Polyphasic Blog

It's been a long time since I have written anything on here (obviously). I have been making posts over on GerryLeonard.com. But, I saw this article and just had to post it. The article discusses how having a single 8-hour sleep block is actually a relatively new idea. Most people do not get this and as such do not funciton well. What used to be normal, and still is in certain parts of the world, is to get at least 2 different segments of sleep, essentially being bi-phasic. This was usually done in one of two ways. Either, the "siesta" way, or with two night time sleeps. The siesta is where the sleeper would have a shorter sleep at night and then take a break in the afternoon. As discussed other places on this site, our natural brain cycles seem to indicate that this is VERY natural. We all are designed to get tired in the afternoon. So, it makes sense to take a nap at this time. By doing this, we, naturally, need less sleep at night. The second bi-phasic sleep cycles is discussed in this article as a dual night-time sleep with a wake time inbetween. So, people would have their "first sleep", then they would wake up in the middle of the night and be intentionlly awake for a time period before going back to bed for their "second sleep".

Most historical documentation seems to show that the difference as to which cycle was prefered (hundreds of years ago) depended mostly on the location of the sleeper. In cultures nearer to the equator, the seista model was the norm. For cultures closer to the poles, the "second sleep" model seems to be more common. The reason for this should be rather obvious. In the pole areas, 40-50% of the year there is more time with the sun down than one really needs to be asleep. So, one needs to find something to do with this time, and the rather natural conclusion, it would seem, is to go to bed when the sun goes down, sleep for a while, get up in the middle of the night to do something, then go back to sleep until daybreak. For those closer to the equator, it should also be obvious that the amount of daylight is rather consistent throughout the year, so people tend toward a schedule where they do the same thing every day for the whole year.

Anyway, I found the article interesting that it holds to my personal experience: that most people would actually be happier on a different sleep cycle, but they've never taken the time to both think about and try other cycles which would best fit their personality and lifestyle.

Yesterday, (Day 45) my normal naps weren't perfect. My 10:30am nap went pretty well, other than I felt tired at about 10 and really had to push to stay awake for a half hour but then didn't feel that tired anymore. At my 2:30pm nap, I again felt tired ealy and so went to bed a coouple minutes early, about 2:23pm. It took me a few minutes to get to sleep, as always, so I probably got to sleep around 2:28. At 2:35, I got a call from my employer (remember I'm on lay off). The call lasted only about 5 minutes. But, this was right in the middle of my nap. I decided to try and start the nap over again. That didn't go so well. It took me another 5-10 mintes or so to get to sleep (now about 2:50pm). Well, my wife was downstairs and didn't know about the call, so when I didn't get up at 2:50, being the wonderful wife that she is, she came in to wake me up. SO, I got another maybe 5 minutes of sleep. I said forget it and called it a nap.

That night, I went on a date night with my wife. We dropped off my daughter with her brother and his fiance then went to the movies. We got into the theater at 5:25 for a 5:35 showing. Of course, I am supposed to take a nap at 6:30. Instead, I laid down right away. I wanted to get the nap out of the way. So, I fell aslweep in the theater, pretty quickly actually. I didn't get a full nap in, though. An alarm clock went off in the movie shortly after it started (around 5:40) and that woke me up. But, I had gotten a nap in, even though it had only been 15 minutes.

OK, so we get home after date night at about 9pm. There is a new show on SyFy (formerly SciFi) called Warehouse 13. It looked interesting, so I turned it on. At 10pm, I realize that it is a 2 hour special and will run until 11pm. Since my last nap was ealy, and I would rather miss 20 minutes from 10-10:20 than the very end of the show, I decide to take my nap then, at 10pm. I set my kitchen timer alarm. I didn't check/reset my phone alarm and go to sleep. The next thing I know, my phone alarm is waking me up: at 6:55am. I slept straight from 10pm to 7am: 9 hours. Now that's a day off. I don't know what happened with the kitchen timer, but it was turned off when I woke up. And, I slept right through two alarms from my phone that go off automatically.

So, yesterday could have gone a little better. Also, I was supposed to call my parents last night. As I noted two posts ago, they are in Hawaii, so they are 6 hours different. I was supposed to call them yesterday but with the date night never had time, so I planned on doing so after my nap (and show). That didn't work out so great. So, I guess I'll just have to call them this afternoon.

Yeah! OK, so as noted, Night 43 I slept a lot. I guess I needed it. So, tonight, I came pretty close to following yesterday's schedule and was indeed able to stay up all night. I actually didn't drive to my parents as noted at about 11am. I was already in the neighborhood for a poker game I usually play. So, I just went there right afterwards, took a nap and stayed the rest of the night.

I did play quite a bit of Wii. I played the balance games on Wii Fit. My parents don't have a whole lot of different games. Wii Fit is really the reason that my mom wanted the system and what she uses it for mostly. But, that kept me awake for the night. So, mission accomplished. I'll plan on doing the same thing tomorrow night. Well, I should say the same schedule, though without the modification noted above.

OK, then. I took last night as a Day Off. I didn't plan on it; it just happened. Yesterday was church, so I did not get a good nap at 10:30am because I was in the car. I read on other blogs and places on-line that people on polyphasic sleep can just kink out anywhere. I definitely have not gotten to that point yet. I guess I was kind of counting on that part in order to be able to get naps in. The car is the biggest one. I don't even konk out in bed. It often takes me at least a couple minutes to fall asleep. But, in the car, I usually spend 10-15 minutes of my 20 minute nap actually falling asleep. So, when the alarm goes off 20 minutes later, I've hardly gotten any sleep. Hmm, so I started setting my alarm for 22 minutes instead of 20 minutes to give myself time to get to sleep. This has worked pretty well, I think, when I am at home but not so well in the car. Perhaps I should just set the alarm for longer in the car. I know it is going to be harder, so a 30 or 35 minute "nap" (including getting to sleep) should be fine. Hmm, ok, I'm going to start this. Anyway, I also had difficulty getting to sleep at one of my other naps yesterday. It must have been my 6:30pm nap. Actually, I thought I had fallen asleep and woke up naturally, which would be great progress, but when I looked at the alarm, it stated I had only been asleep for about 10 minutes. So, I tried to go to sleep again but was unsuccessful.

So, eventually, midnight rolls around. I think this is about when I went to sleep. I know it was before 2:30am which is when I am supposed to go down for a nap. The alarm for that nap woke me up but only for a moment. I do not remember actually doing anything. The next thing I remember is my alarm to end my next nap (6:30am) going off. "Oh Great", I think. See my wife asked me to take a night off and sleep with her in the bed upstairs. I said no I didn't want to take a night off, but I eneded up taking a night off anyway. Well, she's not gonig to be happy when I tell her this. So, I think I should probably go upstairs to cuddle with her some. I already got most of a regular monophasic night's sleep; what's the problem with finishing it off upstairs. So, I did, and besides a few times talking to my wife, I pretty much slept until 9am. If you remeber, I previously posted that I would play poker from ~10:30-next nap and this should keep me awake. Well, my wife feels I am getting adicted to poker (which is likely true) and that this is a bad thing (which I feel is not true since it hardly costs me any money because I win about as much as I lose). So, she asked for me to take a week of from on-line poker. I am still planning on going over to a friend's house tonight to play. That's different. Anyway, so last night, with no power to play, it was the first night I fell asleep before my next nap.

OK, so where do I go from here. I have three choices. (A) I can just forget it and go back to monophasic sleep; (B) I can try and stick this Uberman schedule out again for this week; (C) I can go to an Everyman schedule. One at a time, I definitly don't like (A). I'm not going to go back to a straight monophasic schedule, especially now when i am not working. OK, end of story there. I could switch to an Everyman schedule. Based on what happened with my 5 hour nap schedule before, I think that I would not have much of a problem sticking to an Everyman schedule. But, I told myself, and you readers, that I was gong to commit to polyphasic sleep for 60 days. When I said that, I meant not a polyphasic schedule with a core sleep, though that is still a polyphasic schedule. So, Uberman it is. This means, as mentioned in yesterdays post, I need to come up with some physical activity to do at night. Hmm, wait, my parents just went on vacation. My mother has a Wii. I am assuming they did not take the Wii with them. So, either I could borrow the Wii, or every night I could drive over there (keeping myself awake), play Wii which is relatively physical in nature, depending on what I play, and then drive back, which will again keep me awake. Hmm, I'll have to run this by my wife. My parents have said that we are free to go over to their house for any reason while they are gone. I think the main reason they assumed was to go swimming in the lake behind their house. But, I am sure that playing on the Wii would be fine. I'm not sure if they would want me to borrow it. No, I know they wouldn't have a problem with that either. Though, of course, they would want me to put it back. Really, though, if I am going to borrow it, I should ask them first. They already told us we could go there, but if it was my stuff, I would want someone to ask me first, even though I would say yes. They're in Hawaii, so I'm pretty sure their cell phones still work. But, as mentioned, maybe forcing myself to do the driving each day would be a good thing. I would probably do excercise there at their house at 5am-6am, then I could drive home to take my 6:30am nap (it takes about a half hour to get there or back). After my nap, I would do my morning routine, which is what I am supposed to do per my schedule. Hmm, it appears I never posted a schedule for this new Uberman nap times. OK, well assuming I am going to drive there every night, here is my new schedule:

daytime naps: 10:30am, 2:30pm, 6:30pm.
10:30pm: nap
10:50pm: Drive to my parent's house
If I feel awake enough, then watch TV and do stuff on the computer.
If not, then start on the Wii.
2:30am: nap
2:50am: Play Wii or do something else physical.
I love to sing, but rarely do here at home, even during the day, because I feel like I am bothering my wife, si I will likely do a lot of sining there also. There's no one there so I don't have to worry about making noise.
5am: excercise routine
~6am: drive home
6:30am: nap
6:50am: clean up house, take shower, get ready for day.

You know what, I think this might work, at least for a few nights. And, I really tihnk that if I can just stick to it 100% for a week, then I'll be fully adapted. So far, I have never gone more than 2 days straight without the extra nap at night. It's a plan.

Harumph! Yesterday, I did not get my naps very well. We had a party that started at 5pm. When 6:30 came around, it took me a few minutes to slip away to try and sleep, but it was tough since there was noise from the party. It's not their fault, of course, we threw the party. Later, when 10:30pm came around, I again went upstairs, but, possibly because I had had some pop during the party, I couldn't really get to sleep.

After everyone left, I did my best to stay awake. I did get up after my 2:30am nap, even though I felt very tired. And, I pushed through my tiredness to get some cleaning up from the party done and some other things too. But, eventually, I succumbed. I fell asleep on the couch. I was trying to wait to do excercise until 5am. I guess maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I wouldn't have fallen asleep. Hmm. I think I might want to add an extra nap in at 4:30am tonight. If I plan on it and set an alarm for the right time, it might work out better. Yeah, I think I'll plan on it tonight. And, as stated before, I'm not going to go on the computer after 2:30, because that's sure to put me to sleep.

I really want to do this, but it is definitly difficult. In retrospect, I definitly should have just done the real Uberman from the begining. At that time, I had a bunch of things to do at night to keep me busy. Now, I really don't. I still need to clean my room, but I really hate doing it and definitely don't want to spend over 3 hours a night on it. Driving keeps me awake, in general, but I really am not a big fan of driving at night when I am exhausted as I sometimes have trouble keeping my eyes open. Naturally, having my eyes open is important when driving.

I'll have to come up with something. If any on you have any ideas, other than excercising, please feel free to e-mail me at gerry.leonard@sleeppolyphasic.com.

