Polywood

Just had an interesting conversation with a person about how I, technically, have been alive for an equivalent of 4 months if you compare my waking moments to that of a typical 8 hour sleeping individual for 3 months.

Pretty awesome.

Of recent I have been playing around with my schedule to get more flexibility. It is currently by no means restrictive at all, but I wanted to move my 1.5 core to 7pm instead of having it at 2 am. Found some interesting quirks due to this change; namely that I am actually having a HARDER TIME falling asleep for 20 minutes at the changed 2am.

It’s almost as if that I get my BEST most OPTIMUM rest around 7pm. Whether it be 20 minutes, or 1.5 hours if I go to sleep around 7pm I will gain recuperation at a factor much higher than my other rest periods. I don’t know if you follow, or if I said that properly, but essentially having my 1.5 at 7pm instead of 2am has actually resulted in me being more rested… thus far. It’s quite hard to say as I haven’t been doing this time change long enough. Either way I’m on the verge of deciding to keep all of my times the same but pushing my 2 am to 3 am…

On another note I was discussing with someone what exactly is it that we polyphasers are putting our bodies through and I came up with some interesting points. Frankly I don’t care if it’s possibly detrimental, I really don’t. I see it like smoking cigarettes of which I don’t do, but there is a temporary “high” you get when you are smoking a cigarette. And cumulatively those temporary highs make up for the possibility of getting cancer or a shorter lifespan, at least in the mind of a smoker it does. This is the statement I told my friend, which he didn’t really agree with, but that is truly the case for most people. They know the possible risks and choose to take them for that high. In the case of polyphasic sleeping I see it the same way. Although there is no proof that this sort of schedule is detrimental the benefits I have already gotten from it are worth the possibilities of those detriments. My friend brought up a great point saying that a smoker is addicted and under the guise of addiction one can’t compare the two because one act is forced while another is succumbed to. To that I told him flat out that anyone that has the stones to put up with this sleep schedule and persevere for weeks being DEAD tired and force yourself out of bed when everything inside of you is SCREAMING to stop is also a person that could stop smoking cigarettes. Period. Anyone with the dedication and willpower to do this can also stop an addiction, maybe with some help but with willpower it can be done.

With all of the increased interest in sleep studies and the like I feel like I’ll be eating my words here soon, but WHATEVER! I think this whole deal of polyphasic sleeping goes one way or another.

It’s either that;

1) Polyphasic sleep is a process of teaching your body to function and become used to being CONSTANTLY exhausted without noticing it. I mean, how can I really say right now that I’m rested after my 7pm when all it could be is that I’m used to being insanely tired all the time because I have been doing this for 3 months?! This is a bad example but imagine you wore a bracelet that pinched into your wrist causing constant discomfort. As long as it’s not causing a break in the skin or some sort of infection that is ever changing, don’t you think you’d get USED to the pain after 3 months… to the point you really don’t even notice it anymore? Maybe that’s all polyphasic sleep is… a method to get your body used to being insanely tired.

2) Polyphasic sleep singles out only the most necessary aspects of what is gained during sleep and capitalizes on it ever 4 hours (or whatever the interim time period is). No one knows what all the phases of sleep are for, but we know that if we deprive ourselves our bodies, for the sake of survival, will be forced to do what it needs during the time periods it is given.

I rock, You rock, I’m eating rocky road ice cream. I wake up before my alarm now thinking I’ve overslept or something and I haven’t. Pretty awesome!! A.D.D. just kicked in… BYE

Getting awoken during a 20 minute nap has got to be my ultimate pet peeve. It’s always something stupid… never important. And it’s always some buffoon just being an idiot.

Waking up in the middle of those is KILLER man, ruined my whole awakeness feeling today, and now I have about 4 hours till my next rest and I am dead tired right now.

Let’s go through the morons who can’t just leave me alone for 20 freakin minutes.

–Coworkers who know about my schedule finding me asleep.–

“Hey man, are you taking your nap dude!? What are you doing??”

