Tom's Polyphasic Experiment!
Tom's Polyphasic Experiment!
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>> TIME 1140
I have been thinking about converting my sleep pattern into a polyphasic one ever after reading Steve Pavlina’s blog (www.stevepavlina.com) on the subject. I was planning on doing the switch during the summer months, but as a window of opportunity suddenly presented itself, I decided go through with this right now instead of putting it off, in accordance with another of Steve Pavlina’s advice.
The circumstances around this experiment could have been better. The reason I’m changing to poly is because of chronic and, as of yet, highly unwanted sleep deprivation due to severe insomnia that has been plagueing me for years. So with this rather impulsive decision I’m going on another desperate hunt after something that will rescue me from the zombie-like mindstate that insomnia induces. My determination is strong, however, and I plan to follow through no matter what, at least to have checked this option out. Next semester is two weeks away, and I haven’t got any particularly important stuff to deal with during this time.
Monday night (9/1) I slept, badly I might add, between 0500 and 1200, had me a day of medium-grade exhaustion (as an insomniac, all days are haunted by exhaustion, confusion and general not-so-wellbeing, but to a higher or a lesser extent) and performed some moderately challenging physical tasks. At the end of the day I passed out in bed around 2200, only to be unintentionally woken up by family members as they went to bed at 0000. I tried to fall back asleep for the following five hours, after which I got up from bed, surfed the web and decided I just would not accept this kind of life any longer, setting my first polyphasic nap to 0900. Come 0900 I once more had me some premium, grade A trouble falling asleep, constantly adjusting my alarm watch and making predictions for what time to set the watch to, trying to foresee how long it would take me to fall asleep. I fell asleep at 1000, and slept to 1100, which I felt was a successful though not even remotely invigorating first nap. I adjusted my plan to include a one-hour nap every four hours starting at ten, then at two, and one at six*, going to bed setting my timer for about an hour and ten minutes, to compensate for my insomnia, thereby getting perhaps forty minutes of effective sleep at every sleeppoint. Being a psychology student I know that by extending the sleeping period over more than thirty minutes might bring me to deeper levels of sleep, making it harder to wake up and also making me more tired during the waking periods due to interrupted deep sleep. I might shorten sleeptime as I go along, but for now I’ll aim at one hour sleep per nap for practical reasons.
It does seem a bit counter-intuitive for an insomniac to actually increase the amount of times they will try to fall asleep during a 24-hour period by 600%, but considering that my current sleep pattern is completely and utterly dysfunctional as is, I don’t see how things could really get much worse anyway.
* [This line, written half an hour past my first nap, originally read ”… a one-hour nap every four hours starting at ten, then at two, then at six, and one at eight”, and seemed perfectly logical to me at the time, showing just how messed up you get from not sleeping. Any further obvious errors throughout this text, grammatical or other, I blame on that horned demon called Sleep Deprivation]
>> TIME 1520
Just finished my second nap, which went really well. Some trouble falling asleep, but a lot easier than the first one, probably because of the exhaustion I was feeling from missing a whole night’s sleep the night before. Weird dreams though. Both naps produced intense dreams of a sort of nightmarish nature. They pretty much revolved around me being tired, confused and extremely upset at people, yelling at them and cursing. I’m not used to having nightmares.
I have decided to begin every waking period with a glass of freshly made fruit juice. Christmas brought me a juice-machine, which might turn out to be the best thing I have ever gotten from anybody. I’ve been mixing juices from all sorts of weird fruits and vegetables with the aid of a kitchen mixer, hand-held version, for a year now, and having the process streamlined and enhanced by this new, beautiful machine makes everything a lot easier. Drinks help restore fluids, give a lot of vitamins and also the sugarkick helps me wake up.
Woke up half an hour ago, but am already looking forward towards next nap to get some rest. Being extremely tired and having had little sleep earlier might actually be helping me switching over to poly.
>> TIME 1840
Just finished my third nap, when, come to think of it, is really my fourth if you consider the two hours sleep I got last night at ten my first nap, albeit a long one. Went to bed at six, but felt quite alert and not too sleepy. Somehow managed to fall asleep in perhaps ten minutes, and slept for ten-fifteen. Woke up for some reason and decided not to go back to sleep, but to accept that my body was telling me to get up. Perhaps it also makes sense in the regard that it might be easier to fall asleep at the next sleeppoint, due to the increased fatigue caused by the short amount of rest I got now. Had some carrot juice. Feel fine. Actually, I feel pretty much the way I use to, this closely resembles my normal level of consciousness after a twist-and-twirl night of insomnia and constant waking-up. Which is quite an alarming discovery.
Dreams seemed fleeting, empty of content.
>> TIME 2330
Went into deep sleep this last nap, feeling considerably tired upon waking up. It sure was tempting to continue sleeping. I’m actually rather surprised at my falling asleep so quickly now. Usually, even though I’m exhausted, just getting into bed makes me wide awake. Now I didn’t even notice falling asleep, I just passed out for about half an hour, forty minutes. Everytime I wake up I’m hungry, feeling like having dinner. Can’t have any more fruit juice, though, have to save some for tomorrow.
Feeling tired, but also get a weird kick out of this. Even though I have gotten about half the amount of sleep I usually get during a 24-hour period, I don’t really feel that different from my ordinary mindstate. The sleep is also far better from a qualitative standpoint, so I’m feeling it’s a pretty good tradeoff. Have had ups and downs so far. Have gotten into a few more arguments with people than I would probably do otherwise, being a bit testy and irritable. Looking forward to the next sleeppoint. Day one complete, yay!
>> TIME 0340
Just woke up from last nap. It was tough getting up, I really wanted to sleep in. Had some pretty serious trouble falling asleep for this one, don't know why, really, since I was quite fatigued. Lay awake for approximately an hour before drifting off into a light sleep. Don't know how much sleep I actually got, maybe ten minutes, maybe thirty. I'm feeling really tired now, and also not really knowing what to do with all the time during these off-hour wakeperiods. Reading isn't really an option, since the intellectual effort would be wasted. I wouldn't understand much of what I read, and probably wouldn't remember it. There isn't much on TV at this hour either, so I guess I'll surf the web some.
Even though I missed my last naptime by an hour, I'm thinking it might be best to stick to the schedule anyway and get som sleep at six o'clock, so my brain gets used to the fixed times. Further, I'm having doubts as to whether the two-six-ten approach is optimal, considering many of my lectures will be on between 0800-1200. But then, sleeping six times a day isn't optimal for any activity that demands more than a few consecutive hours to be performed.
>> TIME 0720
Again, trouble falling asleep, but probably got twenty minutes. Real hard getting up. Not waking up, though. Part of my insomnia is attributed to very light sleeping, waking up very easily at the slightest sound. I didn't even wake from the actual sound of the alarmclock this time, but from the light it starts emitting a few seconds before it goes off. Could easily have fallen asleep right there and then, but stayed awake for a few seconds and promptly found myself in my good ol'e insomnia routine, rendering that course of action quite impossible.
Starting to feel like a wreck. Still, not a completely unfamiliar feeling. I'm watching the first sunrise I've seen in probably six months or more. Usually I'd be asleep by now, getting up in about six hours at 1400 or so. Seeing the sun rise alone is worth all this. I've also been setting my alarm for shorter periods of time, about 40 minutes now. I didn't mean for this log to be updated every few hours, but it gives me something to do. I notice I'm starting to ramble a bit.
>> TIME 1120
It's getting tougher. Waking up from my ten o'clock, I almost fell asleep again, but managed to get up. Feeling really tired and just want to sleep. Hunger is a problem too. Not sure what I'm supposed to eat at eleven if I had breakfast at seven thirty. Is it lunch? Dinner? I usually eat my breakfast about two hours from now, I have no idea what I'm supposed to eat.
