once again, a huge amount of excess time. As I usually need about 9 hours of sleep to feel alive the next day, I am saving about 5 or so hours of time, which is still fantastic. While already Everyman doesn’t have the same feel to it as Uberman does, it’s still rather pleasant. With Uberman time just seemed to extend forever, whereas on Everyman it feels more like I decided not to go to sleep for a night. Wonder if I’ll feel like that tomorrow night.

So yeah, this is just a brief update. I’ll try my best to update this blog daily, I’ve been rather neglecting it as of late.

Not much to say right now about the schedule. At the moment, I just feel kind of tired. Apparently it is no where near as hard as Uberman, which is promising, and doesn’t quite leave me an outcast to society like Uberman did. Still, we’ll see how I go. I still could crash and burn if I am not careful, and due to me starting my schedule so late in the holidays I will need to make sure that oversleeping is a thing of the past if I want to maintain Everyman.

Once again, wish me luck.

Raap!d signing off.

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2nd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 12 and 13

Friday, January 8th, 2010

It’s a shame that I need to constantly keep apologising for delaying my posts, but this time there was a good reason. The past few days have been far more eventful socially than I had previously expected. On day 12 I had  a small gathering of friends meeting up at my local national park, which was nice. What was not nice however was the fact that I barely managed to get 5 minutes of sleep. Due to the hot weather, friends waking me, distracting me and deserting me, I really couldn’t sleep. I was really tired, but sadly none of them realized that I desperately need the sleep. That was at 5 pm. After our little gathering was over, some of us decided to stay at a friend’s house, and we ended up attempting a walk to a nearby beach. A beach about 8 km away, but due to one friend’s relationship issues we ended up walking to his girlfriend’s house… he said it would take like 15 minutes. It was more like another 5 km. As soon as we arrived, his mum came and picked him up, telling him that he couldn’t hang around. So, this pointless journey took us late into the night, took way too long, but more importantly: I missed my nap. This has been the first nap which I have missed (when being awake that is), which I regret, despite the fact it was rather unavoidable.

So, on day 12 I got about 95 minutes of sleep, which is obviously not healthy for my particular schedule. I fell asleep at about 6:00 am on day 13, and managed to get up 4 hours later. This was caused by the lack of sleep, and partially due to the inappropriate large volume of certain beverages consumed. Woke up with a bit of the fog of brain, but overall pretty good. It is now the end of day 13, and all my other naps have been on schedule and restful.

There are a few things that I have learnt from these past 2 days:

  • Missing naps, while bad for you, is not the end of the world. You can still bounce back if you are adjusted enough.
  • Prolonged exercise has minimal effect on napping.
  • Be careful drinking when polyphasic. It causes you to struggle with nap times, makes it very difficult to get up, and causes oversleeping.

Well, there really isn’t much else to say. Moral of this story: Don’t miss naps. It hurts.

Until tomorrow, Raap!d out.

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Polyphasic Sleep: Day 16

Monday, November 16th, 2009

I will apologise in advance for this post, as it will be rather short, mainly due to the fact that I can’t be bothered writing the same thing again and again.

It’s rather funny, me and my oversleeping. I really haven’t grasped the concept of actually keeping awake and to schedule, with my motivation sagging when I am tired. The early hours of the morning seems to go far too slowly, and I cannot seem to function well enough to do much work, which is a huge disadvantage. Every morning now that I oversleep, I seem to reach the conclusion that this isn’t working out, I am killing myself (well, I feel like it anyway) and that I should either give up or swap to an Everyman schedule, despite the fact that it would take longer to adapt to. Later on in the day however, when I don’t feel like someone is constantly jabbing me in the head, I feel like everything is working out ok, and that I am all good to continue. I suppose they even themselves out, but I just wish I was more motivated in staying awake in the mornings.

