February 16, 2010 at 4:59 am (Days d everything else)
Still here, still alive, just have nothing to say. haha. Adaptation is all but over it seems as I don’t feel tired in the slightest.
I see people are still coming to my wordpress page… is there something in particular anyone wanted to know?
For the record I am currently on Everyman 1.5 hour core with 3 x 20 minute rest periods = 2.5 hours sleep per day. BAM!
February 14, 2010 at 10:46 pm (Days c 11-15)
It’s been 2 weeks and I am very satisfied with how everything has been going.
I will be switching back to Everyman starting at 12 am tonight and will be sticking with it till I am held at gun point to quit. I was thinking about how when I switch to Everyman and fully adapt how there really won’t be anything for me to talk about anymore… like nothing at all. Maybe that won’t be the case, but I’m just trying to figure what else I’d need to say regarding polyphasic as it will have been as normal as brushing my teeth… and I’m sure you don’t want to know a play by play of that since I do it everyday with no excitement or second thought.
If you have not yet considered doing polyphasic sleeping I STRONGLY suggest you give it a shot. Having what seems to be an extra 2 waking days EVERY WEEK is absolutely incredible. If you’re monophasic it’s almost like having a week that lasts for almost 10 days (if you do the math for 8 hours sleeping every approximate 24 hours that is extra for a polphaser). So much can get done in that amount of time, and I can’t imagine wanting to do monophasic again. Yes I am still a little tired as I have not fully adapted and my botched uberman weekend didn’t help with all my responsibilities, but this sort of tiredness is a mere gnat to the HUGE bug of time that I now have. And that makes no sense.
February 13, 2010 at 8:44 pm (Days c 11-15)
So I am giving up polyphasic sleeping…
YEAH RIIIIIIGHT! I am going to have to switch though back to and permanently stay with Everyman. It’s amazing what taking 4 rest periods as opposed to 6 can do for freeing up your day. Basically I got caught up being busy finalizing a contract deal I had been waiting to go through since FOREVER, and it finally came to fruition. It cost me 2 rest periods today and needless to say I am tired. For what it’s worth maybe it’s a “sign” if those things exist. If I had stayed on everyman I wouldn’t be missing those rest periods as I would have had more flexibility to do what I needed to do today. A little bummed, but only because I can’t show off with the title uberman. Everyman is just as valid, especially if I decide to do 1.5 hour core instead of 2 hour core.
I’m going to finish out this weekend on uberman and then if my opinion hasn’t changed I’ll move back to Everyman permanently, or at least for a long enough while until my occupation allows me some elbow room. It’s almost as if I would have had an more strict 9-5 kind of job I could fit uberman in. But my responsibilities are all over the board.
This morning was very very tough as I had expected. The walks to sunset and back helped as did the curious stares I received from the late night check-out lady who repeatedly saw me stumble in to buy a single bottle of water like 100 times.
February 12, 2010 at 8:57 pm (Days c 11-15)
Well not really the end of my day, I technically have one more rest period at 10:35 and around 11pm I would write, but whatever.
I’m hitting my sleep times on the dot. I’m falling asleep and waking up refreshed (dazed at first, but refreshed). And things are going well
BUT
The weekend is coming up and I know from previous experience that idleness is the perfect catalyst for oversleeping. For the record I’m by no means an idle person, I work constantly on my projects among other things, but I typically don’t see other people during the weekends when I am hard at work. So that energy I get from being around people will be absent and thus another obstacle to overcome.
As one of my goals this weekend is to hit every rest on time and have no oversleeping I have come prepared to do battle!
There is a Ralphs (grocery store) on sunset blvd is open 24 hours and is a short 3 minute walk for me from my apartment. Even though I will be completely delirious when I wake up as long as I plan to do something in advance I’ll end up doing it regardless of my conscious state. So as you have gathered I’ll walk to ralphs after every rest period, get a cold beverage and walk back. By the time I have done that the winter air will have fully roused me, I hope. It is by no means cold here in Hollywood during the winter, but it is very brisk so should work fine.
I can’t believe it has been 12 days, 1 or 2 oversleeps of no more than 30 minutes at most and my adaptation is going fine. The weekend will be a struggle I can already tell, but I have no intention of failing my goal of a PERFECT UBERMAN WEEKEND!