I'm an idiot. I again got some extra sleep: earlier in the night than last night. When I woke up at 10:20 I still felt exhausted. I was ablt so stay up (though I was fighting nodding off) until my 2am nap.

But, when I woke up from that nap, I couldn't stay awake. I literally could hardly keep my eyes open. I laid down on the couch because it was so comfortable. I remeber this feeling of euphoria when laying down.

Well, it didn't go as well the second night, night 39, as it did the first night on Uberman. I think I ended up taking some extra sleep. I'm not 100% positive about it, both because I am remebering back now, and because I seem to remember not knowing I fell asleep but waking up at 7 someting. I had a tough time from about 4am to 8am, if I remember correctly.

I did not go lie down with my wife on Night 39. This is both a blessing and a curse. I probably should have brought it up sooner, as sometimes I do and sometimes I don't at night. When I lie down with her, (a) she will help me get up, or at least that's the theory, but (b) it makes me want to lie there more; I enjoy lying in bed with my wife.

So, on to night 40, which I remember much better.

I slept extra. I pushed myself and pushed myself to stay awake all night. I made apple-crisp between 1am and 2am. I forced myself to clean my room between 3:30 and 4:30. I did excersize from 5am to almost 6am. All this to keep me awake. And, up until my 6am nap, I stayed the course. After the 6am nap, I got up and started doing something. I don't remember what now, even though it was only 2 and a half hours ago (it is currently 8:30am).

But, I do remember that at about 7am, I was pratically falling alseep standing up. I went upstairs and stood outside our bedroom door. I'm not really sure how long I stood there. It was more than a few seconds, maybe a minute or two. Looking back now, I was obviously not thinking straight. I remember thinking, "She'll be waking up soon; I can keep myself from falling asleep for just a little while until she wakes up." Of course, I couldn't. I knew I couldn't. But, for some reason, my brain thought that I would be able to. It played a dirtly little trick on itself. I took probably about a 1 hour nap between 7am and 8am. It might have been less, as I don't know exactly what time I laid down. I wasn't thinking clear enough to remember what was on the clock or set a timer.

I think from now on I'm just going to take naps downstairs like I used to. I started taking them in the room because I was sleeping through alarms. I didn't know if they weren't going off or I just wasn't hearing them. Fearing the latter, I wanted to wake up my wife each time to make sure that she would wake me up. Obviously, some side effects are, (1) she is not super crazy about the idea of being woken up at 2am and 6am every night, (2) I am tempted to go lie down with her other times when there is no alarms and no way I will wake up. So, from now on, that is off limits. Also, I will begin using the timer the way I used to: always having it set to go off in 25 minutes. So, if I do go to sleep, then I will have an alarm to wake me up within about a nap's time.

Other than that, I think I'm good. When I get up at 6:20am, I need to do something and not go to sleep. Really, I should take a shower right away. This should wake me up. And then, I will do the rest of my morning routine.

Hopefully this will keep me awake. No matter what, I need to stick to this schedule for the next week. I really want to make this work.

So, last night was interesting. Yesterday, I took naps at 10am, 2pm, 6pm, and 10pm. As I discussed in yesterday's post, I theorized that the way our bodies work is that they just need that extra nap each day. I was still surprised at how much easier it was to stay up all night. I did end up taking an extra nap at around 4am, but only for 20 minutes and it was "planned" in that I decided to do it.

I was also surprised today that I would get tired right at the nap times, pretty much. I have been living with 5 hours nap start to start. But, it became easily natural for me to go to a 4 hour nap schedule.

We'll see how it goes tonight. Wish me luck.

Sorry I missed night 36. I guess I lost a day in my life. But, I am quite sure that I slept extra and did not only nap.

Yesterday, my wife kinda blew up at me about my sleep schedule. She was upset because (a) I was not actually holding to it, so I didn't get anything extra done at night, or at least nothing she cares about, and (b) having to work around my naps gets annoying sometimes. So, as she saw it, there were only negatives and no positives to the way I have been living. Keep in mind, this is with the extra sleep I have been getitng every night. I have not been holding to only napping. She is actually correct.

So, I decided to be a little more flexible in my napping yesterday becuase we were slightly busy doing other things. So, I ended up getting a nap at about 2:30pm, one at about 6pm, and one at about 11pm. Then I was up until after 1am, maybe it was 2am or so. I went down for a nap and never woke up until 6:30am.

So, this morning my wife and I talked. I said I would stop trying to do a modified schedule because that obviously wasn't working. Either, I would do a true Uberman, or I would do a true Everyman. In other words, I would stop trying to do some schedule I made up and go to something "normal". The advantage to Everyman, I said, was that the naps were more flexible. But, I would need a few hours at night. Even though the sleep times were flexible, I would still have set times that I would shoot for. But, when it didn't fit into our schedule, then I would move them as needed, rather than try and alter our schedule much. Then, I looked at what my schedule would likely be. With Everyman, one takes 3 naps, roughly 5 hours apart and then a core sleep at night. I figured, OK, so I'll keep a similar nap schedule: 5 hours would mean 12pm, 5pm, and 10pm, with a core sleep from about 3am-6am. Boink! It hit me. The reason I have been having trouble staying awake at night is because I have really been living on an Everyman schedule during the day. And, an Everyman schedule during the day will mean my body will want an Everyman schedule at night, and that means a core sleep. That's why I'd been having issues. So, I presented this to my wife and asked if she would support my going to a true Uberman scheulde instead. She agreed to try it out and be supportive.

So, startting today, I am going to be doing a normal Uberman scheudle. I picked 2, 6, and 10 as my nap times, which is pretty standard.

My parents' sump pump went out a few days ago They are also leaving for a trip soon, so yesterday they needed to get Everything out of their basement that was now water-logged. So, I went over there to help them out last night. They stayed up late even though they were gwtting up for church in the morning. I, on the other hand, took a couple naps and was then fine to drive home. I really appreciated the fact that I was able to do this.

I took my 10:15 nap a little late. Then, I took my 1:15 nap about on time at their house. When I got up, I said goodbye (they were about to go to bed) and drove home. Once I got home, I stayed on schedule and went to sleep at 4:15 as I was supposed to. Unfortunately, I did not get up at 4:45 as I was supposed to. I forget the exact detils now, but I remember that I did indeed take another sleep.

Anyway, so I am contemplating going to a real Uberman, but I really want to make a very big effort to make this schedule work. As such, I am going to set some rules for myself for this week.

1. No naps other than the ones I am supposed to take. (The rest are to assist in this)
2. Spend only 10:45-1:15 on the computer (at night, meaning not the 1:45-4:15 timeframe)
3. Play in the 10:30 Hold 'em tournament to insentivize staying awake until 1:15 nap
4. Do something physical: cook, clean my room, etc starting after the 1:15 nap.
5. Excersize right after the 4:15 nap, then do my cleaning/chores and finish getting ready
6. All naps, especially during the day, need to be started and ended at exactly the right time.

OK, first off. Last night, I did not hold to it. I slept quite a bit. I was exhausted while watching the Colbert Report around 11:40. I kept myself up for a little while, but then fell asleep. Partly because I lost the willpower to stay awake. I woke up, or rather was woken up, when my alarm went off at 3:40. I stayed up for a little while, but was foolish and did not attempt to do something very active. So, I ended up falling asleep from about 4am - 5am. We had to leave for my brother-in-law's graduation about 2.5 hours away a 5:45. So, I got up when my wife did around 5am.

So, I am frustrated that I have not adapted more. I think that it is my own fault. I still think that the schedule I am trying is possible, at least something similar is. But, I'm not sure. So, I am going to go back to six naps. Uberman, which is six naps, has been proven time and again. SO, I was going to switch over to a straight Uberman.

But, I got to thinking. My wife is currently always complaining about how annoying it is when we're out that I need to go take a nap. That's while they are 5 hours apart. The 4 hour apart naps could be really annoying. And, once I do get a job again, I will probably not be able to do the true Uberman schedule. So, I decided to go back to my original scheudle of 6 naps: 3 of them five hours apart and 3 of them three hours apart (at night). I will be starting this tonight.

Harumph! I think I am making progress and then I have a night like this. I don't know what happened, really from my 10:15 nap until about 6am. I know I was awake for part of it. I remember waking up from both of the naps actually. I remember watching some TV. I remember playing some poker and doing other things on-line, such as righting the blog entry for the night before. But, I don't really know how much time I was awake and how much time I wasn't. I tried to do stuff on the computer only, again. I didn't have another activity lined up. I should know better. And, I should push myself to go clean my room in cases like this. My room is a mess. I'd like it to be cleaner anyway. So, I should really probably have this as a default activity any time I feel like I am getting tired. I think the issue is that I wait too long. I wait until I am feeling sooo tired that I do not have the will power to keep myself awake. I just pretty much fall over and go to sleep. Before I get to this point, I need to go upstairs and work on cleaning. That should, hopefully, wake me up at least a little bit.

On the bright side, I did not take a nap during the day.

No real new news on the thought process side. Every time I oversleep, I contemplate whether this schedule is even doable. I'm not talking about polyphasic sleep itself. I have a friend that indicated he did indeed adapt to the uberman schedule in college and obtainted the nap rythm that is described on-line. SO, I know this is possible (I'm 100% certain he is not bluffing me). But, I am not certain about my 5 nap schedule. It is unproven. But, I would like to prove it. During the week, for me, this is, and when I get a job still will be, a great polyphasic sleep schedule that could fit into the rest of my daily schedule. A lot of people, including myself, usually get a lunch break. So, I can and would take a nap then. As such, I just cannot be available at work from 7:15-7:40am and 5:15-5:40pm. For me and my schedule (roughly 8am-5pm), this is rarely going to be an issue. Of course, the possibility of this Nieman schedule (named after the man who helped think it up) working is not proven. I really want to adapt. And, I am getting more and more concerned that I haven't yet. After this week, I am most definitly going to switch to uberman if I do not feel adapted. That will be interesting.

Yeah! I finally held to it last night. It took a little effort, but I did it. I baked sugar cookies last night; that really helped.

Unfortunately, this lack of nap last night made me more tired during the day. I ended up falling asleep around 2:30pm today. Arg! I was on the computer and my wife and daughter went down for a nap of their own. The next thing I knew I was dreaming and then I woke myself up. It was about 4pm. So, I got a full cycle. I am concerned that before when I was successful at staying up and not napping was when I had six naps instead of 5. Hmm. Well, as indicated before, I am going to stick with the 5 nap schedule for the week. If I have not made progress by next Monday, I'm going to change to something else. I'll probably go to straight Uberman since I am on lay-off. Yeah, I need to talk to my wife about it some more to make sure she's on-board. But, I think it's a good idea. It's proven to be adapted to. That's really the reason why. We'll see what happens.

So, I made a commitment last night to stick to the schedule. I didn't. I did go to bed at 3am with my wife. When the alarm went off, I heard it (as did she) and got up. But, I didn't make it to 7am. Rather, I fell askeel on the couch at about 4, maybe 4:15. I slept until after 7. The problem, I believe was that I did not (a) have a backup timer running, (b) did not have non-computer activities lined up, and therefore (c) attempted to spend my time on the computer.

OK, so I really, really want to commit to the next week on this 5 nap schedule. As such, I am going to be leaving soon to go and get a AAA battery for the kitchen timer I bought a couple days ago. Secondly, I am going to try to make cookies tonight. And, I am going to make sure that I have some activities lined up for every night this week that does not include the computer for between 3:30 and 5:30. I am going to be excersizing from 5:30 till ~6:15 or 6:30. At 6:30, I really need to start getting ready because we are leaving to help at VBS/VBC at our church (VBS/VBC = Vacation Bible School/Vacation Bible Camp).