Also, it is a problem that I haven't got any good measurements of how long I actually sleep each period. Depending on how I feel, meaning how much time I predict I will be needing to fall asleep, I set my alarmclock for longer or shorter times, but the amount of time I need to fall asleep varies a lot. I wake up when I'm supposed to, but haven't got a clue as to how long I was gone for. This last nap might have been almost an hour, but it might also have been a long period of insomnia laced with some very light sleep. I get that a lot lying in bed. I feel myself drifting away, but my conscious mind just pulls me back again, and I have to start over.
I am optimistic about this whole thing, however, and I can't even remotely imagine considering giving up. I'm a bit anxious about having to go cross-country by train day 4, going back home, as I'm visiting relatives at the moment. The trip takes almost five hours, and I have a lot of heavy luggage to carry with me. It shouldn't be any problem though, hopefully I will be able to get some sleep on the train, and I'll have adjusted a bit more to the whole deal by then.
>> TIME 1445
Finally had a normal nap. Went to bed 1355, fell asleep five minutes later, slept for about twenty and then woke up before the alarmclock went off. Had REM sleep and remembered the dream afterwards, though once more it was something of a nightmare. Bad dream is perhaps a better word, since it wasn't all that scary. Dream consisted of me being tired and exhausted. I feel better now than I did before, but it's still as if someone had cut open up my skull and poured a bucket of glue in it.
>> TIME 1605
After my 1400-sleeppoint I went to make some juice, and then collapsed down on the couch in front of the TV. I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before I would just pass out, so I allowed myself an extra nap right there. I kept it within the thirty-minute limit, and woke up feeling a bit better. Soon afterwards I felt the same overpowering need for sleep, and allowed myself yet another one, this one also less than thirty minutes, and waking up by myself.
I have definitely hit some kind of wall, I'm utterly and completely out, my brain is just trying to shut me down. But I struggle with that little sucker. So now I slept at 1400, once at 1500, and once at 1540. It was not consecutive sleep, but rather a fit of a bunch of naps, so I'm thinking it should be ok and not interfere with my adaptation to poly. Will try not to take any more naps until my scheduled six o'clock one. If anything I must say it feels great being so tired that I really have to fight to keep my eyelids open, I almost never experience that, ever. Usually I have to struggle to actually fall asleep.
I'm feeling pretty bad right now, even after these naps. I've decided not to watch any more TV lying on the couch, since that seems to be pretty much the polyphasic equivalent of a fistful of valium downed with a bottle of wine. I need to stay focused and alert, concentrating on some task not to be overcome by fatigue.
As of right now, I have had less than eight hours sleep since monday morning. And I sure am feeling it. That's about three days. I think. The math involved in calculating this is complicated way beyond my mental capacity right now.
>> TIME 1840
Another of those naps where I really don't know if I slept for the whole duration of the thirty minutes or only fell asleep just a few minutes before the alarmclock went off. I'm guessing at ten minutes sleep, perhaps fifteen. Seems ok, considering I had those multinaps earlier. Feel better than I did before. It's not that bad, actually. Perhaps I'm getting more and more used to being tired like this. If I did only get some ten minutes sleep, it sure beats sleeping for forty. Wellbeing-wise, that is.
I read quite a few blogs and checked out some other sources for polyphasic sleep, which was a bit discouraging. Most people fail at this, and for some reason they seem real eager to tell the world about it as soon as they do. Most of them also tend to draw the conclusion that it was the system's fault for being so difficult to implement, rather than lack of necessary discipline and will-power to go through with it on their part. Decided not to read about any more failed attempts, instead focusing on what the people that did succeed have to say.
On a different note, I'm beginning to think that all those fruitjuices are really helping me adjust a lot quicker. Getting a juice-station would probably be my recommendation to anyone trying this sleep-system out, though perhaps I shouldn't be handing out advice until I've actually successfully adapted to it myself. But drinking plenty of fruitjuice is excellent general advice anyway, so I still get away with it. In your face!
>> TIME 2220
Fell asleep within a few minutes this time. I woke up thinking my thirty minutes were up, but looking at the alarmwatch I realised I had only slept for about ten, maybe less. Felt rested and decided not to go back to sleep. If my brain doesn't want more than that, then that's all it's gonna get. The nap before this one actually made me feel rather energized, I felt I was more alert then than I had been during the other hours of the day. Only when I started nearing the next sleepperiod did I begin to feel sleepy and tired.
I had some REM sleep this time, too, and I clearly remember dreaming. Feel fine, and rather rested. It seems very strange that ten minutes sleep would suffice, though, and I expect having to repay this in some way later on. Day two complete, yay!
>> TIME 0330
My two o'clock went fine. I feel a bit off, probably because I had a couple of drinks while watching a movie earlier. Fell asleep quickly, slept for around thirty minutes, and woke up without any problems.
I've noticed that sleeping on the couch in front of the TV or on a sofa makes the nap better than going to bed, undress and do the whole "going to sleep"-routine. I seem to be psychologically linking my bed with insomnia, or at least with monophasic sleep, which makes it more difficult to fall asleep since it feels like such a big deal. Normally, going to bed would be, of course. Sleeping on the couch really gives a sort of a "nap"-feeling, which makes the whole sleeping process easier.
Also, I must say once more that I believe my insomnia actually is helping me through this, and more so than I suspected at first. It's a bit strange, but I'm actually able to use it to my advantage. I sleep very lightly, so I don't have any problems waking up from my naps, which minimizes the probability of oversleeping. I also find it pretty much impossible to go back to sleep after I've been awake for a few seconds, which is a big help in fighting the urge to give in and fall asleep again after waking up from a nap. Moreover, being already somewhat used to going through extended periods of fatigue and exhaustion is also easing the transition. Finally, the fact that if I wasn't doing this I'd probably be up due to inability to sleep at this hour anyway makes it all the more meaningless to consider giving up. Just thinking of my former sleeping patterns boosts my motivation to go through with this. I actually feel now as if the worst part just might be over, though I know from experience that it would be foolish to take out the victory in advance. I'm feeling absolutely normal about this. I don't feel weirded out by it at all, it actually seems perfectly natural. Also, all this time that I suddenly have at my disposal makes me perform a lot of dull work that I would otherwise probably be putting off. Now I gladly do my chores just to keep myself occupied. My to-do list is shrinking by the hour, further contributing to a feeling of contentment, since I no longer have to worry and feel guilt about things I didn't do during the day. That kind of worries tend to set heads spinning around sleeptime with insomniacs (and for pretty much everyone else for that matter), but since I don't really have a period of lying in bed waiting for the next workday anymore, this has vanished. It makes me feel a lot calmer. I know I have the time to do everything I need to, and I don't really have a reason to feel stressed out by anything.
My only concern now is with physical recuperation. I work out a lot, trying to gain weight and also practice martial arts. I'm hoping my body can handle that without having lenghty periods of time to regenerate properly in deep sleep. On the other hand, I don't really care whether it will or not, since battling insomnia is the number one priority in my life anyway.
The sheer amount of time I'm awake now is staggering compared to what I used to have. Usually I'd be waking up at around 1300, having breakfast and just slacking around for a few hours, then performing everyday tasks with great reluctance, starting to feel tired around eight and not doing anything important after that. This would be followed by watching late-night TV and trying to fall asleep until around four o'clock in the morning, full of anxiety about being too tired the next day to be able to perform adequately. Effective time doing important stuff? Perhaps five, maybe six hours, tops. Suddenly I have twenty. I can't even remember when I last felt my days being this long, it's just beyond belief. It feels fantastic, even though I'm completely wasted from sleep deprivation.
>> TIME 0645
Tired tired tired. Last nap not particularly invigorating. Had some trouble falling asleep, not sure of how much actual sleep I got. Again. Could be ten minutes, maybe twenty. Not more than that. Even so, I feel as if I had interrupted deep sleep. Early morning naps seem to be the hardest ones to get right.
