Posts Tagged ‘Sleeping’

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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 6 and 7

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Well, I wont lie. Day 6 was a complete flop. Typically (some might say ironically), just as things are going well I oversleep on my core nap. I was terrified when I woke up and I realized that I did oversleep. My initial reaction was “Oh my God! I overslept for 2 hours… really?… two hours?”. It was shocking to realize that already my body is adapting to this schedule. Perhaps it was just a fluke, but I don’t remember the last time I woke up at 4 am when not being polyphasic, and I still don’t think I woke up then.

I find that this is rather promising, as my body was clearly compensating for lack of sleep, but awoke me without any alarms very early. Usually when I oversleep, I go till about 8 or 9, and then feel like death. When I woke up I did feel more tired, but that quickly passed. While it was disappointing, it does allow me to see errors in how I do my polyphasic sleeping. One (and most likely) reason for me to oversleep, apart from general sleep deprivation, is that I had my headphones plugged into my laptop. Subsequently, the alarm was not heard… or perhaps it was just muted. I have no idea.

Which sort of brings me to my next thought. I tend not to gain consciousness right away… hmm. It’s a hard feeling for me to describe, but I think it’s essentially memory loss. You probably know what that’s like, hitting your head, drinking too much, not paying attention when someone is talking to you… Well, it’s probably more like the last one. I sort of remain unconscious, and go on auto-pilot, shutting off alarms. That’s the weird thing. Something in me must be awake and living, but I really can’t remember anything. I go to my computer and all the alarms are off, and my phone is either turned off or had its battery removed. It’s the same thing that was happening on Uberman, just to a lesser extent. I’d really like another polyphaser’s experience on this, because I’m sure it’s common. I’m putting it down to sleep dep.

So, apart from that slight mishap, I am going solid and strong, all naps have been taken… Ah. I did however become preoccupied with things that I was doing at home, and had my nap about 30 minutes late… Yes, I do know that I am stupid. Additionally, I was out with friends, and I had to take a nap on a bench near my local trainstation. Trains are really loud. I think I only got a few minutes, but when I take each nap, it feels like I’ve slept 12 hours straight, so I have no idea. I guess I’ll put the oversleeping down to that.

And yes, here I am, in the middle of day 7 and 8. Everyman is officially 100% easier than Uberman. It may not be as cool, but it sure is one hell of a lot less exhausting. I get tired occasionally through the day, sure, but I am adapting. In Uberman each wave of tiredness was like getting hit over the head by a large blunt object. Each nap that I am taking now, I almost don’t see the need for an alarm. I wake up at about the 17 minute mark (I also slept for this long on good days on Uberman) and get up, refreshed.

Last night was rather simple. I do put it down to my friends a bit, because they also came and woke me up slightly before my 2am alarm. So, I have had 3 oversleeps in 7 days… Hey, that’s not half bad, considering the first two wont happen again. It was rather amusing, me getting up while they were going to bed. As I am typing this down, they are all asleep (3 of them), dead to the world. I am allowed to wake them up at 9:30, and it is 8:27 right now. Guess I will go play some computer games :D

Raap!d

PS. Oh, I should probably add this. I am starting to get more cognitive abilities back now. I finished my holiday specialist maths last night… Well, it may need checking, but I am rather optimistic :)

PPS. And I also forgot to add that I will be doing my best to gather some data from my overall sleeping hours, and see how I go. People like graphs, so I intend to make some :P

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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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Still Here.

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Hey guys,

Look, now I know it has been a lengthy amount of time before I gave you any ideas as to what I am actually doing this year in regards to polyphasic sleep.

Mane of you will enjoy the fact that I will be returning to a polyphasic schedule in a few weeks time. Until then hold time some more.

Thanks,

Raap!d

Ps. And yes, it will be the 3-Everyman Schedule. Happy napping!

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2nd Polyphasic Attempt: Day 11

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Today was not a good day, due to me oversleeping for about 4 hours. However, it is real eye opener to another foolish mistake that I make regularly, and has only aided my resolve in not oversleeping. So, today all naps were on time and rather restorative, as per usual, except for an additional nap at 6:30 am. I put my head down on my pillow. Very foolish.