Hopefully, this activity will keep me awake without issue.

I mentioned to my wife today that I don't know for sure that this will work. I do not know for sure that the 5 nap schedule is really doable. So, I really want to try and do this for the next week, but after that I am going to give up and switch to Uberman. Right now I am not working. This is needed for me to be able to do the Uberman schedule. My thought is that I would convert to Uberman during this time, then once I have the productive napping down, I would attempt to move to the 5 nap schedule I am trying now and adapt it as needed to be possible.

I have not talked a whole lot about how I feel lately. The last couple weeks have all been about the same. Most of the time during the day I am reltively fine. I can feel when a nap time gets to be about 30 minutes away. All the time, throughout the day and night, I am obvioulsy exhausted because my one eye will kind of twitch. A couple times when it has gotten really bad, I have theorized that my brain is essentially attempting to fulfil REM functionality while I am awake and this is causing the eye to move rapidly as it would if I was asleep. Eh, maybe not, but it's a theory. Anyway, I am always able to function during the day. But, sometimes, when I don't get REM especially, I will wake up still groggy. But, that usually passes prety quickly and then I am pretty good until the next nap gets close. I think my mental capacity is not as amazing as it was before, especially if I were to try to think a whole lot. But, for normal daily activities, I am just fine. Of course, nights are a lot harder. Since the switch to the 5 nap shedule, I have been relatively alert until 3am. Often, I have a little trouble staying awake right after I wake up from the 10:15 nap for longer than usual. But, other than that, I am pretty good with one exception: 3:30am - 6:30am. This is just my devil time. As noted, I am going to be excersizing starting at 5:30. If I really have issues staying awake, I might add a nap at 5am, obviously until 5:25. Excersizing right after the nap should help wake me up: assuming I do not turn off all of the alarms. If this is difficult, I may bequeth my wife again. But, she is lible to turn me down to the idea of waking me up twice in a night only 2 hours apart.

Well, as usual, pray for me and wish me luck.

Harumph! Last night I had a problem again. Again, I did not hear the alarm. I even set two alarms. Yesterday, I purchased a kitchen timer to use as a secondary alarm. Unfortunately, when I went to use it last night, I found that ti takes an AAA battery: not included. We don't use AAA much, not like AA batteries, so we did not have any that worked, so I didn't have that alarm last night. So, instead I used the mircowave as a backup. I guess I didn't hear the microwave. And, it appears I shut the pohne alarm off wihtout waking up.

Today is Father's Day. So, as a gift, I asked to have a week's worth of wake-ups from my wife. I asked if for the next week I could come to sleep with her instead of downstairs for my 3am nap. When my alarm goes of at 3:30, she is almost gauranteed to wake up (she is a light sleeper and, obviously, not trying to switch to polyphasic). If I don't wake up, then she has to wake me up and get me out of bed and the room. Naturally, she was not so keen on this idea. But, after only a little persistence, she agreed. So, for the next week, I am going to be sticking to my 5 nap schedule and my wife is going to be working with me to stick with it.

Thinking about it. I am not 100% certain that the3 5 nap schedule will work. It is unproven, as compared to a true Uberman schedule. But, I really want it to work. So, I am going to use my wife for the next week. And, once I am awake, I need to set the kitchen timer (I'm going to get a battery today), and a timer on my computer, to make sure that I do not fall back asleep. And/Or I need to stay up doing something. Cooking worked well before. I think I am going to come up with some recipes to work on during the 3:30-whenever timeframe. As I am supposed to be, I will always exercise around 5am, or as soon as is convenient with cooking. If after this week, though, I still have not gotten to a point where I am not just about dead, then I think I might change to a true Uberman schedule. As noted, I really want to get tot he effects of valuable napping. Currently, I do not always get good naps. In general, it is often difficult for me to fall asleep (during the day) and I do not always get REM. As such, I do not always wake up refreshed. This is what I really want to get to. Since I am currently laid-aff, this is a great time for me to adjust to a schedule where my naps will be this way. Once my naps are like that, then I would attempt different modifications to the schedule such that I would have the time in the normal day to go to work.

Last night, I did something that I haven't done very much in the last month. I just decided to go to sleep. Last night, I did fine with sticking to the schedule until 3am. Also, I should note that my naps were a little off yesterday. My 5:15pm nap was put off until about 6:30. Then, much to my surprise, though as described by others, I still felt tired at my normal 10:15 naptime. But, I didn't go to sleep then; I didn't go to sleep for another hour: 11:15. Then, I was awake from 11:40-3am. When I woke up from my 3am nap at 3:25, I felt really, really tired. I got up, turned off my bakup alarm on the microwave and went into the other room. A couple minutes later, I realized that I had pretty much fallen asleep just standing there. I was trying to figure out what to do. I didn't come up with anything. I wandered around for a little bit. I was at my parent's house, not mine, so I ended up not coming up with anything. So, I decided to just let myself have a little more sleep. I went back to sleep by about 3:45. I slept until about 6am. So, I got over 2 hours of sleep.

Of course, now that I am not "in the moment" I believe this was wrong. I am most definitly not adapted to the sleep schedule. The key to reaching this fully adapted state is simply sticking to it. I really, really need to not fall asleep at night. Or rather, not sleep past my time to wake up. So, tonight, I am going to set two alarms. I am also going to embrace and rejoice when it is difficult for me to stay awake. This absolute feeling of needing sleep is going to be what causes my body to adapt to the schedule more fully. Right now, I have essentially "adapted" to an Everyman scedule. If I was only trying to go to Everyman, I would probably say that I have adapted. Though I do think that I might want to do Everyman for long term, I also really want to get to that point where I can do uberman also and conk out anywhere, and stuff like that.

Last night, I didn't set a back up alarm. When I went to sleep at 3am, the primary alarm on my phone didn't wake me up. I woke up at about 5:30am. Hmm. For the rest of the day before tonight (I'm writing this during night 29), I had trouble sleeping. Well, actually, the 10:15 nap, which I actually had a little late, went pretty well. But, the 12:15 and 5:15 naps were tough to get to sleep at. I most definitly have not adapted yet. I think the longer naps at night are what has really been throwing me off.

The nights of 26 and 27 didn't go much better. I actually cannot remember the specifics, but I remember that I haven't been sticking to the schedule at night. I really need to make a point to blog every night. With so many naps, I forget what happens.

I don't know. I'm torn. I definitly know that polyphasic sleeping is the way I want to go in the future. But, I don't know exactly what schedule. On weekends, I definitly will want to be on an Everyman scheudle. During the week, in general, I have no problem sticking to the schedule, well, not from a psychological standpoint. I mean, sticking to the schedule does not effect/disrupt my life. But, during the weekends, I often have/want a more flexible schedule. It's not really convenient to have to go to sleep in the middle of the day at a very specific time. The fascinating thing to me is that I have not had a lot of the effects that I was expecting from my on-line research. My understanding was that going late on a nap or skipping one would really be hard. The answer is that it's really not. I mean, I usually feel tired. Though, not always, expecially during the 12:15 nap. Also, in general, though, I am not up to the exact same level that I used to be. The weird thing is that I seem to have a similar cognative ability, actually. Doing tests and things that would test if I have the same cognitive ability cause results indicating that I am really about the same as I was monophasicly. But, I definitly feel different. I feel like I am more tired than I was before I started this schedule. My unerstanding from the on-line blogs was that once really adapted, I would feel as alert and awake after a nap as was normal during monophasic sleep, if not even more. Since it's been like a month and I have not gone completely crazy, I know that I am getting REM on at least a somewhat regular basis. But, I am curious to know if I am really only getting it at night still. I know I really have to stick to no extra sleeping. Fully adapting and gaining all the benefits of the uberman schedule should be possible, but only if I don't get any other sleep. I know, that I have committed to this a dozen times already. But, I am going to do it again. For the rest of this month, I am not going to let failure be an option. I am always going to have a backup alarm. I am not going to do the poker thing becuase the other night I fell asleep during a game. Literally, I believe it was night 26, I woke up to find that I had been playing a poker tournament. I blinded myself out. Luckily, I didn't end up losing everything in that tournament, but I did lose quite a bit.

OK. So, I am going to retripple my efforts. No more falling asleep. Whatever it takes, I am going to do it. By the end of the month, that's almost 2 more weeks, I want to have at least 7 straight days of not oversleeping.

OK, so night 23 went well. As noted, I wrote the previous post during the night. I stayed up as I was supposed to. I did indeed change to a nap at 3:00 only. This seemed to work out pretty well actually. I had only a small amount of difficulty staying up until 3am to take that nap. My assumption is the difficulty is because I have not been training for that for the last few weeks. And, when I woke up fro that nap, then I didn't start doing excercise right away, but rather after a little bit. I was concerned this would be an issue, but it really wasn't. I finished my excersize routine, cleaned up as I was supposed to, and then got ready for church. All in all, this night went pretty darn well.

Night 24, I had agreed with my wife I would take off. That is, I would sleep through the night in the bed with her, unless I just woke up and couldn't get to sleep. So, we went to bed together at about 10:15 and, as she expected, I didn't wake up until about 7:40. So, it was a normal night off.

Day 25, the day after the night off, though, was difficult. The big thing is that it was difficult for me to take a nap. I tried, but I don't think I ever got to REM. Not at my 12:15 or 5:15 naps. At 10:15, I did get to REM, but it took almost 15 minutes to get to sleep so, I probably only had about 5 minutes of REM before the alarm went off. As such, throughout the whole day, I felt tired. It was kinda odd, really. I would feel like I should takea nap when I was awake, but when I lied down for one of my naps, I couldn't get to sleep. Of course, it was a little bit of a challenge to stay up until 3am, but I made it. Unfortunately, I did not hear the alarm (or remember hearing the alarm) at 3:20. So, instead I slept until about 6am. Hmm, back to Everyman again. So, tonight, I am going to go to the store sometime and get a kitchen timer and use that as a backup. My computer is almost fully functional. (I had some issues with it before, see Night 15-16 for more info.) The one thing that isn't working is the speakers. I can listen to things if I plug in headphones. But, if there are no headphones plugged in, then I get absolutely no audio. Before my big virus, I was suing the computer as a backup alarm. Of course, this doesn't really work if I have to wear headphones. Hmm, I don't think. I guess at 3am, I might be able to fall asleep with headphones on. But, I might knock them off during the sleep. Hmm, I guess I could have that, and set the microwave. That should be enough back-ups. OK. New plan. For the rest of this week, I am going to have my phone as I always do, but for the 3am nap (which is the only one in the middle of the night now, which is the only time before when I had issues) I will also set my computer and wear headphones and set the microwave. I really want to do this right for the next week. I think by then I should be pretty adapted if I actually stick to it. I am really trying to teach my body to (a) wake up after REM, and (b) accept the fewer hours of sleep as acceptable.

Wish me luck.

Harumph! As I am writing this, it is actually night 23. This is the night I was supposed to be taking off (see last night's post). Unfortunately, I took last night off. Last night I was doing pretty well, I thought. I laid down at 1:15 and was planning on doing some work for a party today when I woke up at 1:45. The next thing I know, my wife is waking me up at 7:30. I never heard the alarm. Supposedly it went off, but then I found my phone (which is what I use as an alarm clock) tangled in the blanket I was using. My best guess is that the blanket muffled the alarm.