>> TIME 1330
Think I might have overslept for the first time, but I'm not sure. My memory is just a blur. Before my 1000 nap I was severely exhausted, on the brink of collapse, but I made sure to stay awake anyway. I think it might be that my last two naps were too short to result in REM sleep altogether, I certainly felt as if I had not had any sleep at all after my night and morning nap. Went to bed at 1000, setting the alarm for 1040. Fell asleep after a few minutes and then I don't remember anything until my brother, unaware of me sleeping in my room, burst in and turned the lights on looking for something. I'm not sure what happened next, but I might have just nodded off again. Anyway, I woke up and was on my feet at twelve, so I'm thinking that the worst case scenario is that I have had two long, consecutive naps, just spaced one minute apart. Feel quite rested now, but still a bit retarded. I'm just going to stick to my schedule as if nothing happened, I don't believe this has set me back that much.
>> TIME 1830
So, I kind of messed up a little today, because of all the confusion I'm experiencing. After the 1000 oversleeping, I took another nap at 1400, oversleeping again. I think. I'm not sure. Not by much, I think I slept for an hour or something. Got tired anew soon after this, and mixed up the naptimes so that I went to bed at 1600, thinking it was my 1800 nap. Slept for about fifteen minutes and felt refreshed afterwards. Thought it best to stay with the schedule anyway and went to bed at 1800 as usual, but was too rested from the previous naps. Slept for about five, perhaps ten minutes. I was expecting something like this to happen down the road, so I'm not too concerned. I'll just keep going. I'm feeling much better today, and it seems my body is starting to adapt to this. I fall asleep faster and sleep is more restoring.
>> TIME 2320
My 2200 nap went well. I set my alarm on thirty minutes now, not compensating for insomnia as I did before, since I don't really have that much trouble falling asleep anymore. I lie down, go through a few things in my head, and then just pass out. Everytime I wake up I feel as if I've been sleeping for hours. I feel quite rested now, but everything's still a bit foggy. Day three is over, and I don't have a shred of doubt in my mind that I'll pull through.
>> TIME 0400
Day four, and I'm feeling great. This last nap I just got ten minutes sleep, and felt completely rested afterwards. Making headway.
>> TIME 0650
Had some trouble falling asleep, and had to reset my alarmclock once. This mainly due to a bit of agitation. I often find myself having trouble to fall asleep just by having a lot of interesting things to think about. Tried some Zen meditation, and fell asleep within a minute or two. Slept for perhaps fifteen minutes. Feel perfectly fine, perhaps a little bit tired. I'm not looking forward to spending five hours on that train later today. I just hate sitting crammed next to people, none of which usually care much about expressing acceptable social behaviour- screaming children, yelling on cellphones, tapping windows and empty cans with pencils and producing loud sounds at every opportunity, eating really smelly foods and such. It's horrible. Hell truly is other people, especially when you have to spend time with them on long trainrides.
>> TIME 2000
Just got home. After my 1000 nap I felt awful. Don’t know why, but I did. I got horribly tired, I was cranky and disoriented. Since my train was leaving at 1430, I decided to take my nap earlier, at 1200. Woke up from it, still feeling tired, and was lying comfortably on the couch, and just happened to fall back asleep. Overslept and woke up ten to two, had to hurry to catch the train. Felt good after this though, and it soon seemed like a good idea to have had that extra sleeptime. There is nothing worse than being on that train in a state of grouch and exhaustion. Trainride was comfortable, and I swapped my 1800 nap for a 1600 one. I feel today was somewhat of an exception, a special case, so I don’t berate myself for this. I’m back home now, and not one distraction on the horizon. Now all I need to do is to ride this out.
I have been pondering the impact of polyphase on my general life quality, and realised that the benefits of this system are tremendous, the advantages literally countless, that this just might be one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and that everyone ought to be doing it. It’s such a paradigmatic change, a true revolution in my personal development, one of those things I have been waiting for all my life to discover. Remains to be seen how well it works when I’m done adapting, but if it does work, it’s just plain unreal.
>> TIME 2240
Ten o’clock went really well. Slept for twentyfive minutes, waking up seconds before alarm went off. Feel rested. Running out of things to do. My mind is starting to clear up, might be able to catch up on some reading tonight. Can't believe I'm almost on day five. I've already seen some major improvements in my life because of polysleep. Feeling insanely motivated to see this through.
First of all- insomnia is gone. This was the whole reason for my trying out the Ubermann schedule, so as far as I am concerned, whatever happens after this, I consider the experiment a total success. No insomnia means no pre-sleep worries, and no anxiety about not having enough sleep to be able to perform well the next day. No worries and no anxiety and a lot of work and a lot of play makes Tom a happy boy, though perhaps still a bit dull.
Secondly, I'm feeling a lot more relaxed than I would normally do, even though I'm tired. Lying down to relax six times a day is really having a positive effect on my mindstate. Makes me feel a lot more tranquil.
Also, I don't drink as much alcohol. Not only do I enjoy the occasional drinking spree and/or booze holocaust every once in a while, I also drink alcohol with food, and quite often as a remedy for insomnia. Insomnia gone, so is the reason to drink before bedtime. Drinks with food works well, but strangely enough I don't feel the urge to have more than one glass of wine or whatever anymore.
Getting sleep and meals at routine times is scientifically proven to have very beneficial effects on our health, and I can tell that my body definitely likes knowing my plans for it and what's coming up next, though it may not be thrilled with the whole polysleep deal right now. It'll come around.
I can't have coffee anymore, which I used to consume en masse as a remedy for exhaustion caused by insomnia (contributing to a negative loop since it would actually reinforce my insomnia, which would make me still more tired an so on) since that would mess up the system. A nice side benefit from this is that I also do not ingest white sugar anymore, coffee having been my main source for this.
Being active for twenty plus hours every day now means I have to get plenty of drinks, fruits and healthy foods to keep going, which, needless to say, makes me feel pretty damn good overall.
Don't feel bad about watching my favourite TV-shows in the middle of the night. I can waste time on whatever stupid things I like, I have so much of it anyway. I don't see myself wasting time like this in the future, though, but it feels nice to be able to slack off knowing there will be no negative consequences.
I'm getting major amounts of suntime. Also proven, a lot of light makes us feel better. Seeing a lot of daylight is important, even more so when you live not far from polar regions, as I do. Getting to see the sun rise every morning is a very nice benefit, but nowhere near as beneficial as it is to actually get the total amount of sunhours that every day brings. Increases happiness, fights off anxiety and depression. Gets you some vitamin D, too! Or is it E? Well, it's nice either way.
Lastly, it dawned on me that Mr. Durden must be a polysleeper. "They say he was born in a mental institution, and that he sleeps only one hour every night", and with Jack passing out in the end, napping. I mean, c'mon! It's all right there! And if Tyler is doing it, how could it possibly go wrong? Got an extra little twang of motivation from this.
>> TIME 0255
Yet another successful nap. Twenty minutes, perhaps. I wake up feeling a bit slow for a few minutes, and then it suddenly just evaporates and I feel perfecly fine. I really feel excellent. Rested, alert, fully conscious. I have this silly habit of always trying to improve my reflexes, so that whenever I drop something or something tips over, I try to catch it before it reaches the ground. This litte game has been impossible over the last few days because reaction times were so low. They're back now, and I feel fully in control over my movements again.
I feel the time has come to start planning my wakeperiods more carefully to get the most out of them.
>> TIME 0730
My six o'clock went well, though as usual I had a little trouble falling asleep with this one. The 0600 and the 1000 are the toughest, for some reason. I have a harder time falling asleep at these times, a bit harder waking up and I don't feel as rested after them than at the other sleeppoints. Don't feel quite as invigorated as I did after my last nap, but I'm fairly alert and functioning at a pretty normal consciousness-level.
>> TIME 1105
Overslept half an hour at ten. I feel so tired now. I thought I'd be more rested. Apparently not. Can't ceep my eyelisds open. Think I'm gonna go have an extra nap right now.
>> TIME 1145
What is it with the ten o'clock's anyway? I feel horrible. Waking up from my tens is always the hardest, I haven't got a clue as to why that is. I felt so good during the night, and now this. I won't have any more naps before my 1400 one, though it sure is tempting.