February 12, 2010 at 12:26 am (Days c 11-15)
Technically the first full day on Uberman; a rather difficult morning, very comparable to Day 7, but I made it.
I have been hitting my rest periods with great precision and I currently feel very much rested and alert. I don’t feel 100% by any means though, my eyes ache a bit and show a tint of red. My co-workers, who now know of my sleep schedule, have noticed no change or even observed that I was a bit more tired than usual or any sort of deficiency in my performance. This objective viewpoint is good and I can’t wait for the 100% feeling again.
Even if it NEVER comes I would rather be at this 85%-90% feeling for the rest of my life if it means gaining an extra 6 hours a day! For all intent and purposes I perform at full go… I just feel odd at times.
If I had to break it down here is how my wake to rest periods go:
I awake from super VIVID, realistic dreams leaving me utterly confused for the first 2 minutes of being back awake. Like seriously, I’ve had some cool dreams before but this is something else. For instance at my 10:35pm over 2 hours ago I was in Dodgers stadium eating a chili hot dog. When I woke up to my alarm screaming at me from the other side of the room I jumped out of bed, and carefully held my palms skywards so that I would not spill the chili from my hot dog all over the floor… yeah, you read that right. Once I reached my alarm clock I took my other hand and picked up the imaginary hot dog and placed it on the counter so that I could turn of the clock (it takes two hands to do this)… it was then I realized the magnitude of what I was doing to thin air.
I’m then very alert for about 30 minutes
I then feel a little off for about 10-20 minutes. Kind of dazed, and feeling a little tired.
Once that’s done I’m alert, alert all the way up till about an hour from my next rest period. I start to feel a little tiredness coming on, reminiscent of the time around 8pm on a normal day monophasically.
About 15-10 minutes from my next rest period I could seriously crash hard. During this time I’m usually driving trying to look for a spot to park where I’d be left alone.
5 minutes before schedule rest time I’m closing my eyes and preparing to knock out.
February 10, 2010 at 11:40 pm (Days b 6-10)
I’m converting to uberman. It would probably be more prudent to fully adjust to everyman with the work schedule I maintain, but for the sake of scientific experimentation I have submitted my discomfort towards the betterment of human kind!
Here is my schedule for 20 minute rest periods at each time:
4:35am-8:35am-12:35pm-6:35pm-10:35pm-2:35am
I do get rather tired during the afternoon stretch but that is unavoidable. And once I hit the 6:35 I sleep like a baby. In fact, today I only slept for 10 minutes and woke up fully charged. I don’t intend, and I wouldn’t suggest anyone else, cheat out on minutes like that, but the dream I had was a rather crazy one and I really doubt I could have went back to sleep being so charged waking up and with that dream on my mind.
It still amazes me how intricate and long a 10 -20 minute dream can really get.
February 10, 2010 at 2:36 am (Days b 6-10)
As if my body knew it was time to start making moves! This is the first 2 hour core I’ve FULLY awoken and felt absolutely refreshed (after the days when deprivation set in of course, days 6 / 7)
So now it’s a question of keeping to the core or moving to try uberman….
February 9, 2010 at 11:51 pm (Days b 6-10)
A very hectic day and don’t think I fully went to sleep for one of my rest periods, but no matter I made it.
My core is coming up in about 30 minutes and I have made a pretty profound choice. If my core sleep, of which if you have been following are the rest periods that suck the most, makes me feel like that groggyness again I’m going to switch to uberman. I don’t know if I can fully blame the groggy period being because of the 2 hour core, but the evidence is really stacking up against it. EVERY single 20 minute rest I take leaves me BOUNDING out of bed ready to take on the next thing… every single one! I’m dead tired, I go to sleep for 20 minutes and I wake up like BAM! And then you’ve got my core, I’m dead tired, go to sleep for 2 hours, wake up and like WTF TIRED for the next 30 minutes – hour.
So after much deliberation I think if it doesn’t work out this time I’m going to try uberman and see if constant 20 minutes rest periods throughout the day changes anything.