So, I'd say night 22 didn't go so well. As such, though, I am continuing with my plan from last night's post but with yesterday being my day off. I am thinking of taking tomorrow night off as well, since this was actually the day I was first going to take off but modified it for other reasons. But, regardless, tonight I am going to attempt, therefore, to not nap until ~3am. I'll probably go down a touch earlier, like 2:45 tonight. I might move it to 3 though if it works. If it doesn't work then I'll go back to the 6 nap schedule I have been having. I am concerned that this schedule causes me to sleep too much at night which means that I am not adapting to being awake at night as well. Of course, the whole point is adapting to being awake at night. The issue is that my 10:15 nap did not go so well. I didn't get down to sleep until about 10:30 and then woke up at maybe 10:50. So, it was a little short and a little unusual. As such, I don't feel rested now at 11:45 like I usually do. Hopefully I can make it to 3am.

Nothing much has happened in the last few days. I have still been taking an extra nap, of about 2 hours. Each night it has been at a little different time, somewhere between 2am and 6:30am. I also have not been working at staying awake really that hard. I have been trying to do stuff on the computer, which is what I want to be able to do long term. But, of course, this is not super condusive to staying awake.

Essentially, I have been living a defacto Everyman schedule. I have been getting a roughly 3 hour core sleep (with a very small amount of wake time in the middle). Usually I have slept about 2 hours inbetween two of the naps at night that only have 3 hours between them. So, if you just include those two naps, it's a total of about 3 hours. Aside from that, i have bene taking 4 other naps. So, this is pretty close to Everyman. Realisticly, if this is where I ended up, I'd be happy. But, I'd really like to get completely adapted and be able to do Uberman. Not that I would mind doing Everyman long term. I wouldn't; actually I've considered doing this regardless of if I do adapt to Uberman. At the very least, I would do one or two nights a week of Everyman.

But anyway, I do feel that I have gotten closer to adapting. I moved back away from the 20 minute naps. I feel much more rested with the 25 minute naps. And, that is why I was trying the 20 minute naps, to feel more rested. Sometimes, I do still have issues really feeling rested when I wake up, but I think that is when I am not getting to REM.

I do want to adapt to no core sleep. I am going to try and redouble my efforts. I'm going to make a commitment to not taking a core sleep for five days striaght. But, I feel like taking an intentional day off. So, tomorrow night, I am going to sleep the night as much as I want to. I might go to sleep at 10:15. I think I'll not set alarms starting from then until morning. We'll see how much I sleep. I'm really interested in how much I really will sleep without an alarm. Then, Sunday through Friday nights, I'm going to do whatever it takes to make sure I don't sleep. I'm going to go back to having a backup alarm on my computer at night that goes off every 30 minutes. Also, I'm not going to be on the computer starting from 1:45 until 7:45. I've considered going to the only 5 nap schedule that I had originally come up with. It seems that the big problem is right around 3am, so I thought it might be better with a nap around there. Also, I don't have any issues until I go to sleep at 1:15. I'm not sure of course, but I am theorizing that if I put off the nap until about 5 hours have gone by, then I will have less trouble staying up then.

So, after my night off tomorrow, I am going to attempt to take a nap not at 1:15 or 4:15 but only one at 3:00am instead. If that goes horribly the first night, then I'll go back to the schedule I've been doing at night. Otherwise, I'll stick to following the five nap schedule.

Yesterday, I had this bright idea. I like to play poker on-line (nothing big, like $3-5 tournaments). Well, I happened to find a particular tournament that started at 5:40, right when I should wake up from my nap in the afternoon. When I woke up, I went right for the computer to play the poker game. Ding! A light bulb went off. At night, I could register in a game that started when I woke up. I have to pay the fee for the tournament when I reguster for it. So, if I wouldn't wake up and play, then I would just be out the money for the tournament. I don't have a whole lot of money devoted to poker (especially now that I am laid off. As a side note, I got a call from my boss's boss yesterday telling me to continue my lay off and that I am going to get a separation package at some point, but they don't know when yet. Yeah! If anyone knows an opening for a Software Engineer, let me know.). So, having already paid, the incentive to get up and play would be pretty high. I tested the theory last night at 1:40. Actually, I enrolled in a tournament starting at 1:30 because that was the closest I could get. Regardless, it worked like a charm. At 1:40, I got up and started the game. The issue I had with it is that it tied me to the computer for much of that waking period. I ended up not starting a game for 4:40 because I thought I should get up and do something else. Of course, when the time came, I didn't actually get up and do anything. Instead, though I did not go back to sleep, I really didn't do much of anything.

I noted that last night I woke up not tired but not really refreshed per se. I am always able to get up. I don't really feel tired during the day or night. Sometimes I feel tired when awaking, likely because I was coming out of deep sleep. But that shortly passes. Still, I rarely feel really refreshed in the sense of being full of energy. I think that I am indeed getting REM, but my 25 minute nap is just a touch too long. I rarely remember any dreams, unless I am awoken early. So, I am going to continue the same schedule but chaneg the nap lengths to 20 minutes only. Or rather, the alarm times to 20 minutes. Of course, I do not always get to sleep right as I lay down nor do I always lay down exactly at X:15; it is often X:16 or X:17 currently. So, instead I am going to aim for X:20 and see what happens starting with my next nap which will be at 12:20 on day 19.

I was lazy last night. We got home at about 8:30, but it felt late for some reason. I stayed up until nap time at 10:15. I also woke up at 10:40, as I am supposed to. But, after not too long, I just lay down on the couch and went to sleep. For the rest of the night, I would wake up, sometimes do a little something and then go back to sleep. I probably got almost 6 hours of sleep last night, though it wasn't continuous. Surprisingly, I don't feel as guilty about it as I did before. It was not that I couldn't stay awake. I just chose not to. For whatever reason, I just did not feel like doing anything productive last night. I just felt like sleeping. So, I did. I think I shouldn't do that for the rest of the week. Based on how I felt this weekend in the room, though, I think that if I want to, I should have no problem staying awake. As such, I am going to set a new rule for myself. At the end of each wake period before I go to sleep, I am going to set a to-do list for myself for the next wake period. This to-do list might include some fun time, like playing computer games, but it will always include something, whatever that is. Since all of my sleep periods start at the 15 minute mark, I am going to be doing this scheduling during the 15 minutes before each nap.

I went to New York for a wedding this weekend. So, (1) I did not blog yesterday, and (2) I was trying to be polyphasic with my wife in the same room. So, what happened?

Night 15
We were in a new city, so I spent the time between 2am and ~3:30am driving around finding out where things were. We were there for a wedding, so I checked out where the church was and the best ways to get there. Previously, I had thought that driving at night would be a bad idea: I could fall asleep at the wheel. I found that the opposite was true. I think that I have adapted to the point where I am indeed getting REM sleep at most/all naps, so my brain is capable of staying awake for the wake periods. But, I have not adapted psychologically. I still "think" that I am supposed to be asleep. So, if I don't force myself to do something, then I don't do anything and fall asleep. So, overall. This night went well. I was able to fix my computer (Finally) also. If you are interested, I had the VRT virus. I was able to eliminate it by (a) formatting and reinstalling on my windows partition and (b) dleteing it with CrashBang Linux on a USB from the other partitions that it had spread to. Anyway, I followed my schedule all day and night on Friday, the 15th day.

Night 16
I did not stick to my nap schedule during the day on Saturday at all. They were all over the place. We had a wedding, so I adjusted the naps around that. I took roughly my normal nap at 12:15. But, the reception started at 5pm, so I moved my 5:15 nap back to 4:25. I woke at 4:50 (roughly) and went to the reception. I was getting really tired a the reception then by about 9:30. This makes sense since it had been about 5 hours since I had gone to sleep. But, my fraternity brothers wanted to do some stuff, so I ended up staying until about 10:45. I slept for about 5 minutes while my wife drove back to the hotel. Then, at about 11:15, I went back to sleep. I slept through the alarm I had set, but my wife woke me up at about midnight (thanks hon). So, I got up, went and played a game with my fraternity brothers in a different hotel room, and then came back to sleep at about 2:15. I woke at 2:40, stayed up until 4:15 and woke at about 4:40. But, I did not stay up until 7:15. I got bored (I guess I should have done this blogging, but, o well) and went to sleep with my wife at about 5:30 and slept until 7:30.

All in all, I think the weekend went pretty well, especially considering that I was in the same small hotel room as my wife.

Yeah! I held the line. I did not end up doing what I noted in my last blog, i.e. walking to the store. Right before I went to bed last night, my wife came to me and said she had a bad feeling about my walking the 2 miles to the store in the dead of night. So, I agreed not to walk to the store. Instead, I drove to the store. I had argued against this with her yesterday because I have been very tired in that night period and did not want to get into an accident. Actually, when she went to bed, I had agreed not to walk to the store and was thus planning on not going. Instead, I was planning on just cooking with what I already had in the house. So, I woke up at 1:4; I forced myself up and into the kitchen and started deciding on the exact recipe I was going to follow. I decided to try and make General Tso's chicken and fried rice. I thought we had everything I needed for this (with a few little things I would substitute). I went to the cupboard and found we out that we did indeed have rice, as I knew, but only about 1/6 of a cup. Hmm, well, I was starting to not feel as groggy. I decided to make a list and see how I felt. By the time the list was done with everything I might want to put in the recipe, I didn't feel all that tired (which has been unusual for the last couple nights). So, I did indeed drive to the store.

It ended up taking a whole lot of time to make dinner. (1) I was tired, so naturally everything takes longer, and (2) this was the first time I was making this so it always takes longer. Because of both of these and the fact that part of the point of cooking was to keep me awake, I decided to do steps serially instead of in parallel. I ended up spending 1:40-3:00am picking out ingredients at home from the recipes, going to the store, buying everything, and coming home. I then spent 3:00-5:30am actually making it (with a break in there for my normal nap at 4:15). By 5:30, I was not so much in the mood for Chinese anymore, a cinnamon roll sounded better, and I was tired of cooking. So, I did not experiment all that much with the seasonings. I tried it as-is and found it edible though not amazing. But, the goal was achieved. I stayed up all night.

I should note that yesterday, during the day, I felt tired. I was not nearly as tired as I often feel at night, but I was tired enough to definitely want to go to sleep. This continued to this morning after my 7:15 nap. I just woke up from my 12:15 nap and currently feel fine.

On that note, I went down for my 12:15 nap a little late, about 12:25 actually. I set my alarm for 12:50 and went to sleep. At 12:40, I woke up and felt that it was time to get up. I was not groggy; I was ready to go do something.

This fits with a hypothesis I have been forming over the last couple days: nap lengths are REALLY important. On the Sleep Experts Response page, I discuss a controversy over whether someone on polyphasic sleep goes into deep sleep. From my current experience, I believe the following to be the case. When someone who has adapted to polyphasic sleep goes to sleep, they spend a couple minutes in phases 1 and 2 sleep. Then, they move on to REM sleep, esentially inserting a REM cycle before deep sleep. This has been documented as happening for people that are REM deprived, as an unadapted polyphasic sleeper would be. This REM cycle lasts as long as a normal REM cycle, 15-20 minutes. If the person does not awake, then they move from REM sleep into stage 3 or stage 4 delta sleep. If awoken (or attempted to be awoken) from this state, people naturally feel groggy and tired and that they need more sleep. So, people who take a 30 minute nap are doing just that: getting into deep sleep. The 20 minute nap, on the other hand, is training the brain to wake up after that first REM cycle. Before starting, I had hypothesized that the five or six 25-minute naps would be easier than Dymaxion because I had less time between naps. I think the real issue is the time of the nap. Dymaxion sleep calls for a 30 minute nap. To really get adapted to this, one would have to train their body to either (a) push the REM cycle longer, or (b) not start the REM cycle right away. I'm not sure which one happens, if either one is actually possible. Anyway, so the goal for me should be to have shorter sleep periods, such as 20 minutes. Changing to this would (a) be a deviation from my original plan, (b) mean giving up on the idea of having 5 sleep periods a day, and (c) reduce my total sleep to only 2 hours or less. The REM cycle might might not naturally end until after the 20 minute mark. Hence, I had hypothesized that a longer sleep time, such as 25 minutes would actually be more optimal. At this point, I am not so sure. I think the 20 minute nap is designed around the 15-20 minute REM cycle.