Yes, I drove this far away from work so that I could get away from you and get a brief 20 minute rest in. And you have completely ruined it with your insiped questions of if I’m asleep or not. What do you think? You KNOW I only get 20 minutes in sometimes and you are ruining about 1/5 of my days sleep. Would you like me to come to your house, wake you up and make you lose 1.8 hours of sleep??? I hate you.

–security guards—

“You there, what are you doing in your car smoking pot?”

“Excuse me sir do you need some help? I saw you in your car and…”

“Hey buddy, you can only park here for 20 minutes.” (Seriously a guy said that to me)

Well has it been 20 minutes yet?! Obviously not because the freakin alarm I set is set to go off in exactly 10 minutes from now which would be FREAKIN 20 minutes after I arrived here?! What’s your deal dude?! Back up! I know where you guys work and it’s not that hard to run over a parking lot guard… trust me.

–Random people with nothing else better to do–

“Hey who the fuck is this?! Get out of my car!! Oh wait… this isn’t my car… oops.”

This was today during my 1pm, I literally yelled at this guy. What the heck man! I look over and his car, which yes is the same make as mine, looked NOTHING Like my car and this douche and his friend had the greatest time speeding off honking their horn after having woke me up 10 minutes in. Why is it always 10 minutes… my whole body hates him.

Why is there a crazy outside on Hollywood blvd yelling his head off… I thought I moved away from these people. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE TODAY.

I’m so exhausted…

I notice in my last post i didn’t specify am and pm for my new schedule.

New Schedule (which kind of evolved on it’s own):
7-830pm
2am
7am
1pm

…. I mean I’m sure it’s obvious the times but maybe not.

I wanted to clear the air on anyone who is trying polyphasic sleeping while considering the use of caffeine. You might read from various sources that you can’t use caffeine as it tends to mess up the sleep cycle or you might not fall asleep for your 20 minute… ya know I just can’t agree with that. Although I have been very careful to only drink it and FINISH my portion of caffeine within the first hour of waking from my 20 minute or 1.5 core, but being that I’m almost 3 months in I’m just not seeing a big deal with even being that strict with the time. Maybe it’s just my chemical make-up or maybe it’s just that I have acclimated to the schedule, but really caffeine doesn’t impede my rest periods because I’m so damned tired by the time I get to them it doesn’t even matter. Plus after forcing my body to learn to sleep on command I would say I’m rather proficient at the task of passing out regardless of what I intake. I noticed this as I was drinking a starbucks double shot kill of death mocha today and noticed that I was less then an hour away from my 1.5 core (yes it was 6pm). I continued to drink it and still passed out with no problems. Even now I’m drinking iced tea and I have about 1.5 hours till my 20 minute at 2 am… there’s nothing else to drink here!

I intend to save my “trip to the grocery store to wake myself up” for my 2 am resurrection.

You know what else is your friend? Lights, Cold Air, Cold Beverages, Alarm Clock, and Denny’s / iHop (I get energy from the people out around that time being all wasted and such).

Enemies? Sitting down, chair, couch, taxes, darkness, silence, and “anything your tired mind has to reason with yourself to come up with during the first hour of being awake from a rest period”. Just don’t listen to anything you say to yourself for the first hour… because it’s wrong, always. Just do what you had planned to do before you took a rest. Maybe this is just me as I’m so confused waking up sometimes that I need to just not think and follow the schedule as planned.

….so much to do……..so much to do……..so much to do……..so much to do….

What a ride this is. I began 2 months ago on February 1st sleeping polyphasically and have really enjoyed ever second of it.

If one does the math and equates 16 hours of wakefulness as a “Day of life” then over the last 2 months and 7 days I have technically lived about 3 months 10 days. I did the math in my head so that is a close number I’m sure.

And talk about realizing it… sheesh! I find it a little hard to conceive it’s only April. I mean, yeah I saw the days go by, but I feel I might have a better conception of the passage of time then most people, because it felt like 3 months, for sure, but it was only 2.

Ok, whatever, so an update on things:

I am a polyphasic sleeper.