>> TIME 1445
A few minor setbacks today so far. Overslept again with my 1400-nap. Set the alarm a few minutes early this time, sleeping for 25 minutes, and felt OK waking up. Couch too comfy, fell asleep afterwards. Damned be that couch, I say! Luckily, telephone started ringing and woke me up after fifteen minutes. Could quite probably have overslept for a considerably larger amount of time otherwise. I was hoping I was past having these kinds of mishaps. I'll see if things will get better in the evening. I'm going to have to struggle to stay awake until the next nap, and I'm not too happy about that. Three hours away, but I'm too tired to actually get anything done. Feels like I've been shot with one of them tranquilizer darts by some inquisitive scientist studying this odd behaviour of mine.
>> TIME 1845
Reducing sleeping times seems to help against oversleeping as well as general fatigue. I've cut down on naptimes to 25 minutes, which seems ideal. The problem is that I don't get the same amount of sleep at every nap, since the time it takes me to fall asleep differs from one nap to another. The shorter naps are the most restorative. I suspect, however, that the really short naps during night is the reason I crash in the morning. I would need a full 25 minutes at every sleeppoint. Perhaps it will all even out in a couple or days or so. Today has been pretty tough, I've been suffering from rather severe fatigue most of the time, but also my first nap for day 5 was probably the best I've had throughout this whole experiment. Not only did I feel rested and alert, but it was satisfying in yet another, unexplainable way. It made me just slightly euphoric. I read some guy describing it as if one had had a drink or two, being a bit more relaxed and energetic than normal. For now, I'm just keeping it all up, hoping that naps will eventually become restorative enough for me to continue practice this indefinitely.
>> TIME 0020
As usual, my 2200 went very well. I fell asleep almost instantly and slept for the whole duration, waking up feeling refreshed, but also with quite a bit of disorientation. I'm feeling.. Really stupid. Looking forward to another good rest at 0200, and guessing that I'll have the usual problems with the 0600 and 1000. I have some stuff to take care of tomorrow, so I'm hoping tonight will be a smoother ride than yesterday.
>> TIME 0245
Feeling better after my 0200, which went well. Sleeping like this is strange. I can't put my finger on what makes it feel this way exactly, but sleep now feels as if it were more invigorating and non-existent at the same time. Does that make sense? Everytime I wake up from one of my naps, I can't help but thinking, "have I really slept for the past twentyfive minutes?". It's a bit like when you have had a rough day, and as you wind down in the couch watching TV you just drift off without noticing it, waking up ten minutes later not knowing whether you slept for ten minutes, ten hours, or even if you slept at all. It's a bit disorienting, and it's a weird sensation to be having six times a day.
Last evening I got a little depressed. I haven't got a clue as to why, but I know it was linked to the sleepsystem somehow. Normally I don't get depressed unless I have tons of work to do and not time enough to do it in, and especially when my income (and thereby survival, strictly speaking) is dependent upon it. Maybe I am getting a little bit weirded out by this whole experience after all. I also had my first doubts as to whether the system would really work. I kept thinking that what if I've missed something, and am not adapting as I'm supposed to. Was I just wasting a lot of precious time and investing a tremendous amount of suffering into a project that was destined to fail from the start? But then again, I was getting pretty fed up with just spending time around the house doing chores, and I did have some weird sleep that made me pretty tired, and I do realise after having slept on the matter, kind of anyway, that there is no rational foundation for this depressed state. I wanted to log this since it is inevitable that these kind of doubts appear somewhere along the line to adaptation. I am just as motivated as before, and I'm not going to fail, at least not in the sense of giving up. If things don't go as planned, I'm going to make damned sure it wasn't for lack of trying.
>> TIME 0655
Had no problem with my 0600, and I feel fully rested. I'm on normal levels of consciousness now, meaning that I feel the same as I usually do after nine-ten hours of insomniasleep. This is the first time I've felt focused on an above average level over a period of three naps, and the longest period of time that's gone by without me getting severe sleep deprivation penalties from my brain. This just might work, after all. I have made up a nutrition- and a physical schedule, making sure I eat and work out at the same times every day, in the same way I sleep at fixed times. I'm going to fill the schedule with more activities little by little as time goes by so that I know what to do at what time. Not being structured enough has made me lose a lot of time to indecisiveness, especially around night and morning hours. In my defense I've got to say that I'm still on adaptation, so maximizing time efficiency is not yet top priority. But I'm figuring now is a good time to get started on that. I'll be going for some easy exercise today, the first since christmas holidays, and see what kind of effect that will have on sleep and general well-being.
>> TIME 1030
As usual, the tenner left me a bit zombie-ish, but it's still uncomparably better than yesterday. I'm a bit slow, but quite rested anyway. It's such a kick being able to fall asleep within minutes of going to bed, I can hardly believe it. I honestly haven't had that ability in years, and it really is a very big deal to me. I'm in control of my body again, it dictactes when I can or cannot sleep no more, the fascict pig is overthrown! Viva la revolution!
I'm going out for a long walk through the city later, among the Humans. To feed on their flesh, presumably. Man, it's weird to think it was a week ago I last slept for a whole night.
>> TIME 1555
Damn it! I had to take an extra 1200-nap, being so tired, but as usual with extra naps it didn't really restore me that much. It kept me going until my 1400, but I managed to fall back asleep after that one, for a total sleeping time of maybe an hour. It's really tough with the desorientation waking up, it's as if you wake up in bed, not really knowing how you got there or what you are doing there. So you try to decide what to do next by going on your primary instincts, and they conclude that you are obviously extremely tired, and want to make sure you fall asleep again. It is quite unsettling, since I don't know what kind of effect this is having on my adaptation. Some people include core sleep in their systems, and I can't really make out what the difference between core sleep and over sleep would be, apart from coresleep usually being an hour longer or so. It's strange that this keeps happening at the exact same times every day. It must have something to do with my circadian rhythm.
Anyway, I feel rested after this, so at least I can use that to my advantage.
>> TIME 1955
..One might THINK. Energylevels dropped like a brick, I couldn't even force myself to leave the house today to go shopping for groceries. Had to fight off sleep until my 1800, but somehow I messed up that one, too, having my biggest oversleep yet, landing at an hour and forty minutes. Damn. This must definitely have set me back some, no question about it. How did this happen? Maybe I felt that I was getting the hang of it too soon, slacking off on discipline. No more of that, I'm going to make sure this won't happen again. Still have to figure out how, though. So I've had, let's see now, about four hours plus sleep since midnight. I guess that's not too much to be bitching about considering the amounts of sleep usually demanded by my miserable brain, but still. Man I hope this hasn't ruined it for me. I'll have to put in even greater effort, no doubt about that.
>> TIME 0135
So, it's been a week now, and I've seen some clear improvement. These last few days have seen an increase in oversleeping, but also shorter times for falling asleep, generally a higher quality of that sleep, and also a little of what I've been after the whole time- being awake for longer periods of time with an above average grade of energylevel, and, of course, a remedy for my insomnia.
Oversleeping this much yesterday and today put me down a little bit, but after consulting the forum I was a little more optimistic again. This reminds me, I'll put up a links-section later for anyone who would like to find out more about polyphasic sleep. My 0200 is coming up, so I'll finish writing another time.
>> TIME 0220
Was way too rested to fall asleep at two. Postponing it an hour or so. Also, I am going to take the advice I got and try to shift my naps around a bit to accomodate my circadian rhythm better, so as to try and reduce the amount of oversleep at noon. I do this with some reluctance, since this schedule is the one that is best adapted to my lectures. But what the hell. I don't really go to many of them anyway, it's much more comfortable just to sit at home and read. Especially if the system works out, then I'll have plenty of time to catch up on stuff I've missed. I'm thinking of adding an extra nap somewhere during the day. I'm a nocturnal being, I never sleep until four o'clock under normal circumstances, so I'm naturally more energetic during night hours. But during the day I get sleepy, so I'm thinking perhaps another nap would take care of that. I have been taking additional naps over the past few days anyway, so there won't really be much of a difference, but if they're planned at least I won't feel bad about it.