One of my biggest crimes, as I have stated earlier is my habit of taking extra naps, in the hope that it will aid me in functioning properly and reduce the chance of crashing. Unfortunately, it turns out that it does the exact opposite, for every time I wake up, all I can think about is sleeping again, making me either reset my alarms for an extra 25 mins (which are usually set wrong, pm instead of am for example, but this could just be my subconscious being tricky =D) or simply to just lie back down and fall to sleep.

Another bad one is the setting of just one alarm instead of multiple ones. Because my wilpower is so low, the chances of me sleeping through an alarm is astoundingly high, and to counteract this I set as many alarms as possible. Unfortunately, I only have my mobile phone (which can have up to three, one that repeats if not told to shut up) and my computer (which I can set as many as I like, but I dare not set it to loudly as to wake up other household members) to wake me up. An interesting idea that I just had would be to put the lappy on the ground next to me. Then I will definately hear it =)

So, for tonight (and tomorrow morning) I have written a basic list of things that I can do. Unfortunately, they are almost all computer games as my head never seems to like revision or homework at the early hours of the morning if it isn’t essentual, and other activities (mixing, piano, swordfighting, taming cougars etc.) tend to make far too much noise. What I can hope for is that eventually many other friends may join in a similar quest (or just stay up more) to fight against sleep, providing entertainment throughout the night. Until then I will just have to look at Messenger and Facebook sadly, with 0 friends online.

Moving on, today my 1 am sleep was ok, but I felt slightly tired after waking, getting exponentially tired after about 30 mins. At 3 am I took a nap, which ended up as two naps, falling into my trap. Amazingly, I was able to get up and survive for another hour until 5 am, where I had 4 naps in a row, the last one turning into core sleep until about 7:15 when I was awoken. The morning was probably one of the worst that I have ever experienced. I got up utterly exhausted with a huge amount of convincing from my mother, and promptly sat on the couch, staring upwards realising how screwed I am for todays chemistry (redox) and maths (calculus) tests. I managed somehow to find the time to have a nap for about 10 or 15 mins on the couch before going to school (probably around 7:45, although the actual time excapes me), and this nap dramatically helped in keeping me awake, alert and functioning. Sure, I definately wasn’t 100% (more like 50%), but I was up and running. As I got to school, I progressively awoke from my haze, and did my tests. Funnily enough, I am almost certain that I got A’s in both of them, and I bet that if I didn’t get my nap at 7:45 I would have probably gotten a C or worse.

This brings up an interesting conclusion, that being that I am halfway adapted to Uberman, and half Monophasic. I can’t seem to survive without oversleeping, and yet the only sleeping that actually feels restorative is the REM sleep naps. The long ‘core’ naps, that go for over an hour make me feel horrible and groggy on awaking, but the naps make me feel great (even if I start to feel tired an hour later). This is both motivating and worrying. Any evidence that I am actually progressing with my sleeping schedule is fantastic, but will this damage my normal sleeping? Well, I have never heard of anyone yet that can’t readjust back to monophasic sleep, so I think it will be ok. I’m just fearing that the transition between the two schedules back to monophasic could be a bit of a challenge in itself. Then again, I will have melatonin on my side rather than against me, so I think that would be fine.

So yeah, the only other event was that I set my alarm wrong at 5:25 pm (was talking to mum about the DPRK, got carried away) and slept until 7:00, awoken by my nextdoor neighbour (thank you!). It seems strange that I can now oversleep in the afternoon… It never used to happen. Oh well…

Just at this very moment I found out that Uberman polyphasic sleepers take 2 – 4 weeks on average to adjust. Wow, so I am not all that unusual after all. That is rather relieving, as I really need motivation to keep me going with this.

I said this was going to be a short post.. Heh, I guess I lied. See you tomorrow.

Jimmi.

PS. Wow, turns out I have nothing to complain about in comparison to these insane people: http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2009/07/24/uberman-too-wussy-for-you-try-tesla/ – I am so trying that if I can ever get polyphasic sleep to work for me!