I sleep about 2.5 hours a day give or take and I have been doing this since the 1st of February 2010.

I sleep on what is called the Everyman schedule with 1.5 hour core and THREE 20 minute rest periods throughout the day.
Old Schedule:
12-130
7
1
7

New Schedule (which kind of evolved on it’s own):
7-830
2
7
1

What I know for a fact:

Anyone can successfully do this.

I get a crap ton of things done, and STILL have plenty of time to goof off.

So here are some of my thoughts, pros /cons, and experiences on all of this thus far.

Firstly, everything I say here is simply MY experience… I’m sure other polyphasers experience their polyphasic life differently. But this is how I see things in the short 2 going on 3 months I’ve been doing it.

Pro – You wouldn’t believe the amount of things I get done in a day.

Pro – I’m never the “wake up tired but have to get up because I pushed snooze 3 times guy”. I’m always up and at em, which is fantastic. I do get a little tired sometimes while I’m awake, like in the mornings right around now, 5 am, but it’s nothing worse then anything I’ve felt before monophasically.

Pro – time of day means nothing to me now. I don’t go to bed thinking, “dang I’ve got to get up in 6 hours” anymore. It’s 5 am and I’ve been up since 2am, but none of that matters. The only reason I care for time now is when the bank or post office is open or closed, or when I need to be a certain place to meet some monophasic sleeper on his laughably short daily time schedule. That is awesome.

Con – I wake up INCREDIBLY confused. This confusion, I figure, comes from the fact that I’m waking up in the middle of intensely vivid dreams and is a necessary bi-product of this type of sleep schedule. It doesn’t affect too many things, but it has caused me to have to make a note to myself to read before I go to sleep. Because I really have no idea what’s going on when I wake up.

Pro – I love sleep now. I used to HATE it. Seriously, I hated doing it, I wanted to do anything to not have to ever do sleep again and then I found polyphasic sleeping. Now I LOOK FORWARD to my 20 minute naps! When I start feeling tired and look at my clock to see I’m almost at my next 20 minute I get STOKED! When I see that I’m about to have my 1.5 hour rest I’m so excited I can hardly calm down to go to sleep. I consistently think, as I’m laying there, that I won’t be able to pass out…. and then BAM I wake up 1.5 hours later.

Cons – I love sleep now. Yeah it’s kind of a bad thing too. Like I almost crave it sometimes… even if I’m not tired I CRAVE the chance to just close my eyes. Not only that but I also CRAVE the passage of time. Weird huh? I sometimes wish I could just pass out and let life pass along faster for a bit. You’d never know such an innate desire is so strong within us until you deprive yourself of it. The other weekend I went out, and I mean its Hollywood so things get wild, and I end up passing out without setting my alarm when I got home. I woke up after about 5 hours, which is 2 days worth of sleep. (imagine sleeping 16 hours in a day and you kind of get what I trying to say, it’s not the same but get my drift here) I got up, looked around, wasn’t tired or anything but just decided to go back to sleep for another 3 hours. It was freakin FANTASTIC! I was a little worried I might mess things up, but no I resumed my schedule as I normally would hitting all of my rest periods like I normally had. But what I got out from resting for 8 hours is the realization of how much I really like sleep now. I’ll never go back to monophasic sleeping consistently, it’s just one of those grass is always greener sorts of things. And maybe that all goes away after awhile… I mean I’ve only been doing polyphasic for 2 months and have been monophasic for 27 years, so there is inevitably withdraws. But when you feel like 3 months has passed and it only has been 2 months things get a little awkward and something in you just wants to stabilize things.

Hmm, I have much more to say but I think I’ll have to end here; I have a deadline in about 2 hours for some monophaser. Oh yeah, that’s another good point…

Pro – I have read in multiple places that you run out of things to do. I have no idea what those nut cases are talking about. I have so many things to finish and so many things to do I couldn’t go back to sleeping 8 hours a day if I WANTED to. When you’re up 21.5 hours a day you kind of come up with alot of ideas. Unless of course your a nincompoop.