Per this hypothesis, if I am already adapted, I would feel like I was sleeping a long time when i took a nap, but still wake up groggy. If I am not adapted, then I would feel like I did not get any sleep. If the former is true, then it would make sense to alter my original intent to have only 20 minute naps or something shorter than the 25 minutes at the very least. Tonight, I am going to attempt to keep track of how long the nap felt. If indeed they seem long, such as that I have been asleep for a while more than 25 minutes, then I will probably transition over to only 20 minute naps

Argh! OK, something needs to change. This time, I know I slept. It's just so desirable. I could hardly help it. I tried to resist, but at last succumbed. Last night, I was good for the first wake period at night, from 10:40pm-1:15am. I was hungry, so I had dinner. Besides that, I watched TV, listed to an audio book while making dinner, and went on the computer. After the 1:15 nap, though, I had issues. I had made a schedule yesterday afternoon to try and help me stay awake. I had on my schedule that I was supposed to eat dinner AFTER the 1:15 nap instead of before. Since I am really tired, my creativity and problem solving skills are horrible. Essentially, I couldn't come up with anything else to do instead of making dinner at that time besides moving on to the next thing on my list: cleaning my room upstairs. Naturally, I don't enjoy cleaning, though I feel it needs to be done, so I thought to myself, "I'll just wait until I am supposed to do that per the schedule". Secondly, I was cold. I have been getting cold at night lately, which makes me want to stay under a blanket. Both of these together spelled disaster for my staying awake. I ended up sleeping from about 2am-6am.

I woke up extremely depressed. This happened yesterday too. I was so depressed yesterday morning that I had difficulty doing anything productive. Today, I talked to my wife when she got up (which was soon after I woke up). She indicated that she had complete faith that I could stick to the schedule, not sleep, and fully adapt. I guess I needed that.

We decided that I was going to run to the store directly after my 1:15 nap. By run, I mean literally run/jog/walk to the store. The closest store that is open 24 hours a day is about 2 miles away from our house. Jogging there should take roughly 20 minutes each way. Since I will be tired, I would guesstimate another 45 minutes to an hour in the store. So, this should kill about an hour and a half to 2 hours each night. As should be obvious, I do not want to make this a habit long-term. But, if it will keep me awake until I am adapted, then it is definitely worth it. I am planning on not eating my night-lunch (a friend of mine came up with this term and I thought it was clever and better than "fourth-meal") until after the store time. I will plan on deciding on what I will make before my 1:15 nap and come up with a grocery list. Then, 1:45-3:15 will be going to the store. 3:15-4:15 will be making and hopefully eating my night-lunch. Of course, this is almost breakfast time, really. So, my guess is that I will end up skipping breakfast. In actuality, with a night-lunch of 4am and a lunch around 1 (as I had today), a dinner near 8pm would actually cause me to have 3 roughly equidistant meals. Actually, lunch should be at noon, but since I nap at 12:15 while I have been home from work I have been eating it later.

So, hopefully, for the next couple days, I will spend the entire time that I have been sleeping at night on dinner. This means I will have to not eat, or only eat something small in the 10:45-1:15 period if I am hungry. We are going out of town for a wedding this weekend, so this will only be for tonight and tomorrow night at first. We'll see how I am doing by Sunday night. If this works the next two night and I am not fully adapted by Sunday, then I will likely pick back up the practice for next week. After next week, though, when I will be going back to work, I really won't want to be spending 3 hours a night having night-lunch. Secondly, last night I had difficulty picking out what I wanted to make. I had down something similar to this for last night (except not going to the store) but didn't stick to it. I think holding off on eating, though, will be easier than holding off on sleeping at night, now that I know how detrimental eating early was last night.

Secondly, I discussed the use of my computer. See, amongst other things, I have been using my computer as a back up alarm. My phone goes off every time that I am supposed to wake up from a nap (7:40am, 12:40pm, 5:40pm, etc). But, during the night, I have been going to Timer Frog to set a back-up timer to go off every half hour or so. I never turn the alarm off, simply reset the countdown. So, if I fall asleep, then it will wake me up within a half hour. Somehow last night, I disabled this at some point because it was not blaring when I woke up. But, one of the issues is that my "home base" has always been my computer (at least for the last decade or so). So, when I don't know what else to do, I go to the computer. My wife believes this is part of the problem (and I cannot argue with her). It is far easier to fall asleep trying to do something on the computer. So, I am going to be obtaining a kitchen timer that works the same way as the countdown that I have been utilizing on the computer. Then, I am going to be shutting down the computer each night after I make dinner (the recipes will be on the computer). And, secondly, I will be moving the computer to the kitchen BEFORE my 1:15 nap and not moving it back until after my 7:15 nap. Finally, the entire living room (where we have our TV) is off limits except for nap time for this same period. When the alarm goes off, I am to leave the room immediately and not come back until it is time to sleep (on the couch) again. As a different, psychological effect, so far I have devoted time but not money to my conversion to polyphasic sleep. By purchasing the kitchen timer, even though the cost is not very high, it constitutes actually putting money down as an investment rather than just time. I am hoping this makes me think "I have to do this; I already spent the money."

My computer crashed a few days ago. I have been working on getting everything up and running again since then. I got some sort of Trojan horse that kept sending spam e-mail, along with tying down my system. When I tried to get rid of it, my system stopped booting altogether. It took over 36 hours for me to copy everything from the drive to be ready to wipe it. I should make more frequent back-ups; I know.

Anyway.

Night 8 and 9

I am going to start referring to everything by nights instead of days because for me, this has been the only time there have been issues. In general, days are just fine. Some days I feel a little more groggy than others, but I can operate, drive, carry on conversations, and pretty much do whatever I want. I still feel that I am tired every once in a while. And, I can definitely tell when it is time for a nap. OK. So, going back a few days. I had hypothesized that if I took one core sleep, this might help me catch up on lost sleep and then allow me to begin sleeping better polyphasicly. I decided not to try it (on purpose) but that night (night 7), I accidentally tried it anyway. So, on night 8, I was interested to see how sleepy I was. I am am happy to report that I did pretty well on night 8. I still felt somewhat sleepy, but nowhere near what I had felt for the last couple nights. I was able to stay up all night while being on the computer. In general, if I can operate on the computer all night, I consider it a successful night, since computer time is most likely to put me to sleep.

Since I am writing in retrospect, I do not remember a whole lot about these nights. I remember that they were successful. I stayed up all night without any real issues. I did do some physical activity on night 9; I built some shelves for the basement. But, this was not because I absolutely needed to do something physical to stay awake. Rather, I just had it on my list of things to do and night time is as good a time as any to get it done. Also, as noted, by this time my computer had crashed I was working on backing up all of my data, so I could not do a whole lot of anything on the computer.

At this point, I know I considered myself to have relatively adapted to polyphasic sleep. I considered this very good because I wanted to be pretty much fully adapted by the end of the weekend since I was to go back to work on Monday.

Night 10

Of course, as soon as I indicate that I will refer to days by nights, I get to a night where the daytime activities are important. On Saturday (Day 10), I had a bachelor party to go to for one of my fraternity brothers. The plan was 2pm paintball, 7pm dinner, after that Canada. As I live in the Detroit area, it is relatively normal to go to Canada, especially for groups that include 19 or 20 year olds since they can legally drink in Canada. So, I took my 12:15 nap as normal here at home and then headed out to go paintballing. We were there until a little after 6pm and I did not break for my 5:15 nap. I gave someone else my keys to drive to the restaurant and attempted to take a nap in the car. I did get to sleep, but never got out of alpha sleep, that is phase 1 or possibly phase 2. We went to dinner and ate. It took a while due to the size of the group and the fact some people were late. We finally left for Canada around 9:45. I thought it would only take a little over a half hour, so I drove and thought I could nap when I got there. Well, due to lots of things, that wasn't the case. When we still weren't there at 10:30, I let someone else drive and again attempted to take a nap. Of course, 10 minutes later we were at the bridge to Canada and I had to get up. Since one of the other guys in my car didn't have a passport, the border control ended up making us go through immigration and get my car searched. By the time we go to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the people it was well after 11. I figured I would just have to make sure I got my next nap. This actually happened. At 1am, we were at a coffee shop that served alcohol. Since it had a coffee shop atmosphere, there was a chair in the corner where I was able to take a nap as scheduled. I was also back in the hotel room (though not everyone was) for my 4:15 nap later. After this nap, I left with the same people and came home feeling not too bad. But, after my 7:15 nap here at home, I never got up. I slept for a couple hours after the nap was supposed to end.

Night 11

To make a long story short, I slept through a wake period again. This time it was the one between 4:45 and 7:15. I actually woke up when my wife came down at around 7. I did not take my 7:15 nap since I had just woken up. My computer was still down. I had been using my computer as a secondary alarm. See, there is a website (http://timberfrog.com/countdown/) that has a countdown timer and an annoying alarm afterward. Last week, before my computer died, I was using this website to make sure I did not oversleep, or more accurately that I would be woken up after a maximum of 25 minutes (a normal nap length). Since my computer has been broken, I have not had this backup and have subsequently not made it through the night. At the end of this night, I thought I would be able to get the computer working by the next night.

I was also informed by work that my TLO (Temporary Lay Off) was going to continue for another two weeks. I was planning on going back to work tomorrow, but now I don't have to. I'm actually not sure if this is good or bad. If I was going to work, then I would start/stick to a schedule more ardently. But, this way, it doesn't matter if I am groggy or not rested during the day. I am still holding to the my 60 days. I am going to do this for 60 days. I am going to do what I can to actually adapt to this schedule.

Night 12

As I am writing, it is now day 13, so night 12 was just last night. On Monday nights, I often go and play poker with friends. We start around 8pm and often go past the 10:15 mark. Last night, though, I was already out by 10:15, so I left the house and went out to my car to sleep. It takes me 30 minutes to drive home, so I opted to sleep in the car. That didn't work out so well. I don't think I got very deep sleep in the car this time. I'm not sure why since I have in the past gotten good sleep, but I didn't this time.
So, I came home, said hello to my wife and started eating. After that things get fuzzy. My wife asked me this morning if I slept and I told her I honestly didn't know. I was trying to remember what happened and I cannot. I know I was awake for the whole period until 1:15. I know I woke up at 1:40. I know I did some stuff to keep myself awake during that period. I think I remember going down at 4:15, but I am not sure, and then the next thing I remember is it being about 6:15. This is kinda odd and scary. My wife indicated it was like I was drunk last night. This is not the first time she has indicated this. On other occasions in the last week, she has said something to the effect of: I'm acting drunk. I'm not sure how she would know how I would act drunk as I have never been, but you get the idea. So, tonight, I am going to (a) use the countdown timer on my computer after midnight until 7:15, (b) not do anything else on the computer, and (c) not lie down except at nap time and jump and stand up when the alarm goes off. I am going to redouble my efforts. I am not going to do anything that would stop my adaptation. I want this to work.