>> TIME 0345
Still had some trouble falling asleep, having slept so much earlier- much as compared to what the schedule prescribes, that is, four hours is still a fair bit less than half of the amount of sleep I would normally get in a day. So in some sense this is already working, it's just not working at optimum efficiency yet. Furthermore, the fact that the schedule requires quite a bit of planning makes my day all the more structured, whereby I get a lot more stuff done. It's generally more efficient than just hopping from one thing to another without any real plan, just doing whatever task seems right at the moment. I doubt that you'd plan ahead an entire day's work on monophase, dividing it into three-hour blocks of activity and sticking to it religiously. That comes natural with polyphase. Add some of Pavlinas time-saving methods to that and you'll be unstoppable. As Pavlina noted, polyphase also helps a great deal against procrastination. There's really no "next day" to procrastinate things into. All your time is just one long, continuous stream of activities, so putting anything off is automatically putting it of indefinitely, rather than just a few hours ahead.
>> TIME 0900
I forgot to log the last nap, mainly because this is starting to feel a bit routine now, so I just didn't think of it. My 0600 got pushed to 0700, and was only ten minutes or so. I'm thinking I'll reschedule all my naps one hour forward, to see what effect that will have on my noon-time drowsiness. I have a lot to do today, so I'm expecting at least a few hours walking back and forth across the city, and today starts a new term of my Krav Maga practice. Not only am I out of shape after the holidays, I'm also a bit ill with a mysterious cough that just will not pass, and of course being on a tiresome adaptation to polyphase, I kinda dread going there.
>> TIME 1245
As usual, I started getting tired around 1000, took my nap, which helped a little, and then had another one at 1130. Energywise I wouldn't exactly consider myself an ignited barrel of liquid hydrogen, but I feel more rested now than I did at the same hours yesterday.
>> TIME 1725
Overslept. Again. Came home a few minutes past 1400, and napped as usual for twentyfive minutes. After I woke up I thought I'd just laze about in bed for a while, which perhaps is one of the more obvious ways to guarantee falling back asleep. Disorientation upon waking up sure isn't helping. I always wake up feeling like, "Huh? What? Where the hell am I? And what am I doing here? Am I supposed to be sleeping now? Is it time to get up? And where the hell am I?". Slept for about two hours, anyway, which might turn out to be exactly what I need to cope with training later this evening. Today was a little bit better than yesterday, rearranging the naps seemed to have helped. This time it was not fatigue but lack of discipline that made me fail. Still, not too worried.
>> TIME 0020
So, I'm on day eight. Yesterday felt like such a long day, I just can't believe it was just twentyfour hours. On more than one occasion I thought I had forgotten which day it was, thinking it just had to be Wednesday. I did get some four hours plus sleep total, but it felt as if I was awake and active every single second of those twentyfour hours and then some.
Just to recap, at 1930 I took a quick nap before going to my martial arts class. It was probably around ten minutes long, but it did make some difference even though I had overslept quite a bit just an hour earlier. Coming to first day of a new term I was foolishly expecting my (quite excellent) instructors to show some sympathy with us all coming straight out of a non-exercise vacuum of holidays and gluttony. I was wrong. Not only of did they muster an utter lack of understanding for our unfit condition, apparently they also chose to extend our classes by thirty minutes this term. As I suspected, I did not perform that well, but surprisingly enough, I did manage to keep going for the whole duration. Sleep deprived, a bit ill with a cough and haven't worked out in two months- I have to say I'm satisfied with my effort.
I'd like to log one thing about this. Every class I have to remove my lip-piercing. Being situated on my lower lip, a well-aimed blow to my head could easily crush my teeth if it would happen to land on the piece of metal I have stuck there, those plastic gum-things protecting me or not. It's a bit of a hassle taking it out every time and putting it in again after I'm done, but it's usually not that big a problem, so I've been doing that for six months. After class today I tried to put it back, only to discover that the hole in my lip had pretty much healed during the ninety minutes we were working out. I just could not get it through again, a thick strand of tissue had grown over it. I'm telling this somewhat disgusting little story because I wanted to note something about my body's regenerative abilities apparently not having been much affected by polyphase. At least not in the direction of decay.
Upon coming home I went for my 2200-nap, which due to the shift in schedule is now my 2300, and had a resting sleep for about twenty minutes. Again, upon waking up I asked myself what the hell I was doing there. I'm still exhausted from class, but it's not as bad as it probably should be, considering the circumstances. Anyway, I'm on day eight, and satisfied with the results thus far, oversleep and confusion or not.
On a different note, I'm having plans to further expand this site as I go along. Turns out building a website is just the perfect pastime during adaptation. It's not that demanding, it's moderately complicated and not too hard on creative effort, and it eats away at a lot of time, as you sit and correct and improve small stuff here and there. I can imagine building models of aeroplanes and cars would be of similar value in this respect with, of course, the added joy of sniffing industrial glue.
>> TIME 0455
Took my 0400 a little early. Slept for a while, and woke up refreshed. Fifteen minutes later my alarm went off. Turns out I had just slept for ten minutes or less. It's not good. I'd rather sleep a complete twentyfive six times a day than 3 x 10 minutes at night and oversleeping for two hours extra during noon-time naps. Anyway, I feel pretty good. It's tough being exhausted from working out, though. Usually I'd be asleep by now, waking up without a trace of previous day's exercises. Now I have to sit here waiting until it wears off. Makes being up this late a bit of a drag. I've already had my naps, but I'm still feeling slow and dull because of the workout. A bit of a headache, too, and no aspirins.
>> TIME 0750
Napped at 0630, being way too tired to wait until 0700, which went really well. Late nights are definitely my strong side. I fall asleep on time, don't oversleep and feel rested afterwards. I'm going for a day without oversleeping today. I'm leaving the schedule open for naps at 1000, 1200 and 1400, and am going to take them as needed.
>> TIME 1735
My attempt at a day without oversleep failed with my 1200 nap. I really haven't got a clue as to what happened. I got tired, as usual, at 1000 and had a nap. Waking up from it I was still tired, and so took my 1200 to regain energy. Then came a period of intermittent wakeperiods and sleep, and suddenly it was four o'clock and I had overslept for perhaps a total of an hour and a half, but I'm uncertain. This is just ridiculous. Why does this keep happening at the same hours every day? There's got to be some way to avoid this, I just don't get it.
>> TIME 2105
I've been drifting in and out of sleep most of this day, being much more tired in the evening than usual. This came around the same time as soreness from yesterday's exercise kicked in, so I think it's my body telling me it really needs more sleep so that it can heal. I sure hope it learns to heal quicker soon, since if it's going to act up every time I go work out the system will not be sustainable. Though this is a problem, I don't consider it a very big one- my main reason for trying out polyphase was curing insomnia. That I have done, oversleeping or not. Furthermore, today is the first day in more than a week that I've come even close to sleeping a full eight hours. Normally I'd get about ten hours sleep every day, and taking into consideration how much waste-time monophase produced with its morning- and evening inertia, and also that the routine triples my productivity, I've gained so much already that no matter how much I oversleep, this is still a huge leap forward. It would be nice to have those extra six hours in a day, but an extra two combined with high quality sleep (or being able to fall asleep at all for that matter) and the routine and other benefits the system brings, I'm still ahead by a bunch. This is just me having a positive outlook on things, by the way, I'm nowhere near throwing in the towel. I'm going to continue doing this until either I get it right or sudden bursts of pain start radiating from my spleen down towards the groin.
I'm also thinking that this might not mess with the schedule too much after all, if I can just get into bed at the right times. Isn't there a lot of people getting 'core'-sleep? How would a coresleep system differ from a normal system with some oversleep? It's the same thing, except with coresleep it's planned. And it works too. The last few days I've been oversleeping by about an hour around the same times every day, and it made me feel a lot more energetic and rested afterwards, I only got positive effects from it. So you could say I've been on a failed Ubermann schedule for over a week, but on a successful modified Ubermann with some coresleep for about four days. For four days I've been feeling fine except for the tiredness I felt around oversleep-periods, and I've still only slept for about four hours every day. I only need to tune this and everything will be just fine.
