Posts Tagged polyphasic

Things were going so well. I was feeling tired, but resolved. I had a plan to keep myself awake. I was enjoying having the extra time.

Then this morning, I had my first nap around 5am, and woke up at 10:20am. Unlike other breakdowns, I don’t even know what happened. I have no memory of setting or forgetting to set my alarm, though I find it hard to believe that I would forget something so intrinsic to the process. I have no memory of the alarm going off, and doing something silly like going back to bed.

Basically, all I can conclude is that my own brain has sabotaged my memory in order to guarantee a significant amount of sleep.

I don’t have it in me to start all over again. I’m pretty pissed off; it’s one thing to be faced with a conscious lack of determination, but quite another to discover that said lack is so inbuilt, your own body will conceal it from you and manipulate your senses when necessary.

Upon reflection, having been through this once, I would definitely consider trying it again if there was a significant need. In particular, I think of my friends who have new babies; being able to get by on naps, at least until the baby can sleep through the night, would be extremely helpful. Just approaching the sleep deprivation in a consistent way might be preferable to the torture new parents seem to undergo.

I just finished the final nap of my first full day of true polyphasic sleeping. It was really hard to get up after this one, but now, about 20 minutes later, I feel alright.

To be more specific, “alright” means alert without feeling drowsy, and no major aches or pains. I have a general sort of lightheadedness, and I am officially off driving until I can establish this routine solidly.

Meanwhile, I’m not sticking so rigidly to the nap schedule; if it’s “naptime” but I don’t feel tired, I’ll delay my nap by up to an hour until I feel more drowsy in order to have better luck falling asleep. Also, I am definitely going to consider adding an additional nap at times when I become overly tired; this didn’t seem to complicate matters for the others who tried this method.

Fell asleep quite easily, again, but needed to whack the snooze button a couple times. Funny, I think this is just a subconscious reaction to my alarm, as it’s what I usually do when I wake up feeling tired. It’s like I’m forgetting what it is I’m trying to accomplish in the first few seconds of waking.

Anyhow, I feel a bit numb, and according to Phil, who I was visiting earlier (along with Cori and their new baby boy), my eyes have the glassy look of a sleep-deprived new father. Although he may have been projecting.

I’m also being very lazy and procrastinating about my writing. I’ve gotten stuck on a key part of the beginning and conflict introduction, and can’t seem to work past it. Sorry, I will try harder tonight.

I finally fell asleep. I remember having a strange dream where I was playing recreational volleyball with some friends and there was no net. And I woke directly from this dream when the alarm went off.

I don’t feel refreshed or anything, but I’ve started to feel some hope that this could work.

Stepping back, at this point I have had a very mild headache and general body aches all day long. Nothing to call in sick over, but noticeable enough that I recognize it as a side effect of sleep deprivation.

So far my plan to avoid falling back to sleep is working. Unfortunately, I can’t sleep when I’m supposed to, either.

I’ve tried using something to cover my eyes, making everything dark; waiting until I was tired; and extending my nap length to 40 minutes instead of 30. I still haven’t been able to fall asleep.

Perhaps the third time will be the charm?

OK, so I have a new plan of attack. Jumping up when my alarm goes off has never been a problem. (Mostly because I never actually fall asleep.) The problem has been not staying up long enough to resist the temptation of going back to sleep. So my new plan is:

1. Jump out of bed to turn off alarm.
2. Leave the bedroom immediately, and make a complicated beverage in the kitchen.
3. Blog about my current condition.

This will keep me awake and active long enough to shake off any haze I might have from trying to fall asleep. It remains to be seen if I can get through the sheer exhaustion that will occur in a couple of hours.

Today I tried staying up all day and starting my first nap after I felt tired; it didn’t result in me falling asleep, but I’m hoping that resigning myself to a “cold turkey” start, combined with my experience in the past two days, should help me get over the hump. Who knows. Not me.

So far so good, though. I’ve got a bodum full of Gunpowder Mint tea brewing in the background, and this post has perked me up a bit.

I can hear morning transport trains rumbling through downtown ten blocks north of me. The sun will be coming up soon, and I’ll get to watch the city wake up again.

BTW, if you’d like a quick route to all my posts on this little adventure, just bookmark this link:

My Polyphasic Sleep Experiment

This isn’t working. During all my naps, I wasn’t able to fall asleep at all, and when my 4am nap came around, I did the old “sit on the bed” trick after I turned off the alarm, and the next thing I knew, it was 11am.

When I started this experiment, I started the naps after a full night’s sleep, which meant I wasn’t sleepy at all. I think what I am going to do today is wait until I am very tired, and then start my naps from there.

Also, the new rule is that after turning off the alarm, I have to get out of bed and make a cup of tea or something else to drink, then check my email. At least this will give me a fighting chance.

As of 10am yesterday, I put myself on a polyphasic sleep schedule, starting with a 30 minute nap at noon, with subsequent naps every 4 hours. The drill goes like this: every 4 hours, I go to bed and set a nap alarm for 30 minutes. I go to sleep, and wake up 30 minutes later when the alarm goes off.

This is great in theory, but in practice, it’s hard to fall asleep on command. The best I could manage was a brief sort of quasi-consciousness, verging momentarily on a dreamlike state, before coming starkly awake again, usually before my alarm went off.

Regardless, I wasn’t very tired until 8am this morning, which is understandable, as by then I had gone almost 22 hours without any substantial sleep. My alarm woke me up at 8:30, just as I was drifting off. My body felt like it was made of concrete, and I could barely stand up or keep my eyes open. I decided to give myself another 30 minutes. At 9am, I didn’t feel any better, and in the end, I continued napping in chunks until 11am, when I felt better.

I’m back on the schedule now, and my 4pm nap is coming up shortly. I may have screwed things up this morning, and I’ll have to come up with a way of pushing through that exhaustion, at least for these first few days.

Physically, I’ve noticed some minor muscle aches, and interestingly, my legs are not nearly as sore from my run as they would usually be; I’m attributing this to the fact that I didn’t spend any large chunk of time lying still, letting the lactic acid soak in. Instead of that painful shock when I get up, I have felt my muscles get progressively more sore and tight, and have been able to work and stretch them accordingly.

It was neat being awake from 4:30am to 8am this morning; I was watching an episode of the Colbert Report, and at the beginning it was black outside, but by the end it was complete daylight. Most of us are used to sundown, but unfamiliar with the sunrise. It feels kind of like when you come out of a matinee movie, and it’s still light out: a disquieting excess of time.