There is indeed a concept out there that purposes that everyman is actually HARDER BECAUSE of it’s longer length of sleeping periods. And not because of the short 20 minute ones, but because of the core. It makes sense because, although I do want to give my awesome body credit, I can’t say with any certainty that my body knows the difference between the 20 minutes and the core right now. Sure if I gave it more time it would eventually adapt, but my body is GETTING the 20 minute concept. It understands exactly what I need and delivers, leaving me rested. But when it comes to the 2 hour core my body is sort of confused what to do with it.
So as I said, I’m going to give it one more night then I’m going to try out the uberman. The ONLY reason I didn’t try the uberman before is I really didn’t think I could fit it into my crazy schedule. But I do believe I have figured out the most probable times that I can get some rejuvenation.
I “stole” this from another polyphaser and adjusted it slightly
4:35 am
8:35 am
12:35 pm
6:35 pm
10:35 pm
2:35 am
as opposed to what I am doing now; with 12-2am, 8 am, 1:20 pm and 6:40 pm 20 minute.
Now you might be thinking that I certainly didn’t space my uberman out evenly, but this is really the only way I could do uberman as my work is unrelenting after lunch noon. If it doesn’t work no biggie, I’ll do everyman with a smile. It’s Judgment day for everyman for my 2 hour core tonight though.
I’ve just been sucking up material on this topic as I finally broke the news to my coworkers what I’ve been doing. I didn’t want to tell them that I WOULD be doing something like this, as that would automatically think any lag on my part would be accounted for by my lack of sleep, which wouldn’t be the case. In fact, they admitted to noticing NOTHING different about my behaviour these past 9 days. But I did tell a couple, to which I was told that I would die. How pleasant.
On that note I have actually been reading on such a topic… can lack of sleep induce premature death? No research proves that directly. There was a study done that showed that people suffering from insomnia and who only received 4-5 hours a night had a higher probability to die sooner, but it was due towards their proclivity to abuse pills because they thought there was something “wrong” with them, that they weren’t normal. If only the doctors would have filled them in. Thai Ngoc is a old guy who claims to have not slept a wink in 33 years, AL Herpin being another confirmed non-sleeper case. Both of these men died of natural causes, and on top of that they didn’t sleep AT ALL, not the 2-3 hours we’re getting… they received Zero!
Here is a cool article I found linked to a wikipedia page: http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/59/2/131
It actually shows a slight increase in longevity due to sleep less. Of course the ends never justifies the means, but wouldn’t that be cool or what?!
Wow these tired spells hit fast. I was wide awake when I started writing this day 9 blog. Now I’m falling asleep here. I wanted to say though that my most tired parts of the day are right around 3-4-5… and no I don’t know why. I don’t even know why I brought that up.
February 9, 2010 at 6:53 am (Days b 6-10)
Wow the morning after cores are rough. Not as bad as day 7 but still a challenge. I’m glad polyphasic is a difficult thing to accomplish, it really says a lot about a person who can do this. Neither good nor bad, but it just defines people.
When I was in college I noticed that most of my closest friends shared a very similar quality. They all were very independent, and very social. They cared about their style and physical appearance and were all just fun loving, drama free people. It was a nice realization, because I could tell pinpoint a person that I’d get along with immediately.
I feel it’s the same with this polyphasic sleeping. The type of person that can do this, along with the type of person that even CONSIDERS doing this can be quantified into a similar grouping. A person that seeks their own answers in life and doesn’t sheepishly follow what others say is possible. A person willing to take risks and has the willpower to follow through. And a person that is a little crazy, borderline schizo… haha
My correspondences with people about being able to do this gets responses all over the board. From people telling me that I’m an idiot and will be dead soon to others immediately interested and desiring to know more so they can make their own conclusion. Whichever you feel is the case is fine, but just as long as the decision comes from some sort of research and contemplation then you’ve got my respect. It’s the people that have done no background investigation, have tried it to only fail and then subsequently say it is impossible because they can’t do it, or the people that just outright dismiss the issue before hearing anything out are the people that I quickly get myself away from. I can’t imagine living life believing everything so bullishly. Where’s the growth? I myself have encountered outlandish ideas, or at least ideas that seemed outlandish at first, but my first reaction was to hear it out before making a decision. Those types of people are draining.