I never thought it would be this hard to adapt to Polyphase. It's been a humbling experience. So humbling, in fact, that I now consider myself the most humble being in the whole world, noone has more humble than I do. In your face!
>> TIME 0035
Logging individual naps seems superflous as of day nine. I fall asleep within a few minutes of lying down, normally sleep about twenty minutes and get plenty of rest from them. There's really not that much to log anymore. Instead I'll be focusing on the solution to three main problems with my Polyphase from now on.
1) Oversleep. Not only is this making the transition harder, it also takes a big bite out of all that extra time Polyphase is meant to bring. Then there's the problem of sleeping two hours in the middle of the day. If I had to oversleep, I'd rather do that during nighttime hours when Normal Human Society is inactive.
2) Exercise. After my workout tuesday (which by the way feels like an odd way of viewing it. I didn't exercise two days ago, I mean, it's just been a few naps) I realised that intense martial arts practice might not go along all that well with the system. I'll see how much this keeps interfering, but in the worst case I'll just solve it by adding those two hours core sleep regularly. Though I really don't want to. There is just something about that whole idea of coresleep that seems to be inconsistent with Polyphase, it just lacks.. Aesthetics. It messes with the whole symmetry of things.
3) Accomodating system into normal Human schedules. As of today (as of in a couple of naps) school is once more in session. Since lectures are not at set times every week, I'm probably going to have to push and pull naps in various directions to make the Human schedule and Polyphase schedule sync.
>> TIME 0715
Night has been uneventful. I'm growing more and more accustomed for naps going perfectly, especially at night. Feeling as if I might be coming down with a bit of a cold.
>> TIME 1635
Okay, so today was interesting. My bus was leaving at 0900, so I took my nap at 0800 so as to have the energy to pull through the first day of the new term. One of the main problems with having insomnia is that if you have anything even remotely important to do the next day, you just will not fall asleep. Falling asleep means you have to be completely relaxed, even a hint at stress will make you feel wide awake. So, naturally, I couldn't fall asleep. This is the first nap I've missed so far, so I was curious what would happen. What happened was that I, obviously, got tired, but also a bit depressed and paranoid, even to the extent of being somewhat socially crippling. That was really weird. Upon returning home I went into bed and fell asleep immediately, waking thirty minutes later feeling completely refreshed. Perhaps I'm a tad bit tired, but far from any unmanageable levels. I attribute this to the high amount of oversleep yesterday, which brings me to the next weird thing. All my soreness from exercise is pretty much gone. There's still some there, but not as much as there would usually be. The first workout after a long holiday is bound to bring pain for a few days, but now I feel fine, deciding on going there today, too. It's strange, because one would think not giving my body enough rest would have the opposite effect. But on the other hand, what do I know? Perhaps I was better prepared than I thought, it might just be that simple.
>> TIME 2010
I decided not to push it with the exercise. I think I need to wind down a bit. I've been both tired and energetic today. My nighttime naps went just perfectly, and I sat up doing research on a lot of stuff all night without getting tired. Then came the nap at 0800 that I missed, which I regained at 1400, completely restoring me. It seems that when you catch up on sleeping, you don't increase one notch on your energymeter and stay there until next nap, but rather you get up to normal levels of consciousness but get tired quicker so that you have to go shorter in between naps. I slept at 1900, and only for fifteen minutes, being woken up by a loud sound of some sort, and feel restored once more. I feel how I'm slowly depleting those resources, getting slightly more tired every minute, so I'm planning on throwing in an extra nap between my last and my 2300 one.
All in all, if nothing unexpected happens, this has been my first truly successful day of functioning Polyphase. Since 0000 I've only slept for two hours, and have been walking around the city, attended my first lecture, looked at an apartment I'm hoping to move into, and showed the person who lives there mine (we're switching). I've gone shopping for groceries and cooked a lot of food (batches are increasing in size, due to one extra meal that I just have to have in between first and second nighttime naps), and am now going to catch up on some studying and a translation I'm working on. That may not sound as much of a workday, but considering the mere two hours sleep, I'd say that's pretty impressive. Even though I was tired around noon for having missed my morning nap, it was still possible to function normally, even with the strange effects it produced.
As of right now, even with my shortcomings as a practitioner, Polyphase is ten times as productive and resting as my insomnia-based monophasic sleep. If there would be no improvement from this point on, I would still gladly stay with it. It sure is going to be interesting to see how this whole thing will end.
>> TIME 0140
So I'm on day 10 now, and finally seeing some real improvement. I fall asleep quickly at every nap, sleep well and sound between 10 and 30 minutes, and wake up refreshed and clear-headed, sleep inertia is at a minimum. I slept only for about three hours yesterday, with an overall high level of performance with the obvious exception of the hours following the missed nap.
Even though my transition into Polyphase is not complete, I've experienced some of the tremendous benefits of the system already. First of all, naturally, is the increased amount of time I have on my hands. But it is not a quantitative increase alone. The fact that the kind of sleep I get makes me more rested, also makes me a lot more productive. Normally, if I had really had the fortune of having eight hours sleep, I'd still be tired and not really wake up until a few hours after I got up, and after a full workday I'd be exhausted and probably not willing to do anything else after that. I'd be tired in the evening and winding down for several hours before bed, eating away yet more precious hours of the day. With Polyphase, I'm functioning on a constant high level of alertness, and whenever I get tired I only need to take a fifteen minute nap to get back on track. I don't wind down before naps, and don't have to jumpstart my mind with coffe afterwards. Oh, I don't have coffee or tea anymore, and since they were my only source of white sugar, I've completely given up that, too. It's much the same with alcohol, which I noticed messed with my naps, so I've cut down on that to just the occasional drink, which I enjoy all the more for it.
But not only have I got more hours to spend due to the system, and not only am I feeling more rested, the discipline and routine that Polyphase requires is having yet another very positive effect on my productivity. Sleeping for eight hours every day at a set time and then spend the next sixteen doing something else hardly qualifies as routine by my standars anymore. The division of my workday into many, smaller compartments makes it a lot easier to keep up with routines like eating, reading or exercising at fixed times. As I mentioned earlier, it fights off procrastination since there is no future to put things off into. You work continuously, and as a result the quality of your work also increases, since you tend to do one thing at a time and don't have to stress out about it.
Further increase in productivity is achieved by the fact that lying down to sleep six times a day makes you a lot more calm and tranquil. I've been using deep-relaxation techniques for some time now, and though they work just fine, the result could just never match that of doing thirty minutes of intense relaxation six times a day. Of course, I still do the techniques, so the benefits are multiplied. Which brings me to the next advantage of Polyphase.
Having this much time on your hands means that you could easily afford into your day a set of exercises that increase not only your productivity, but also mental health and overall well-being, by meditating, exercise or reading self-development literature. Since you don't have a future to put things off into, you end up doing exercises every day, not least because you eventually run out of things to do because of the sheer mass of time that you have at your disposal. And better still, whenever you do get bored with work or whatever it is that you do, you can easily take a break, slack off and watch utterly meaningless sitcoms or play computer games for hours on end without the accompanying feelings of guilt for not working, since you're definitely earning your fun by getting a huge amount of work done in a day anyway.
There is a definite peak as to how much mentally demanding work you can do, so every once in a while sitting at your desk, you feel compelled to do something active. If it's 5 o'clock in the morning, there isn't really that much you could do, activity-wise, so either you go out for a healthy run, or you end up cleaning your apartment. I can honestly say, my home has never been so tidy and organised as it is right now. I used to hate doing dishes and cleaning up, feeling that it was pointless work that kept me from doing stuff I liked. Now it's a welcome break from doing real work.
Being this productive makes you cross out a lot of items from your to-do list, which has another very nice effect on your mental state- you spend a lot less time worrying about stuff that you should do at this or that time. You do have the time, and you do have the energy, and if you do notcarry out your tasks, you will get bored. Eliminating these kind of worries brings a ton of calmness. Overall, so far, the system has not only brought extra hours to my day, it has exponentially improved the quality of my life. I'd like to point out once more that these are the benefits I've noticed just so far. I do not yet consider myself completely adapted.