Dang It! It is currently 2:45am. I do not feel excessively tired and so am able to type this. If that was the end of the story, then that would be great news. Unfortunately, the reason for this is that I had a prolonged nap. My wife and I went out tonight to hang with friends. We ended up getting back a little after 10. Perfect, I figured. I went to bed for my 10:15 nap. I woke up at 10:40 as expected. This is where the story gets hazy. I remember coming downstairs and feeling really tired. I remember stretching out on the ground. I thought I might have fallen asleep but not for very long (or so I thought). When I awoke, I started trying to do some work on the computer. I had an issue and so restarted the computer. This ended up being a problem because now I can only get my computer to boot in safe mode. But, after struggling with my computer for only a little bit, my alarm went off indicating I should be waking up from my 1:15 nap- it was already 1:40. I'm not exactly sure where all the time went, so I am going to assume that most of it went toward sleep. My guesstimate is that this means I received about 3 hours of sleep between 10pm and 1:40am. So, I guess I am on an Everyman schedule today.

The good news is that this sleep has seemed to make a big difference. The last two nights at this time (it is currently around 3am) were periods when it was extremely difficult to stay awake. Actually this was the prime nodding off time. Last night I almost literally fell asleep standing up and it was somewhere in the 3am time-frame. There is nothing I can do except take this and move on.

I was hypothesizing with my wife that maybe I should get a little extra sleep like this. Here was the hypothesis. I know that I have made some progress in adapting. In general, for most naps I wake up after 25 minutes without the help of the alarm clock. For multiple naps I have had dreams, which indicates REM. So, perhaps I was now just having continued issues because I was behind on sleep even though I had adapted enough to sustain this sleep schedule. Of course, there was no way for me to know if this was true. Another, and actually more likely, option was that I had not fully adapted and really needed less sleep (or rather to just continue on the naps as scheduled). If (a) was true, then that meant that I could get more sleep at some point to boost me into a higher sustaining level for sleep stores, but if it was not true then a prolonged sleep would continue to postpone true adaptation. So, I had decided to not change anything but rather continue with my naps as previously done. Naturally, when I make a decision, then sometimes God tells me I made the wrong one. I got the small amount of prolonged sleep. So, I guess now I'll get to test my theory. I do still feel tired, but not in the way that I have for the last two nights. I'll take my nap at 4:15, as usual, and continue from there. The natural progression of option 2 above ( I really need less sleep) was for me to modify my schedule to only have 1 nap at night: ~3am. This would give me only 5 naps and waking periods each day. This was the schedule that I originally came up with and would really like to be able to adapt to. The current schedule was intended to make the nights easier by putting an extra nap there.

Since I accidentally overslept, I am not going to be intentionally modifying my schedule so close to this. So, I will be attempting (to the best of my ability) to only take the scheduled naps for the next 36 hours. At that point, meaning after tomorrow night, I will re-evaluate and see if I want to try anything new or postpone any changes an additional 24 hours. This is probably most likely. I will also be working on getting my computer back up and running so that I can actually post this and other messages to the blog.

Yeah! Last night went quite a bit better. I was still really exhausted, but I did something all night and was able to keep myself from oversleeping too much. I did not end up doing about half of the things that I had set out to do yesterday. But, I did do some cooking: both cookies and a dinner dish. I did end up nodding off in the morning around 6am. The previous night I had only had issues between about midnight and 5am. So, once I got to 5am last night, I figured I would be fine. This ended up not being the case. As before, I woke myself up within 20 minutes or so.

I am expecting tonight to be just as bad again. My expectation is that I am about 3 days behind Steve Pavlina's experience, so it will be day 8 or 9 before it is really starting to get easier. So far today, though, everything has been going well. I fell fine as far as alertness and other things go during the day. As previously noted, I do not have any issues staying awake or feeling fine during the day. It is only at night that there are issues.

I have been writing in the middle of the night. After I am adapted, I will be picking this back up again. But, last night went pretty badly. I do not remember much of anything from between 1am and 6am. It was almost constant nodding off and jerking myself awake. As far as I know, I never slept for a prolonged period other than the naps. As such, I do not know if, or I guess I should say "how", this nodding off will effect my adapting to this polyphasic schedule. Regardless, I do not want to do this again. So, I decided that I would not be on my computer at all during this time. I will still have the computer ON as I use it as a secondary alarm clock that goes off every 30 minutes. I came up with a rigorous schedule that I am going to follow instead and starts after my 10:15 nap. It runs until I am done with everything on the list or it is morning, whichever comes first: hopefully morning.

My list of activities includes: cooking a dish that includes baking for my dinner, baking cookies, making a new closet organizer for my wife and the like. It starts off with me watching the Daily Show and Colbert report which are on TV at my house (Eastern Daylight Time) at 11 and 11:30 every Monday-Thursday. Based on last night, I should be able to keep myself awake until midnight to watch these. Of course, if this proves untrue, then off goes the TV and on with my other activities. I indicated that I wanted a dish that bakes in the oven so that I could prepare it before my 1:15 nap and then put it in the oven while I am asleep. I know I will wake up in 25 minutes, so as long as it won't be done until then, I don't see a problem. I haven't picked out the dish yet; I plan on doing that sometime today.

It is very odd to me that I am so not tired during the day, as opposed to the night. I never considered myself as taking my cues from the outside but rather from my own sleepiness. This appears to be incorrect. At night, I can hardly stay awake, let alone function. But, during the day today, I am absolutely coherent. I even have a hard time falling asleep for my naps. This is absolutely fascinating to me considering that over the last week I have only gotten a total of roughly 20 hours of sleep, maybe 25 at the most if you count the time last night that I kept falling asleep and waking myself up. I guess I'll have to wait another couple days, but if by Thursday, I am still doing well during the day, then I would say that some amount of adaptation would HAVE to be completed, because any amount of sleep store from monophasic sleep would most definitely be lost.

Dreaming

OK, so yesterday I had my first polyphasic dream (that is I had a dream while on polyphasic sleep). It was nothing special. But, it was somewhat extraordinary in that I was able to get to REM sleep in my 25 minute naps.

I'll come back and fill in some other data, but let's skip to tonight I make off on the last night it's possible to that, In this one, the dream was fascinating. Even now, hours later, I can still recall many of the details of the dream. But, the most interesting thing, I thought, was that I woke up without an alarm. I have been going down at X:14 and waking up at X:40. In this case it was 1:15am when I went to sleep for a nap. I set my alarms and went to sleep. At 1:39, in my dream, I finish my thought and sentence, then put my head down on someone's lap, then wake-up in real life. I was very heartened in this. It is still VERY difficult to not go to sleep (see info below), but there is hope that this will dissolve,

Sticking to the Schedule

It is still not easy per se to take naps and only naps for sleep. I had a shortened 5:15 nap today. After just a little bit, both of us shook it off and moved on. I was able to stay awake without an issue until 10:15.
Contrast that to the naps at night. Tonight I was really bad. For whatever reasons, I was not able to, essentially, hold the line today. I tried, but I kept not being able to do so. i remember thinking back at the time and somehow rationalizing it. I actually do not know how much I slept in the time periods between my 1:15 and 4:15 naps. I am sure that it is less than an 2 hours, but it was more than the 25 minutes I was supposed to get at the beginning of that period. Tomorrow I am not going to stay in the living room during those few hours. For the rest of this week (it's Monday that I am writing about), I am going to get up and go do something during this time, whatever that something is. That's what I should have done today. I would keep realizing that my eyes were closed. A couple times, I would "realize" that I was laying down. So, I feel bad for not sticking to the schedule, but I do realize that I did not take a very long nap. No sleep time was ever greater than 25 minutes. The thing is, if I wake up groggy and then end up falling back to sleep, does my body just go back into sleep where it left off, or does it have to essentially start over from scratch? Considering the fact that I am still fighting for control and not sleeping, i am going to guess that it will be anything like starting over from scratch.

I am still confident that with hard work over the next few days I will indeed be able to adapt to a real polyphasic sleep schedule. I keep telling myself this, over and over again. This staying up and fighting the natural urges of my body is for a purpose: it is an investment in my future.

Why is it taking me so long

I am not sure what other people who have adapted would consider normal. I read Steve Pavlina's blog on his polyphasic transition quite a bit. By the time he was how far along I am, he indicated the worst was over and he was on his way back down. Last night was most definitely the worst for me to date. I am sure the next night will be just as hard or even harder due to the naps I took as mentioned above. But, until those deviations, I have been pretty much by the book to my schedule. I guess my schedule (which I made up and is not true Uberman) might take a little longer to convert to also. But, i have another line of logical thought. Steve was not only a vegan but also on an Early Riser schedule. As noted on its article page, the benefits are somewhat similar to that of polyphasic sleep. My guess is that he was essentially on the right path toward Uberman long before he actually tried to convert. My weak attempt at going to Everyman before this experiment did not seem to help anything. Actually, I am pretty sure that it would have been better to do something else in that time instead. In other words, I think that the key to converting to Uberman is sleep deprivation. My moving to just taking naps ended up in my getting even more sleep than usual. So, I think this actually made the adaptation period longer. But, it may have made it a little easier. I have no frame of reference, so I'm not sure on the easier part. Before starting I also hypothesized that I should switch to Uberman and then if I wanted to it would be easier to switch to Everyman. Now, I do not disagree to this belief from before, but I think that the oposite would also be true. In other words, the transition to Everyman is less sever and as such can be started while still working for a day or two (especially if it is not a very busy week). Then, switching to Uberman will be when adaptation for Everyman would start. This could decrease the amount of time for adaptation to Uberman.

I am going to (a) not spend any time on the computer tonight, and (b) make sure I stick to the schedule 100% for the next 24 hours (written now as my next day is starting)

I did not post yesterday (Day - 4, May 22) because not much had changed. I have not really overslept on any naps nor fallen asleep between naps. On a couple occasions I woke up after a nap and then fell back to sleep but re-awoke within 10 minutes due to a secondary alarm system (or my wife: thanks hon). So, I was hoping to really be in or through the worst of it by now. I don't really know that I am. I have not always 100% of the time gotten exactly 100% of my nap. As an example, today was church and I attempted to take a nap in the car after we got out of church. This did not work all that well. Of the 25 minute nap period, I was probably out for about 15 minutes tops, and this was split between one long and two shorter naps. I have also noticed that some wake periods are extremely easy to not fall asleep early on while others are extremely difficult. After about 36 hours, I had hypothesized that it was due to the time. But this does not seem to hold up as it is not the same time block each day that is difficult for me. In general, the days are easier than the nights, but not always. My guess is that if they were all 4 hours instead of 5 hour days and 3 hour nights, that nights would be more easily distinguished as difficult. Also, I have had where the 10:45pm-1:15am period is extremely difficult to stay awake in and then the next period is much easier and I have had those two switched. To top it off, sometimes a day period is really difficult. I was exhausted in my morning (7:40am-12:15pm) period today but pushed through. Then, with a relatively poor nap at 12:15, I went on to have a pretty easy period until 5:15. This can be contrasted with the same time period yesterday in which my wife said that I was acting like I was drunk. I don't know. I am guessing that I am just still adapting. I am also guessing that it might take longer because I have not been on schedule 100% of the time. As another example, I accidentally fell asleep yesterday morning at 6:45am but woke at around 7:10. I counted that as my 7:15 nap, even though it had been a half hour early. But, since for the last 4 days I have not had any sleep for more than 40 minutes, and anything that long was divided by an actual awake time between 1 and 5 minutes, I would think that I would be relatively adapted by now. Perhaps that was too ambitious. As another mix to the particularly decent awake time this afternoon, I had lunch with my wife at Taco Bell. We always get Mountain Dew's Baja Blast there. So, that's what I drank. I didn't even give it any thought until after the meal was over when I realized that was the first caffeine I had had in almost a week. I'm not sure how or if the caffeine affected me. Usually caffeine from pop does not affect me; I do not drink other higher caffeine drinks such as coffee. From this single trial, indeed the caffeine did not hinder my next nap, though that was, admittedly over 3 hours later.