Anyways, woke up at 2 am feeling ok. Was working on building my laptop computer and ended up lying down for a sec on the ground, BAD IDEA! Slept for like 10 minutes and then jolted myself up from sleep. I now have a jug of iced tea next to me that I have been sipping of off intermittently all morning. I personally and currently don’t believe that any sort of caffeine is good on this sort of life hack, but I have read some polyphasers using stimulates with no problems. My experience with coffee yesterday turned out to be ok, so this is something I’m just going to have to find out on my own. But I will say that drinking something COLD is a great way to fight off the tiredness temporarily.
I haven’t been able to quantify this phenomenon I’m about to mention, but I do think it is worth note since I read someone else having the same problem and then quitting polyphasic afterwards. I have never had a headache from doing this sort of sleeping but I did have a sort of pressure type feeling in the exact same area a headache WOULD BE say I had one. It’s a weird pressure, I like to imagine it is the feeling of my neurons rerouting/rewiring themselves due to this deprivation of sleep, but I don’t know. I first experienced it on the 3rd day, and on the 4th 5th it did get a little unnerving at times but nothing threatening. Just felt like I was flexing my brain…. as I said it’s hard to quantify.
I definitely want to adapt to this everyman schedule first before I make any sort of changes, but I have been heavily considering figuring out a time schedule without the 2hour core I dread.
February 8, 2010 at 11:35 pm (Days b 6-10)
Crazy long day.
I felt great this morning, on top of the world. Singing and going on while driving my car, looking at everyone else in their cars rubbing their eyes or yawning.
Afternoon rest at 1:20 was on schedule and felt amazing. I’m really getting the hang of going to sleep quickly.
If anyone has trouble going to sleep for their short rest periods I have some suggestions. And for the record it used to take me FOREVER to fall asleep when I was monophasic. I have a very overactive mind, and the quieter things are, like when I’m going to sleep, I will end up thinking non-stop about the most random things. Pertinent things towards my life, but random. What I usually had to do was put on a movie or something that I had seen MANY MANY times and it was the ONLY way I could make myself to go to sleep monophasically. So when I first heard of polyphasic sleeping my first and hardest challenge was to conquer getting to sleep so quickly. Because I wouldn’t be able to watch a movie anymore doing this.
I quickly learned a way that works for me and the conditions that must be present for myself to fall asleep quickly. The warmer the air is around me the easier I fall asleep, like if I fall asleep in my car in the afternoon as opposed to falling asleep in my bed at night. Yes it is winter but I live in Los Angeles California… where it is basically a perfect forecast everyday.
Take my mind of trying to sleep; run a make believe situation in my head. Not something that I need to accomplish, or anything about myself. But think about, I don’t know, like a dog running through the field and everything the dog experiences. Yeah, I know it’s weird but it works for me to not TRY to sleep
Get into a rhythm of breathing, breathe semi-deeply, deeper than a normal breath and stay in that mode, try to make it automatic as you focus on your imaginary image.
relax every muscle in my body. Try to fall into your “bed” whatever it may be.
And MOST importantly, above all else. Don’t RUSH into your sleep period. This morning since Fry’s opened at 8am and 8 am was my rest period I decided to take my rest a little early at 7:40 am. I was listening to music the drive up but as SOON as I saw it was 7:30 I started to let myself calm down. Turned off the music, let my tiredness slowly take over. There’s some guy on youtube who, at one point in his scenes, is standing staring at his clock, telling his friend that he needs to be asleep in 3 minutes for his rest period. Seriously dude?! really?! If that were me, I’d already be in the bed focusing on passing out.
So yeah that’s what works for me.
Being warm, sleeping on my side (I prefer my left), running distracting pleasant images in my mind, purposefully breathe heaver than normal, relaxing muscles (especially your face muscles), and proper preparation right before.
On another note, I’m not sure if the 7:40am rest that was supposed to happen at 8am had anything to do with it but I was INSANELY tired right before my 6:40pm, like really tired 2 hours before so I took a couple of sips coffee at work which did the trick. I was worried it might hyper me up past 6:40 but there were no repercussions as I was so tired already.
Going to hit my 2 hour core at 12 am in about 20 minutes. Dread the longer sleep periods, but let’s see if my body has adapted any further into understand what the core is for.