>> TIME 1350
Damn. Major oversleep. Fell asleep at 1000, woke up three and a half hours later. It really pisses me off, especially considering the 1000 was an extra nap taken to prevent oversleep later. My nighttime naps are rarely longer than 10-15 minutes, so I'm thinking it might have something to do with me being so tired arund noon. I decided to have more naps around that time to counter the effect of that, but it obviously isn't having the desired effect. I've got to come up with something to solve this problem.
>> TIME 2115
Okay, worst oversleep yet. I've been in bed napping and sleeping most of this day. I got really tired from my first oversleep, and tried to compensate it with having more, but shorter naps. They weren't that resting, and I just fell asleep afterwards without even noticing I was dozing off. So I probably got a full day's sleep today, which feels kind of okay after all. I've been feeling like coming down with a cold, and it's been ten days without proper sleep, so I'm willing to accept this as a welcome break from the ordinary schedule and just continue from here with a lot more energy. I have to find a way to stop oversleeping soon, though, since I can't keep this up.
>> TIME 0035
I'm well rested now, because of all that sleep I got yesterday, so I feel good. But it pisses me off, too. It has been way too many days with oversleeping now, it is almost becoming part of the system, which is something I certainly want to avoid. I skipped my last nap, figuring I wouldn't fall asleep anyway. I don't really know what to do. I'll try to be more disciplined about actually getting out of bed to prevent oversleeping, but from my experience there's not much of a problem when I actually wake up, it's those times when the alarm goes off and I just turn it off in my sleep. I'm going to put it way across the other side of the room from now on, to see if that helps. In all other respects the experiment is going just great, but this is a serious drawback, and I absolutely must overcome it soon if this is going to work.
>> TIME 0645
Everything's going fine. Since I was so rested from all that sleep, I've been able to pretty much juggle my naps around as I see fit, going to bed only when starting to feel tired. I've napped only once tonight, and I'm taking my next in fifteen minutes at 0700, to get back on schedule. That one day when everything worked perfectly was the one where I also had a lot of stuff to do outside my apartment. I've been pretty much shutting myself in lately, wanting to adapt completely to polyphasic sleep before I started attending classes and such, but perhaps that's the wrong tactic. I'm going to get out more around noon, going shopping, going to the library and such, just to make it impossible to take those extra naps that lead to oversleeping. I'll be more tired, I guess, but the oversleep just has to end.
Other than that, I'm getting more and more positive effects out of this. I have just a huge amount of time to spend on all sorts of stuff, and I feel much better, too. I'm just more relaxed and feel happier in general, having an easier time concentrating and don't mind doing stuff I used to find just way too boring to be wasting time on before. It feels pretty good sitting up at four o'clock reading advanced psychological literature, only to get up from my desk from time to time to look out my window and watch drunk people staggering home, where hours of pain and agony await them in form of hangovers. All done with a smug face, of course. Tsk-tsk, Humans! I have no inclination going drinking whatsoever, I just feel so great about doing all this stuff that I haven't had time focusing on until now that I don't care. Social life is taking a beat, of course, but I think I'm going to streamline that process too, perhaps through some sort of Power Socialising-scheme.
>> TIME 0745
I just had the weirdest nap. Went to bed feeling quite active, so I knew my nap would be shorter because I would need to wind down a bit (just for a few minutes, nothing big) to fall asleep. I lay there thinking about some stuff, kind of nodded off but just barely and felt as if I was still trying to fall asleep, so I continued thinking about the same stuff, whatever it might have been. A few seconds later my alarmclock went off, showing that my thirty minutes were up! Weird as hell. Apparently I just slept twenty minutes, and sure enough I feel rested, but if my alarm hadn't told me otherwise, there's no way I would have believed it. It's like I just lost twenty minutes of my life to some kind of cosmic insta-trade in exchange for feeling rested.
But there's a lot more strange stuff going on with falling asleep right now, it sure differs a lot from what it would be like on monophase. On mono you'd kind of ease into sleep, going from consciousness to a semi-conscious state where your imagination just takes over and goes autopilot, which then sort of gently pushes you into sleep. Now when I lie down and just let my mind wander, as you do, thinking of something that happened earlier that day or something that I'm going to take care of later or whatever, out of nowhere I find myself imagining some seriously bizarre stuff, like some spaced out cartoon. It's as if dreamsleep just goes ahead and starts without waiting for me to fall asleep. I can't really put my finger on what makes it so strange, but the kind of thoughts that surface sure do share a lot of features with dreaming. It's kind of alogical stuff, weird scenes of warped memories mixed with whatever dross my imagination decides to hurl up, but I'm fully conscious all the time, being perfectly able thinking "now that sure was some fucked up shit". 'Cause it was. And I do. I think this is what usually happens just before I actually fall asleep, and when that does happen, it's not a soft transition, but rather an immediate shutdown. It's like my brain goes, "Hey! He's FINALLY lying down. I don't care what this suckah is doing, I'ma shut his bitch ass down and get me some sleep right here!", and then pulls the handbrakes.
>> TIME 1400
Tried to fall asleep for an hour at 1100 with no success, until I not only slept at 1200, but overslept for two hours. I mean- it's just a big joke, I don't know no more.. I can't remember the alarm going off at all, can't remember resetting it, it's like the insta-trade just decided to start doing some really bad business all of a sudden. I feel like just beating the shit out of someone, like really just find some dude and just start punching his teeth out. This is so indescribably god damned frustrating, when will it end? I mean, I make an honest attempt at not oversleeping, trying to muster all the pure willpower I have within myself to avoid it, and I know for a fact that I do have quite a bit of that stuff, and still I just plain downright fail, miserably, utterly and completely. There is no question that my body exerts more power over whether I'm sleeping or not than my conscious brain. I've never felt so powerless.. I mean, losing ground to one of my bodyfunctions? Come on. I'm running out of ideas. Oversleeping at noon is fast becoming something of an institution. I don't know what to do, I really don't. My willpower is what I've got going for myself, if that isn't working, I don't know what will.
I was talking above about trying to be active, so as to avoid the noontime oversleeps, but before doing anything or going anywhere I am still going to need another nap after my 0730 one. It doesn't matter if I pull it towards 1000 or push it to 1400, it's just like my body decides this particular nap is the best time to get some extra sleep no matter what, even though I can honestly say that the bitch just does not know what it's talking about. I have GOT to win this.
>> TIME 0200
So I'm on day twelve. And doing so-so. Actually, from a practical standpoint, I'm doing great. I sleep a lot less than usual, fall asleep quickly, am more rested and calm, and generally have a much better life now than I had twelve days ago. On the other hand, my oversleeping troubles just won't go away no matter what I do. It might perhaps be that my tactics so far have been unfruitful because it's an ongoing process that takes time, and that I just have to stay with it for some time for it to work. I hope it is so, because otherwise I'm not sure how I'm going to combat it. But then again, sleeping for five hours every day is still a very big improvement from sleeping ten (and sleeping badly, if at all), so I shouldn't be whining. I'll keep up trying to implement the hardcore Ubermann, and just see how it goes. Going back to monophase was never, and still isn't, an alternative, so there's not much of a choice other than just sticking to it anyway.
>> TIME 0600
I have been more tired than usual this night, being out with some friends drinking earlier. It's not that bad though, and I got pretty rested from a full thirty minute nap around 0200. Decided on having my morning nap now, at 0600, so that I can take a short one at ten, then go do some stuff around the city, and have another short one at two. I'm going to make the hardest effort yet not to oversleep.
>> TIME 0825
Night went well, as usual. Feel rested and alert. Have scheduled some work-out for later, but I'm having second thoughts. Might not be the best thing to exert myself physically if I'm to go through this day without any oversleep. I'll decide on that later.
>> TIME 0950
Okay, here goes. I'm going to take my 1000 now without oversleeping, then have something to eat and leave this sleepcursed home for a few hours. I'm doing laundry later, too, so hopefully that will keep me activated enough. I refused to have insomnia anymore two weeks ago, which led me here. So now I just have to refuse oversleeping.
