GOAL : 14 hours sleep per week
PROGRESS: 22.5 hours sleep this week
Yup, I slept 8.5 hours more than what I wanted. But to make myself feel better I deducted that that comes down to 3.21428571 hours of sleep per day this week. Which if you think about it is better than all but two of the schedules (Uberman, and this one, Dymaxion). I’m not going to stop aiming for that two hours though. In fact I could have made it if it wasn’t for a few mistakes…
The MISTAKES (and solutions)
It might sound weird, but if you really think about it it’s common sense; Sleeping on a bed makes you sleep for a looong time. The bed is comfortable, warm, cozy, snug, and all those other words that describe fluffy things. Sleeping on the bed accounted for 94.117647 % (8 hours) of my oversleeping time! I’ve decided that I’m no longer sleeping on beds. Who actually needs a bed for a 30 minute nap? Especially when it makes it harder to wake up.
On New Years I decided that I would go against my Ubervegan lifestyle and drink alcohol (none of the other rules were broken). I didn’t think far ahead enough to realize that I would be tired + not in the state of mind to control myself from oversleeping. This combined with the fact that I found a comfy bed accounted for me oversleeping 4.5 hours (out of the 8 mentioned earlier). The ubervegan lifestyle seems to be made for this schedule. All the things I don’t consume are the only things that would end up ruining my sleeping pattern; Meat and dairy would cause me to sleep longer due to their effect on the body, sugar intake would play havoc with my energy levels, and all the other foods would make my body focus more on processing food that on replenishing my energy levels when I’m sleeping.
- Being bored/doing boring activities
For a while I literally couldn’t connect the dots. And seeing as how I couldn’t do anything requiring a lot of brain activity I decided to do some simple coding, and movie watching. While coding/movie watching, twice I looked at the clock, blinked, and found myself transported 30 minutes into the future (which is not as fun as it sounds). This accounted for one hour of over sleeping (I count this as sleeping even though I was technically awake-ish). I decided that from now on if I feel tired and in a “boring” situation, I will do a little exercise (run in place, stretch, dance) to increase my blood flow.
- Not Sleeping exactly 30 minutes
If you were counting, so far I overslept for 9 hours. So how did I end up oversleeping 8.5 hours? Well I, being the experimentalist that I am (and work needing to be finished), ended up sleeping only 15 minutes for two of the naps. Bringing down my score to 8.5 hours. This was so, so, so very stupid. Due to this I experienced one of my hardest days, became ever slower in my thought process, became snappy, less productive, etc… let’s just say it was a very stupid idea. I now focus on the 30 minute rule religiously.
I didn’t just make mistakes though, along the way I made a few discoveries…
The DISCOVERIES
- It’s the extra two hours that are the hardest
I discovered why Uberman is easier than Dymaxion; That extra two hours of wake time. Throughout this whole thing I noticed that for the first four hours after a nap I was relatively energetic and awake. But, once I passed four hours, I had to constantly fight to stay awake. This imaginary time limit set by my body is one of the hardest things I need to overcome.
- I can’t tell time anymore/longer days are actually shorter days
Time no longer makes sense. It feels continuous now (in fact I’m not able to tell what day it is without checking a calendar). The worst/best thing is that my 30 minute naps feel 8 hours long and my days feel 6 hours long. Making me feel as if I’m sleeping longer now. See, this whole thing started with me wanting to get more hours out of each day and I accomplished that (relatively) but I don’t feel like I did. Since, days feel to only be 6 hours long (instead of 24) I feel rushed, because in the back of my head I keep telling myself I’m sleeping in 5.5 hours. This, in a unforseen way caused me to be extremely productive, because I end up focusing only on the things that matter. In the end I feel as if this week has actually been a month, and my most productive month at that… It must suck to be on the Uberman schedule, feeling as if everyday was only 3.5 hours long would drive me insane.
I cleaned out my fridge. Due to the facts that I’m now awake more and consuming more energy, I’m eating a lot more than usual.
The best and worst part of this whole things has been the dreams. The dreams are in a word, consuming. I’ve literary stopped being able to tell whether I’m dreaming or not. Coming from theaters after watching Avatar (an amazing movie btw) I literary had a dream where I was an Avatar. But not like in the movies… better! Instead of lasting two hours (like the movie), I felt as if I was an Avatar for years. Then out of nowhere, I hear my alarm clocks go off, and realize that I’m not in fact an Avatar (which is a sad fact to realize). See in the dreams I don’t get that “this is too amazing to be real” feeling anymore. I actually feel like the events happening, no matter how bizarre, are a normal part of life… You can imagine the havoc this plays with me, I’m literary living two lives.
Anyways, that’s my update from the first week. If you want to get daily (smaller) updates on my progress follow me on Twitter and look for comments with the #polyphasic hashtag. And as always you can check just how puffy my eyes my gotten by tracking my pictorial progress on Flickr. I’ll leave you with a list (made by two wayward-wellingtonians) of all the types of naps I’ve in someway experienced this week (if your a polyphasic sleeper you’ll find this hilariously accurate);
Top Eight Kinds of Nap
Since we started sleeping polyphasically, I’ve noticed the quality and nature of naps varies quite a bit. Most naps are just “standard” naps, but I get at least one of these naps each week or so:
- The Paradox (AKA The Traitor, The Pan Galactic Gargle Nap)
Everything seemed to go so well. You lay down on schedule, fell asleep right away, and had a lovely dream involving cake, meadows and fluffy animals. Yet you wake up feeling like someone stuffed your head full of polystyrene and poured bleach in your eyes. Luckily, the effect tends to fade away after a few minutes.
- The Time Warp (AKA The Forgotten Oversleep, The WTF Nap)
Three hours have passed, both alarm clocks have been switched off, along with the light and the MP3 player. You may also have had a drink and been to the bathroom at some point. The last thing you remember is lying down.
- The Newbie Nap (AKA Murphy’s Nap, The Coffee Victim)
Your eyes refuse to stay open. Your body is exhausted. Your brain feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton wool. You lie down expecting the best nap of your life. Instead, you spend 20 minutes thinking about how badly you want to get to sleep. The ticking clock, humming refrigerator, faint noises from next door and blinking LED on the VCR also don’t help.
- The Phantom Nap (AKA The Non-Nap, The Wake)
You were awake when you lay down. You were awake when the alarm went off. You don’t remember waking up. Did you sleep in between? No-one will ever know. Unless someone heard you snoring.
- The Nap-22 (AKA The No-Win-Nap, The Nap-And-A-Half-Without-The-Nap)
You wake up feeling pretty good. Eyes open, head clear. But there’s a problem. You still have half your time left. Do you get up, or go back to sleep? If you get up you’ll feel tired later. If you go back to sleep you’ll feel tired when you wake up. You may as well just give up and sleep through to the next nap (not really).
- The Micronap (AKA The Surprise, The iNap Nano)
Why did the hand of that clock jump forward two minutes?
- The Snap (AKA The Epiphany, The Crystal Pillow)
You suddenly snap awake, with one minute left on the clock. You feel like your whole life has been a lead-up to this one moment of startling and unexpected clarity. Work fast. You have about 5 minutes before you go back to normal.
- The Chrono-Nap (AKA The Bullet-Time, The Saga)
You fall asleep almost immediately and have an incredibly long and detailed dream. You wake up what feels like hours later, cursing yourself for oversleeping, only to realize you’ve been asleep five minutes. You resist the urge to call your monophasic friends and tell them how awesome polynapping is.
photo credit: fwooper