Much of the reason I wanted to move to polyphasic sleep was to have more time to do things I want to do. The second reason is similar: I feel sleep is a necessary waste of time, similar to unwinding. Anyway, I have noticed that some periods I am extremely unproductive. The least productive periods are the ones where I don't feel great but I don't feel horrible. If I feel horrible, then just to keep from falling asleep, I have to keep doing something, anything. So, I end up doing this and accomplishing something. Likewise, when I feel great, then I go ahead and do the work that I wanted get done at that time. In the middle though, I do not feel like doing anything productive, but when doing something leisurely, such as watching TV, I am awake enough to not really "fight" with sleeping, so I end up just watching TV/playing computer games the whole time.

I was hoping for more interesting things to write on this blog. Fortunately for me, I have not had too many of those extremely hard wake periods that decrease to show me that I am adapting. Hmm, maybe I really haven't adapted yet? But then, why not. I am taking the naps as prescribed. Even with the few times I have drifted off for a real quick snooze (which has been rare and always resulted in jerking myself awake within the minute) or gone back to sleep after a nap, I have probably only had about 12 hours sleep in the last 4 days. One would think this would be enough sleep deprivation to cause adaptation. Hmm, I have no choice but to just move forward with it and see what happens in the next week.

Dang it! I overslept. I've been having some problems with my alarm. I use my phone's alarms to wake me up. I have them preset to the 6 times I am supposed to wake up. Tonight at 10:40, the phone display indicated the alarm was going off, but it didn't play any audio. Since it was during the day (not night), I didn't have an alarm on my computer for a backup. But, my wife did some in and woke me up before 11. So, I overslept but still got only about 40 minutes sleep. This is the worst oversleep so far. I am going to assume that this is not going to be so bad as to completely set me back in terms of adapting. As always, I'll have to wait and see; I'll know more in a week or so.

Boy do I have a headache still. On the other hand, during the day I am not all that tired. At night I am, actually I can hardly remember everything that I did last night. I know I worked on cleaning out the garage.. I know I watched some poker on TV. I know I made some cornbread for dinner. (This was a relatively normal late night treat for me when I grew up: cornbread with maple syrup.) Other than that, I wrote the Bay 1 blog post somewhere in there and I know I worked on the webpage some, though I am not sure what I did and did not get done. This morning I went back and read Steve Pavlina's Day 2 account. I couldn't help but notice a big difference between what he described and what I feel. During the day today, I was relatively fine. I am almost always groggy after a nap, assumedly because I was in deep sleep. But, once I actually wake myself up from this state, then I am relatively alert and able to concentrate, other than my massive headache (I'm going to call it a migraine). To see quantitatively how I am doing, I took some of the alertness "tests" today around 2:30-3pm.

By the end of doing the games, I was exhausted. I'm not sure if it was just that time of day, or if it was because of the amount of effort it took to concentrate on the "tests". Probably a little of both. I definitely could tell a difference in the effort required to do well. As keeping track of the scores is mostly the point, I compared my scores almost a week ago with those from today. I noticed that I did about as well as before. My guess here is that I am used to operating at a certain level and that is what I expect of myself. But, since I am sleep deprived to some extent, I push myself to do just as well, but it is at the cost of significant effort which causes me to feel tired.

Now, it is late at night and I have, in general, found it extremely easy to stay awake. I had to essentially force myself to get up from actual naps lest falling back asleep, but other than that, there has been little issue. Sometimes I need to switch activities so as to not get too bored with a single one. Again, not a big shocker. I am curious as to whether (a) it is just taking me longer to adapt, (b) my adaptation is in a way that makes me believe that I am still functioning normally but this is really the way I work in sleep deprivations, or (c) I am not really adapting. Hmm. Well, there have been some positives and, even if I am not adapting, I think I might opt for this kind of schedule when I am not working (as I am not this week). In case it is not obvious, the benefit is additional time. Before, I felt torn between doing something productive, such as working on a webpage, doing something purely for my enjoyment, such as playing a game, and spending time with my family. All of these were vying for a relatively limited amount of time. Now, though, I feel I have much more time and therefore plenty of time to spend with my family when the circumstances are in a state that is so desirable. Also, though I get enough time to consistently both blog and make progress on modifications to my webpage. But, I do not need to spend as much time as possible in order to achieve this. Therefore, I can spend some time just watching TV, browsing other on-line topics, etc and not feel that I am getting behind. This is the largest benefit. Anyway, I committed to doing this for 60 days, unless I am in a state a week from tomorrow that would make me unable to work, in which case I will call it to a close early. Of course, any medical or physical issues MAY cause me to change from polyphasic sleeping also. I really hope not; I am still hopeful that I am just in the early phases of adapting and will be able to adapt as well as others have.

It has been 38 hours or so since I last got any monophasic sleep. I mentioned yesterday that the jury was still out on starting today. Well, let's say that I am glad I wasn't doing anything useful at work today. The first half of the day went relatively well. I thought I was doing pretty well. I took off for lunch and took a nap in my car. I had difficulty falling asleep - something I would consider inconsistent with being tired. Then, afternoon hit. As most people do, I always get tired in the afternoon. This is the reason that sleep doctors indicate that we as humans are naturally biphasic. Anyway, so I generally lose alertness in the afternoon. Today was no different, but today I was starting at a lower level. So, I was pretty much falling asleep at my desk around 3pm today. By 4:30, I opted to go home but was doing significantly better, at least as far as falling asleep. Now, at 11:15, I am falling asleep. I made a list of activities that might keep me awake because they involved being active. This is in contrast to what I am doing right now: typing on the computer. I was hoping that tonight I would be able to handle it relatively well and be able to work on the web page.

On a related note, I have a headache. I did not think about this before trying this. The nights that I have stayed up all night in the past, I often had a headache the next day. I was/am not sure why exactly. I have hypothesized that it could be dehydration (similar to a hangover). This could be part of it, but I am pretty sure it is not all or even most of it. I know that I am not so good during the day about taking care of my posture. On monophasic sleep, assumedly, this was not a big deal because I would relax every night and make up for it. Now, I don't have that time to make up for it. So, I now have a headache. I took some tylenol a couple hours ago because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get to sleep. So, we'll see what happens. 1. I am not willing to live on tylenol. If it ends up coming down to doing either monophasic sleep or taking tylenol everyday, then I'll go back to monophasic sleep. On the other hand, perhaps this will be the motivation I need to actually take care of my neck and back during the day, if that is indeed the main issue. That would actually be a great effect in and of itself of converting to polyphasic sleep. Of course, this might be esier with more exercise. I am not or rather was not getting enough exercise. Perhaps adding this regular exercise will help my back/neck issue also. I should note that even on monophasic sleep, I would have a headache based on my neck probably a couple times a quarter, in general one really bad day and one lighter headache. So, we'll see what happens on polyphasic sleep.

I am definitely sluggish and falling asleep. I am regularly snapping my eyes open and having difficulty focusing on the computer screen. Obviously, I am not considering this sleeping. I have http://timberfrog.com/countdown/?t=00:30:00 running in the background on my computer always. Why? because this gives off an annoying noise every 30 minutes, so if I fall asleep, then this will wake me up so I do not get any non-nap sleep. I just have to remember to refresh the page (which resets the counter) before each scheduled nap or else it will go off when I AM supposed to be sleeping.

It's 12:30 in the morning and I am writing this entry. I went to work today, as expected. I did take my naps, but the one at lunch was short. I don't think I actually got to sleep. The 5:15 nap was really refreshing. My wife disturbed me from the 10:15 nap right before I went down, so I ended up with a slightly shorter nap and am not sure if I actually got to sleep. So far, this is easy. I am well aware, though, that it is going to get a whole lot harder before it gets any better. From now on, I will probably be writing my entry somewhere during the "night": anytime after 10:40 when I wake up until ~5am.

I am quite sure that this is going to be difficult. I am already wanting to go back to sleep when I wake up from my naps - and I haven't even had a night without sleep yet. Good thing I am not going to have anything important to do at work tomorrow; I'm not sure how alert I'm going to be. The jury is still out on the starting early idea. I guess I'll have a better idea tomorrow night. Some things finally clicked with my wife tonight. She made the comment, "so I won't have any time to sleep with my husband; you know I sleep better when you're in bed with me." I didn't know what to say. I guess maybe I wasn't clear with her about everything. So, I should add that to the adaptation tips: make sure everyone in your family/house is aware of the change and what it will mean to them. I was planning on having my "fourth meal" (as taco bell calls it) around midnight. This would spread out my four meals for the day (6am, 12pm, 6pm, and then 12am). But, one of the adaptation suggestions is not eating before a nap because it will be harder to wake up. As such, I am going to postpone that meal until right after I wake up at 1:40. This will hopefully be an incentive to actually get up: eating. Perhaps after adapting I will change back to my original plan. Then again, as mentioned previously, I am hoping to be able to go down to 5 naps instead of 6. In this case, my 1:15 and 4:15 naps would be replaced by only one nap around 2:45. So, eating around midnight would not make me have a full belly for that nap and would likely be a good idea. I don't think pushing my fourth meal off until 3:20 would be a good idea since I am planning on having breakfast around 6, probably 6:20 or so will be more accurate. Other than my one hard fast rule (I WILL NOT SLEEP OTHER THAN NAPS), i am really planning on playing this by ear. I'm going to start with this six 25 minute nap cross between uberman and dymaxion sleep schedule. If it doesn't work, I'm not going to throw out polyphasic sleep altogether. Instead, I will probably choose to either (a) try to convert to Dymaxion even though it is supposed to be harder, or (b) go straight to Everyman.

As mentioned in the Sleep Experts article, the Everyman schedule seems to make the most sense to me from a concept of eliminating non-useful sleep. As mentioned there, about 50% of a normal monophasic sleeper's time is spent in either phase 1 or phase 2 sleep. Both of these are essentially useless and a waste of time. I would much rather have this time awake. The benefit to Everyman is also its curse: it is more similar to monophasic sleep. This is a benefit in that there is essentially little risk of sleep issues that many professionals are concerned about with the purely polyphasic schedules and that it offers less rigidity in naps and schedules. But the curse is that it takes a long time to adapt. It is not as hard to adapt in the same way that Dymaxion is. One does not get as sleep deprived on Everyman. Therefore, because of this lack of sleep deprivation, the mental and physiological changeover to polyphasic sleep takes a lot longer, but it is "easier" when happening. I wanted to try out true polyphasic sleep. Also, I assumed that once adapted to true polyphasic sleep such as the schedule I am trying, that moving to Everyman would be essentially a non-issue. Actually, I have always assumed I would have some sort of Day Off on a semi-regular basis. I have considered having this not be a single day every month or two, but rather to take off one sleep period every week. In other words, one day a week (I would do Sunday since it is supposed to be a day of rest) I would sleep in between two of my regularly scheduled naps. In this way, i would end up with a 3 hour and 25 minute sleep cycle. This would provide the deep sleep present in a normal monophasic night.

Anyway, I should be alert enough tomorrow night to blog again. I'm not sure about Saturday night (Day 2). We'll see.

So, I started trying to get a little less sleep this weekend. As noted in my previous post, I am going to attempt to limit my night time sleep and allow for naps at the same times that I will be taking them once going on my uberman-like schedule. So, this weekend I never got more than 6.5 hours sleep each night. It was a little difficult to stay up. I got a little groggy most nights but was able to push through it by keeping busy working on-line. Today, I feel pretty good actually. I went to bed at a little after midnight last night, got to sleep within probably 10 minutes (so ~12:15) and the alarm went off at 6:30. I felt tired but got out of bed and now don’t really feel tired anymore. My guess is that I am essentially adapting more to an “early-to-rise” sleep pattern, rather than anything polyphasic. I took 2 naps yesterday and one on Saturday. I’m going to try and take one today.