>> TIME 1135
As usual had trouble falling asleep, and felt very tired upon waking. Fought the urge to take another nap, but having trouble keeping my eyes open. It gets a little bit easier every minute, however. My body needs to accept that it will not get any more sleep arund noon-hours, it'll have to be satisfied with whatever it gets.
>> TIME 1815
So far no oversleep, and naps going as scheduled. Started feeling very tired around 1700, so I took an early nap 1730. Waking up, I feel even more tired. Had something to drink. I'm so tired now that I just have to sleep some more. This is the problematic moment, this is the way I've been feeling every time I overslept so far. There is no way I could avoid taking a nap now, I can hardly keep my eyelids open. I'll wait for some time so that there's at least thirty minutes between naps, and put the alarm across the other side of the room, and just prepare myself mentally to wake up and get up from bed at the instant the alarm goes off. I've slept less than two hours since midnight. Maybe being this tired comes from not taking the full thirty minutes, from the fact that naps vary considerably in duration. Some of my naps are just barely ten minutes, though I don't think any of them are shorter than that. My noon-time naps are usually a full thirty, and I wake up to the alarm going off as opposed to the nighttime naps where I normally wake up by myself before the alarm.
Getting undressed and sleep under covers seems to be a really bad idea altogether. I'm sleeping.. I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. Forget it. I just want the time to pass half an hour from last nap so I can get some more sleep.
>> TIME 2205
Seems like I made it. At least past the noon-sleep. It was really tough, especially between 1600 and 2100. I think I had two extra naps, amounting to a total of perhaps fortyfive minutes. It isn't much less than the time I have been oversleeping, but at least I was in control, and it stopped me from reaching the deeper levels of sleep. I'll try to do this tomorrow, too.
Night is coming, and I can feel my energy starting to rise again. Feel like a vampire.
>> TIME 0155
One day left to two-week mark. Managed to go a day without oversleeping yesterday, and I think I'll have to keep the discipline up for a while until it's not a problem any more. I'm considering the experiment a success, but to fell fully adapted I think I must overcome this last barrier. It's as if I've adapted to 75%, but oversleeping has slowed me down some. Not sleeping at noon made me feel really, really tired, just like when I started the transition. I have to adapt those last 25% now, which I'm guessing will be easier than getting to this point. Other than that, and aside from the occasional troublesome nap, everything is going just perfectly.
>> TIME 1125
Night went well, and I still haven't overslept. I am definitely noticing the reduced amount of sleep. I'm functioning on pretty normal levels, but I've obviously grown accustomed to having those two hours oversleep in the afternoon as a buffer. Sleep feels better now, though, I fall asleep even faster and it seemed as if dreams are more vivid as well.
>> TIME 0145
Have been busy all day, so I haven't been able to update the log much. Also, it's been two weeks now, and it's hard to consider the adaptation as anything but a success, which makes me feel less inclined to log daily events as thoroughly as before.
I managed to sleep at scheduled times, and scheduled times only, today. I think I might have overslept by ten minutes or so in the evening, as I accidentaly set the alarm for 1030 instead of 2230, so it didn't go off. Other than that, everything is going exactly the way it is supposed to. I generally feel rested every day, there's no problem whatsoever doing physically demanding stuff, and I am certainly enjoying all the benefits of a polyphasic sleep-pattern. I will not list all the pros and cons since I feel I have outlined that pretty well in the text above.
I'm going to decrease the amount of entries in this log from now on, only noting more important events. I'll keep posting some about my oversleep problem, but that seems to be coming to an end as well.
>> TIME 0635
So I've been on the schedule for a full two weeks now, and it's working perfectly. I'm sleeping on average three hours per night, having increased my naptimes by ten minutes (which helped a lot against fatigue), and am wide awake and concentrated during waketime. I'm feeling much more relaxed and focused in general, and get tons of stuff done. Only drawback so far is that I go through an absurd amount of fruit and vegetables every day, which I ingest directly after waking up so as to increase bloodsugar levels, and this is starting to cost me some money. But then that's an investment I'm more than willing to pay for, and also, I'm saving quite a lot of money by not going out drinking as much. Went out for a few beers saturday, and found myself being quite content with actually not having more than a few.
I'm putting all this new time to good use, studying routinely between 0000 and 0800 every day, and then some during the day. I'm brushing up on math and languages as well, and also meditating and stretching every day. I'm slowly filling my freezer with food, dishes and laundry are always done, and the apartment is very clean. I've pretty much covered half of the courses I'm taking already, and manage to find some time to read up on preferred literature too.
>> TIME 0535
Had quite a crash yesterday and earlier tonight. Couldn't fall asleep for my 1600 nap, did fall asleep after an hour and unfortunately enough slept for three and a half, not sure what caused it. At 0100 I went to bed and fell asleep pretty much immediately, and overslept with another three hours. Don't know where this came from, or why. Even after all these incidents with oversleeping it's still difficult to say how it comes about. I'm not sure as to whether it's that I turn off the alarm by accident, or that I just fall back asleep after turning it off or what.
I am berating myself a little, thinking that it's my fault for not being disciplined enough. I didn't oversleep for two days before this, and that was all due to discipline. Perhaps it's wishful thinking that the adaptation is already complete and that Polyphase is going on autopilot now, but I know that's not the case. I still have to put in the effort to make it work. And it does work, as long as I stay with it.
Anyway, I can see something positive in oversleeping as well- at least I get all sleepstages, and my body get's some uninterrupted rest. Having these unscheduled fits of coresleep also makes me a lot more alert, and makes naptimes a lot more flexible, would I need them to be.
>> TIME 1300
Wow. If I could give just one tip to someone trying to adapt to Polyphase, it would be to take every precaution and make damn sure not to oversleep. I don't know kind of chemical imbalance it causes in the brain, but it sure isn't a pleasant thing.
So I overslept yesterday at four, and once more at early night. Not only could I not fall asleep for my 0800 in the morning, I also got a pretty bad headache and felt down right miserable. I got really depressed and moody, just feeling like shit. It something else too, I can't put my finger on it, but it's there. Nasty stuff. Don't do it.
>> TIME 0415
Last two days have been complete failures, and the closest I've been to having to start all over again. I've been crashing, having insomnia, overslept and underslept, and it keeps going. I felt so weird yesterday that I didn't have any naps between my 1200 and my 0000. I just couldn't fall asleep, and when I finally did at midnight, I slept for almost four hours. My noon-time oversleeps have switched places to midnight hours.
This has demoralized me a bit. But still, as usual, I'll just keep going and going until it all settles down.
>> TIME 1135
Okay, so I haven't updated for a few days. Had a girl visit me over the weekend, so I didn't have that much incentive for sitting and writing at the computer. This was a good opportunity for trying out Polyphase in a social context, and my conclusion is that it really isn't a good idea. Social interaction with someone over several days is way more demanding because of mismatching sleep-patterns. Also, even though it's not that big a problem, I have to admit I feel a bit like an idiot having to explain the way I sleep to people.
So, how am I doing, besides this? Real good. If you were asking about how my second adaptation is going, that is. I pretty much slipped up and failed with polyphase, which stings a bit after critizing people who did fail earlier. However, I did not fail because of lack of discipline and motivation, it was just weird circumstances that crushed my attempts. Two oversleep periods in a row, followed by a long wake-period, followed by more oversleep, which resulted pretty much in a slightly defective monophasic cycle that threw me completely off balance. I was a bit stressed out during this period, too, and my insomnia got a lot worse, which made me miss quite a few naps.
I'm still on track though, I'm not giving up. Kind of easing back into polyphase feels like it might take a lot less effort than having to start cold over, not least because I haven't actually reverted into monophasic sleep, just had me a lot of oversleeping and insomnia incidents that can't qualify as succesful polyphasic sleep. But at least I've been on a nap-schedule the whole time, and since I know how everything works I'm pretty sure this will go the way I want.
Biggest problems so far have been the social aspects of this. I've got classes that span more than six hours, and I've been skipping every one of them because of problems with polyphase.
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