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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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Polyphasic Sleep: Day 5

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Well, here I am. Day 5. I almost failed. Well, pretty much failed. You would be suprised at how much effort is needed just to keep this sleeping pattern working. I admit, I never did have a strict sleeping schedule, but this adjustment has been a lot harder than I imagined (probably harder than Yr 12 IT actually). I had a bad start to this day. I mean really bad.

My 1 am sleep went off without a hitch, although I do admit, I was rather reluctant getting up. I mean, I could still function well, but I had that pressure in back of my mind telling me to go to sleep. When it came to my next nap at 4.30 am, I was exhausted. I feel asleep on the floor, as I knew it was going to be a struggle waking up in the morning. Sleeping through my alarm, I woke at about 6 am, feeling absolutely horrible. My willpower evaporated, I crawled into bed, and feel asleep. Into deep sleep.

I woke at 10.14 am.

My main reaction when I woke up was “It’s really bright this morni.. oh sh**!”, and I jumped out of bed and checked the time. My clock didn’t lie, I was still tired, and was 1 hour and 45 mins late for school (turns out my mum actually tried to wake me up about 3 times, and finally left when she thought I was able to get up by myself). I quickly had to act, and call both parents to inform the school that I wasn’t there, so they don’t come down on me like a ton of bricks. Unfortunately, I had a conversation with the school, convincing them I was sick, and that I can’t contact parents (mobiles turned off), and they were ok with it. So, I stayed home today (to be honest, I really felt rather sick inside, and my cough hasn’t improved).

So, I stuffed up again. And badly. But I said that I would continue this for 31 days to see if it works, and I plan to stick to my word. So, with 26 days left to go, I started on day 6…. which went rather well. I admit, I still don’t feel fully rested after each sleep, but it’s feeling like I’m actually getting some rest rather than just staying up all night every night. So, my 1 pm sleep was very average, as I suspected. Took me ages to get to sleep, and I woke up to really cold feet (didn’t wear socks, and wasn’t under a blanket) and a longing for more just a bit more sleep.  My 5 pm sleep was far better, and I felt that I hit REM sleep, even if I only managed to sleep for less than 20 mins. This is actually quite a revelation for me, as I find that I sleep and wake up about after about 17 minutes of sleep, give or take a few. My last sleep at 9 pm today was rather restorative, and now i’m feeling rested, but still marginally sleepy. I know that I am in for a challenge tonight.

So, the positives so far are my naps are becoming easier and more restful. The fact that I am still predominantly monophasic is a negative. I feel that this is a bit more of a learning experience, and I am aware that if I can resist oversleeping for just a few days, I should be in the clear. I’m staying optimistic.

How I felt today:

Mentally: 4 to 7 /10 – From the early morning until about now.

Physically: 7.5/10 – Feeling a bit groggy.

Emotionally: 5 to 9/10 – Felt like giving up, then I started feeling a heap better, and now I feel great after finding more Spor music =D

Current Tiredness 5/10 – Still rather awake, but feeling the need for sleep.

 

Well, thats about it for tonight. Hopefully I will be able to stay up fully tonight, but I fear there will be another obstacle in my path. My dad said that it would be very good for me if I went to bed early tonight, and gave the new laptop a rest (which is now my current computer). I agreed with him, but I was dying inside. I don’t want my parents to wreck this, not when I’ve come so far. I can see improvements here and there, and I know that things will get better if I manage to finish this week. So, I’ll probably get off in a while, read a book or two and convince him I’m going to bed soon, then get back on once my parents have retired for the night.

Anyways, this post is becoming lengthy, so I might cut it from here. Thanks to the people that are reading this, I’m suprised there is actually anyone reading this at all. If you didnt quite get what is going on, visit one my eariler posts, or search ‘Polyphasic Sleep’ on the net. Well, I guess it’s time for another challenge. “I defy you stars!” =)
Jimmi.

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