The reason for this crash was because I gave into having an extra nap. I’ve read that some people can add in extra naps when they are tired,  but I find that they only lead to me oversleeping. Also, when I do give in to sleep deprivation and have my extra nap, I almost always oversleep, but tend to wake up if I go to sleep at the nap times. Not only is this a sign of me adjusting, but it shows that I am not used to having any more naps, and that they just pull me back into a monophasic routine, which I obviously don’t want.

So, I plan on not giving in to sleep deprivation. No more extra naps. This way I will cut down on my oversleeping, and even if I do oversleep, at least it is at the correct sleeping times, making the damage to my schedule minimal. Unfortunately, half of the reason for these extra naps is boredom. Now, I love having extra time, but when you are sleep deprived I can barely concentrate, and find that I get bored easily. So, I need to find more things to do each night, which is why I really need some people to talk to, either in real life or online, to keep me from slipping back into sleep.

Anyway, that’s about it for day 11. I feel alright, but slightly headachy, starting from my oversleep. However, I’m pretty sure it’s caused by not enough liquids. Time to get some water =)

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An Ambitious (and Slightly Festive) Goal.

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Hello all, and Merry Christmas!

So, according to my good friend Wikipedia, a New Year’s Resolution is:

“a commitment that an individual makes to a project or the reforming of a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. The name comes from the fact that these commitments normally go into effect on New Year’s Day and remain until fulfilled or abandoned.”

Normally, eh? Well, Raap!d here is deciding to go against the flow, and make his New Year’s Resolution on Christmas Day instead because he is sick and tired (pun :D ) of monophasic sleep.

Yes, that’s right. I will be starting polyphasic sleeping again, and follow the same pattern and schedule I did for my first polyphasic sleeping attempt. So, that is the Uberman method of sleeping for 2 – 3 hours in six naps with four hour intervals. The times that I will take my naps will be the same, at 1, 5 and 9 am/pm.

This time however I will be taking my polyphasic sleeping pattern even more seriously than before. I will be documenting every day (as usual) but with the addition of more information as to how I feel throughout all the adaptation period and beyond (which means more graphs for you statistics lovers). Finally, I will set a minimum target for how long I will continue on the Uberman sleeping schedule:


One Year.


Yes, I know it sounds like insanity to plan that far ahead, but I know that the extra time will be highly beneficial for me. Now that I am on holidays, I have plenty of time to adjust before my next schooling year. The obvious benefits for me are:

  • The awake time gained (about 98 days over 1 year, which is 2, 352 hours!).
  • I can do anything at anytime (except in nap times, of course).
  • And the fact that I feel better rested when polyphasic sleeping than in monophasic sleep.

Which will help me because:

  • I am going into Year 12 next year, and I want a good TER (85+), so I need lots of study time and focus.
  • I am now learning to play 3 instruments.
  • I love having free time and playing computer games.

So, here I go again. Wish me luck, and Merry Christmas!

Raap!d

(As a little footnote, I thought I might mention that I am technically starting on the 26th, as I will take my first nap at 1am, to make sure I am tired enough to sleep. Additionally, I’d like to thank Yarochisai for giving me the idea of starting on the 25th, as she is going to do the same… Well, in actual reality I stole her idea of starting on the 25th, but I was going to start after Christmas for convenience. Anyways, I really need to wrap presents. Bye!)

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Polyphasic Sleep: Day 18

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I don’t know if it is a different attitude that makes this schedule easier, but something definately has. I mean, I still get badly fatigued, and crave sleep at different points, but I can comfortably say that I am adjusting. It was foolish of me to have a half hearted attempt at staying up, with no consequences for oversleeping. Now that I am not oversleeping (or not badly during the night) I am feeling like I am adapting, no matter how tired I am.