Oh, I should note that from now on I am going to adopt the day/night convention that my fraternity, Delta Chi has now and had when I was in college. A day starts when the sun comes up. So, in general based on my sleep patern, each day will start when I am awake between 4:40 and 7:15. As such, during the summer I am going to refer to any time before 4:15 as the previous day still but any time after I wake up at 4:15 as the next day.

The point that I have of sleeping polyphasicly is actually to have more "productive" time. This seems obvious. I am going to be giving up an hour or so of theoretically productive time during the day in order to be on this schedule. Therefore, I would only want to do it if I could get well over an hour of additional productive time when I am now asleep. Now, I'd like to point out that productive is relative. Time could be productive for one person but not for another. I will be the first to admit that I am not the best at holding myself to being productive. For this very reason, I have come up with a strict schedule for my personal (night time) activities that I am going to try and live by. It does have some time for "goofing off," as I would never choose to do it long term if it didn't. I am going to be attempting to follow this schedule for 30 days after I get adjusted, not during the adjustment period. As I am hoping to be adjusted (basicly) by May 30th, I will be trying to follow this productive schedule for the month of June.

7:15am - start nap

7:40am - end nap

8am - arrive at work

12:00 - eat lunch

12:15pm - start nap

12:40pm - end nap

5pm - travel home

5:15pm - start nap

5:40pm - end nap, change clothes for evening

6pm - eat dinner

(after dinner) - spend time with my wife and daughter. Currently, I split this time with playing with my daughter, talking to my wife, watching TV with my wife, doing stuff on the computer, etc. In this schedule, I am going to hold myself to NOT going on the computer. I am the kind of person that can almost literally spend 24 hours a day on the computer and be OK with it. If I get sick of surfing/writing about polyphasic sleep, I can switch to politics (go to my Economics and Politics blog if you are also interested in this kind of thing). If I get sick of writing in general, I can do other surfing. If I get sick of surfing, I can play poker. If I get sick of poker, or just lose too much money, then I can switch to playing Warcraft (DotA). The list goes on and on. Anyway, for the month of June, while I am on this strict schedule, I am NOT going to go on the computer at all during this period. On the other hand, I am going to take a walk with my wife and daughter as often as possible, such as when the weather allows.

10:15pm - start nap

10:40pm - end nap, start working on this blog

11:30pm (ish) - start working on www.econandgov.com

12:30am (or after) - watch a TV episode or two (from hulu) or surf internet as desired

1:15am - start nap

1:40am - end nap, start a poker game online. Work on www.graph-data.com at the same time. If nothing else, I can work on data entry into a MySQL database, which will be a significant amount of the work for this site.

Once I get out of the poker game, if I got cash, then start a second game that should end before 4:15am. Else, continue with graph-data.com work until bored.

When bored (or I chose to), check general "to-do" list (a.k.a "honey-do" list). I cannot "get bored" of graph-data.com and not work on items from "honey-do". I can switch back to working on econandgov.com if I am bored of what I need to do for graph-data.com and that interests me more.

3:30am - play on computer/watch TV as desired.

4:15am - start nap

4:40am - end nap, start cleaning

5am - start exercise routine (I haven't actually come up with what my weekly routine is, but I am going to come up with one)

6am - have breakfast, then continue to do my current morning routine including mild cleaning, shower, etc

6:45am (ish) crawl into bed to spend time with my wife

7:15am - back to top of schedule and taking nap

So much to write; so little time. Obviously, that's the reason I am starting this polyphasic schedule: to have more time, and why I am starting this polyphasic blog: to have something to write for.

Based on the anecdotal evidence, I am convinced that polyphasic sleeping is (a) possible and (b) better than monophasic sleep for some/many/most people. After adapting, I will hopefully make a judgment as to which of these. I do not believe the Sleep Professionals who imply (or outright state) that people who claim to have successfully adapted to polyphasic sleep are lying and don't really exist. Sorry, there is too much of a following for this to be the case. I just don't see people lying that much. Maybe I am naive. I am a young foolhardy male, after all.

Anyway, I now know for sure, that I am going to be off of work the week of May 25th. I also have May 22nd off. So, this is when I am going to be adapting to polyphasic sleep. My wife is a very supportive person but initially thought I was crazy. Luckily for me, she has already found a benefit for polyphasic sleeping. Her cousin is holding a graduation party in Maryland on May 30th. If I am successfully sleeping polyphasicly by then, then I can drive through the night while she and more importantly my 11 month old daughter sleep. So, that is the hope/plan and as such gives me an even stronger reason (stronger than the desire to be adapted and function on polyphasic sleep) and her a reason at all to keep me to the schedule.

If you do the math, I am off starting on the 21st and want to be adapted by the 30th. This only leaves 9 days. Steve Pavlina indicated that by day eight he was doing great and was even able to slightly modify his schedule without major difficulty. On the other hand, most other bloggers indicate that you probably want almost 2 weeks to really adapt. So, first off, what was different about Steve? I found two things (a) he's a vegan, and (b) he NEVER overslept. I have no way of knowing how important the first one is, but I am not going to change over to being a vegan to decrease my polyphasic sleep adaptation period. The second one, though, is enough evidence to me that this is the biggest key.

But, just in case the real reason was because he was a vegan or, more likely in my opinion, I do slip up and oversleep once, I am going to attempt to give myself a leg up in any way I can. As such, (a) I am going to start on Wednesday May 20th. That is, when I wake up on the 20th, this will be my last full night of monophasic sleep. Yes, I need to work on the 21st. But, based on previous experience, I can stay up all night and do relatively well the next day as far as functioning, especially during the day time. And, since I am relatively certain that I will not have any major work to do that day, I am not concerned about being slightly less productive than usual. The second thing I am going to do is start something like an Everyman schedule this coming weekend, May 16th. I am only going to go to sleep at night when I feel tired. Most weekends, and even weekdays, I go to bed more because I know I will be tired tomorrow than because I am tired now. Also, since I will likely end up tired the next day, at least by Monday, I am going to begin attempting to take my scheduled naps when I am supposed to. I am hoping that I will have essentially gotten used to taking the naps but still have a too long sleep period at night only by May 20th. So, when I eliminate the night time core sleep, I will simply be adapting to the sleep deprivation and then changing my asleep stage periods and not my when do I sleep periods as much. I will be skipping the 10:15 nap during this early (pre Wed) period as this will likely cause me to go to sleep then and never wake up. Also, I am going to be setting my alarm for 25 minutes, rather than 20 minutes. The hope is to eventually go down to only 5 naps a day for a total of just over 2 hours. But, if I end up with 6 naps and therefore 2.5 hours of sleep, I would consider the conversion a definite success.

I have decided to try and adapt to a polyphasic sleep schedule.
There are a lot of reasons for this, including not wanting to be tired all the time, but the main reason is to have more time awake, and especially more productive time awake.
I am well aware that this is going to take a while to work. From reading everything on-line, I am willing to invest the next two months in order to transition to a schedule of more awake time after that.
In general, I am the kind of person that likes to make investments. And, I love to see my investments pay off. So, I am more than willing to invest a large amount of my time that I would be productive over the next couple months in order to be more productive after that.

I am going to be on TLO (Temporary Lay Off) for the week after Memorial Day (week of May 25th). So, I am planning on transitioning between my monophasic schedule and my new polyphasic schedule at this time: starting on the 20th/21st of May. I am planning on attempting to adopt a modified Uberman schedule at first. If this doesn't work, either at all or very well, then I will move to either a true Uberman, a Dymaxion, or most likely an Everyman type schedule.

I have learned to think ahead quite a bit before jumping in. (I've had some VERY unsuccessful businesses that I have owned part or all of.) So, here is my thought process.
1. I like the increase in time of Uberman. Especially since I know I should be exercising but am not, and I would also like an increase in productive time
2. With my current job, I am not likely to be able to take off more than once to go take a nap. Some days I would be able to but others I would not, so I can't count on it.
3. According to Steve Pavlina and some others that have done polyphasic sleep, shifting times on the naps is relatively easy AFTER you have adjusted to the napping.
4. As a curious person, I am wondering if the exact need is dependant on one's body or on the fact that one has started to train his body that it is time for a nap.
5. I really want a nap both (a) during my lunch period and (b) right after work.
6. Dymaxion is supposed to be harder than Uberman to adapt to. My assumption is that it is harder because of the longer awake times in between each nap. I am really looking for that extra awake time during the day, what with my job and all, but not necessarily at night.

Here is roughly my current schedule during the week:
6:30 - get up and get ready for work
7:45 - leave for work
8:00 - arrive at work (yes I only live 15 minutes from my job)
~12:00 - take lunch
~1:00 - get back to work
5:00 - leave work
5:15 - arrive at home
(do whatever I am doing that night, which varies)
10:30 - go to bed

Of course, those are all generalizations currently: some more than others.
If you take a look at this, you will probably see right away that unless I can take time out of my time at work, I cannot do a true Uberman. This is normal for most or all people who work, right? But, I really wanted to try something that did not include a core sleep period. So, I came up with, at first, an idea for having only 5 naps a day. I thought I could take a nap for up to 30 minutes. This resulted in a schedule of nap times at: 7:15, 12:15, 5:15, 10pm, and 3pm. That's what I came up with. It would be a total of 2.5 hours of sleep. Really, this is a cross between Uberman and Dymaxion. It is actually a lot closer to Dymaxion. But, I didn't really want to do straight Dymaxion because (a) it is harder to adjust to because of the way monophasic sleep cycles work (See What Sleep Professionals Say for more on this), and (b) I did not want to have to wait a half hour to an hour after work was over to have my next nap. This was my thought process. But, Steve Pavlina and other indicated that they needed an extra nap at night in order to not accidentally fall asleep, at least during the adaptation period. So, I decided to add another nap in making it a total of 6, which is more like Uberman. Based on PureDoxyK's general analysis, this pointed to the need of the naps to theoretically only need to be 20 minutes. But, I would really love to be able to modify this in the future to only be 5 naps again. As such, I decided on setting my alarm for 25 minutes, halfway between Uberman and Dymaxion. But, for the adjusting period, at least, I would start with 6 nap periods.

Here is what I am going to attempt to transition to:
7:15am - take nap
7:45am - leave for work
8:00am - arrive at work
12:00pm - take lunch
12:15pm - take nap
1:00pm - return to work
5:00pm - leave work
5:15pm - take nap
(do my normal evening activities)
10:15pm - take nap
(do stuff on computer, such as write for this blog, etc)
1:15pm - take nap
(do stuff on computer, such as write for this blog, etc)
4:15pm - take nap
("get ready" which will include exercising which I do not currently do, and it will include cleaning up as I currently do but would like to expand)

On weekends, this schedule will be very much similar. I will keep all of the sleeping/nap times exactly the same. The three shorter wake periods (at night) will consist of the same activities as during the week also. During the day on the weekends, I will do as I normally do now (aside from napping), whatever that is.
I WILL NOT SLEEP OTHER THAN NAPS.

From reading around on-line. This appears to be the one and only key to polyphasic sleep. People that follow this single rule are able to adapt to the polyphasic schedule and stay on it for as long as they chose to. For the record, I am planning on staying on a polyphasic schedule of some kind for at least 60 days. I'll count Thursday as day 1. People that sleep other than the naps take longer to adapt, often do not fully adapt, do not feel fully alert when they have supposedly "adapted" etc. So, I WILL NOT SLEEP OTHER THAN NAPS.