Hiatus

I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated. So here’s the scoop. I finished my first week and adjusted quite well; I fell into a fairly rhythmic schedule. Though I was adjusting well, there were two days in week two (days nine and ten) in which I was unable to make all of my naps… The result was a massive (twelve hour) crash at my next nap. Today, day eleven, I have been unable to sleep at any of my naptimes, though I have gone through the motions regardless. Hopefully I’ll be back on the schedule sooner than later. More as it comes.

Another Oversleep

It seems that my five AM nap may be my most dreadful opponent in this endeavor. Yesterday I overslept by more than two hours. I begin to worry about my ability to acclimate myself to such a drastic change in schedule. I’ve not slept since the oversleep, and am currently deciding whether to wait for my nine o’clock nap and simply jump back into the routine, or to try introducing a core to my schedule, though I know the everyman schedule is by far less efficient. Perhaps I should take a couple of days and collect myself before returning to the attempt. I don’t know.

End of Day One, Already Doomed to Failure

Alright, so I may be making it sound a bit drastic. Not long after I finished post number one, I hit the pillow at five AM for nap number two. Unfortunately, I set my alarm for PM… and the rest is history. So, I’m back to square one, not that I ever really left it. I napped at five this evening, though I had only just started to drift when my alarm woke me, and hopefully I’m back on track. Not much else to report at this time, just wanted to get my failure out there. I’m considering lengthening my naps to thirty minutes until I’ve gotten used to falling asleep quickly, and then cutting back to twenty. We’ll see how the next few go before I make any decisions on that front.

I suppose that’s all for now. Next update whenever I post it! I will try to keep these fairly regular on the slim chance that anyone stumbles across it and is actually interested.

The Idea, Some Background, and My First Nap

I’ve always hated the idea that upwards of a third of my life has been spent in a state of unproductive inactivity. Which is not to say that I’ve always had productive activities to fill the other two thirds, but simply that wasting that third never really appealed to me. Until recently, the idea of shorter naps rather than the customary eight hour block had occurred to me as a potential alternative, but I had never worked out a successful or plausible plan for significantly decreasing the amount of time spent sleeping, and following a number of unsuccessful experiments I found myself giving up on the concept.

Thursday afternoon I ran across a blog by chance here. While initial results of this specific case seemed less than promising, my fascination got the better of me and I read on to find that the uberman routine (six twenty minute periods of sleep daily, spaced out every four hours) seemed to be very successful both for the author and for a second subject. That being the case, and given my current excess of free time during which I should be able to adapt to the new routine, I’ve decided to give Polyphasic sleep a fair trial. I will, of course, be carefully monitoring my own mental and physical health over the course of the experiment, as I am not entirely without my doubts. Cutting three quarters of my total daily sleep could have some interesting effects, or some very drastic ones, and I will be monitoring both closely.

That said, I’ve found some useful little tips here (the author of these is actually the sister of the previous blog’s author), and find the author’s insight to be quite sound, in comparison to what little other reliable data I could find on the subject and in relation to what I know about human sleep patterns. I’ll be following the schedule put forth in that blog, as I’ve no reason to alter it at this point in time.  Also worth mentioning is Steve Pavlina’s 2005 blog on the subject. He goes into significant detail when describing his experiences with the schedule, and really puts the whole process into intelligent perspective, injecting his thoughts and some small changes into the routine. I’m currently reading this in the time between naps.

Speaking of which, my first nap was unsuccessful. I was unable to fall asleep within my allotted time, rather beginning to drift in the last minutes before my alarm woke me. I’m going to shift my schedule back thirty minutes for simplicity’s sake, so I’ll be napping at 1, 5, and 9 – am and pm. I believe I may have eaten a bit too soon before the nap (around 12, I went for the nap at 1:30). In any event, less than an hour before nap number two, and I could definitely use it.  I haven’t slept since I woke around eight o’clock yesterday morning, in an attempt to deliberately force myself to nap. It seems, however, that my body is used to long periods of forced wakefulness. I may find myself taking longer to adjust than I had hoped.

Ah well, more as it comes.

Edit: As I’ve completed Steve Pavlina’s blog, I should mention that his is by far the most in-depth blog I’ve found of a success story, and it seems likely that his blog has been the basis of a majority of research done by the other bloggers I’ve linked to in this article.