This morning was rather comfortable. I was very tired for the majority of the time, and getting progressively worse until 4.30, when I had my nap. I decided beforehand that it was not wise to have extra naps in the morning, and the reasoning being that I will likely oversleep, and doesn’t help getting me over the effects of melatonin. To keep myself awake, I found myself doing push ups and other physical exercises. When 6 am hit, I decided to go for a run, which helped at keeping me awake, and had a cold shower afterwards. Even after getting my 8.00 nap at school I still felt quite tired, and couldn’t seem to do any work until I squeezed an extra nap in my free around 10.30 am. After that I could work at a very average pace through the whole day, until the last lesson, where I really felt the need to sleep (the mid afternoon sag).

Despite this sleep deprivation, I am pleased and highly motivated at the fact that I am not depending on core sleeping anymore, and now am simply struggling with the naps themselves. I know that I should be good to go as long as I can keep this up for the whole week. I realise however that my 31 days to adjust is really not feasable. At my current state, I doubt I would pass any exam, even with a heap of revision. Consequently, I must adjust in the rest of this week to ensure that I can do well. It would be a huge waste if I spent all this time adjusting just to need to fall back into the normal routine for my exams, so that is a little extra motivation to keep going.

My persuits were almost cut short today after school though. I was feeling the need for a nap, and I had one at 5. Being extra conscious of the fact that I really need to get up, I set an alarm on my computer to wake me up. Turns out my computer alarm is better at waking me up than my mobile phone alarm, and so I only set one alarm on my phone. Big mistake. I was woken up by mum at 8, telling me to come out and eat some dinner. I was very unhappy about my oversleeping, and I wondered what had actually caused it. Turns out my laptop was on powersaver mode.

My school is not laptop friendly, and subsequently finding a powerpoint is hard. I use my laptop on a day to day basis at school, so I put it on powersaver mode so that it lasts. When I get home, I plug it into power. My laptop starts charging, but (stupidly) doesn’t turn back to high performance or balanced settings. So, after 15 mins of disuse, my laptop goes into hibernation, and doesnt play its alarms. Additionally, I slept ontop of my bed, which definately helped me in oversleeping.

Despite this, I feel that I can keep going with this schedule, as the oversleep was not very long. I just need to be careful. One massive oversleep and it’s all over. If this happens, I will quickly change back into monophasic for the exams, and restart in the holidays.

Let’s just hope that isn’t going to happen,

Jimmi

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Polyphasic Sleep: Day 17

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Here I am, still alive on day 17 of the uberman schedule. But today feels dramamtically different from all the others. The main reason is that I did not oversleep.

I promised myself today that I would not oversleep, and by using extreme measures of keeping awake (4 alarms, all lights on in room, sleep on floor with only a pillow and no blankets in clothes, get friend to call me if not responding on Facebook after 40 mins of naptime). Oh, please note that the only other thing that I haven’t tried in getting me up, apart from the ridiculous ideas involving cold water and caffeine, is drinking lots so as to have to wake up after a while to go to the toilet. While this sounds like a good idea, the chance of lucid dreaming is far too high, and I don’t want to accidentally wet myself =P .

So, in the early morning I actually didn’t find it that hard to stay up. I suspect that is probably due to having as many lights on as possible to counteract the melatonin production in my body, and due to my slow adaptation to the uberman schedule. Waking up from my 5am nap was a bit of a struggle, but I found that it was alright after I did a few push-ups (physical excersice does wonders in keeping people awake).

The rest of the day was alright, although I still felt a bit of a slump nearing my 1 pm nap and at the end of the school day. As I am writing this, I can feel that my body craves sleep. The second night is always worse than the first, as I have found out when I was younger, trying not to sleep (got halfway through day 2 and slept irregularly for days and days after) for as long as humanly possible.

I know I keep putting off the writing of the introduction to polyphasic sleep and how to get started blog posts, and I feel the constant need to apologize for this. Half the time I really just don’t have the mental power to start writing about it, and the other half I am too busy and stressed by work to get around to it. Nevertheless, I will start it sometime soon, and judging by the amount of people talking to me about my sleeping schedule and their interest in it, I’d better get writing soon =)

So, that was pretty much the whole day. My mental power wasn’t quite as good, but my motivation is soaring right now. As long as my willpower manages to overcome my lazy subconscious tomorrow, I should be all in the clear.

Well, time to do some work.

Jimmi

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