Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)

I've decided to stop blogging about my polyphasic exploits, at least until I'm in a position where I can give this blog the attention it needs. Each and every day I'm posting the same thing, "I overslept by an hour or so, bit of a setback, hopefully I'll stop oversleeping", not to mention the huge gaps I'm leaving between posts. Adjusting to polyphasic sleep requires things in your life to be settled enough that you can make it your number one priority, and right now that just isn't true for me. I've got a new job starting in the next few days and there's no way I'm willing to be a mindless, zonked-out zombie during it. I'd actually half-written a post for today, so I'll just include it (unedited) below:

As I stipulated a few weeks back, the universe may be against me. Whilst that does sound like a very passive stance to take, I can't help getting a little down sometimes about all the things that have gone wrong during my attempts to become completely 100% polyphasic (meaning no oversleeps, or at least very few). I went on a ski trip and overslept for 2 days straight (admittedly my fault). I got sick. And then again. I took a week or so off and had another crack, but that only lasted 10 days or so. And then this attempt was going OK until everybody at my workplace was instantly retrenched and I not only had the depression/extreme rage to deal with, but also had no motivation to get up at 3am after a 20 minute nap (that was normally the time I worked, and it was quite frankly depressing to wake up to nothing). Now that I'm starting the new job there's a lot of training to do and I don't fancy the prospect of being a zombie during my first few weeks of the new job. Not a good look.

However, it's worth noting I am actually doing polyphasic sleep right now (I'm just inadvertently oversleeping roughly once a day, by on average 1-2 hours). So where am I right now?

- I sleep, on average, 4 hours a day. Given before I was needing at least 8 hours (usually more) to feel "normal", this is quite an achievement.
- I'm able to achieve that without really getting tired anymore (unless I push the time between naps to 8+ hours). No more "afternoon blues", no more coffee needed to get me through the day.
- Instead of having the day/night dichotomy most people have, the entire 24 hours of a day seems the same to me. 3am isn't much different to 3pm (although I do feel more tired at 3am - my body is probably still used to its regular circadian rhythm). This means I'm able to work from home during the night and early hours of the morning, and then have the entire day to do whatever I please. Awesome. It also means if I feel like catching the sunrise at 5am, it's absolutely no trouble at all to be awake for it. There's no "Oh my god I have to drag my sorry ass out of bed at 4 in the morning..."
- I can move naps around and stack them if I have something important on. I went on an all-day rockclimbing adventure the other day and didn't feel tired at all (though I did make a poor decision to oversleep when I got back, but it's no big deal).
- I can sleep at the drop of a hat. Before I used to take an hour to fall asleep; these days I'm out within 3 minutes max (often within 30 seconds).
- I can sleep anywhere. I used to be the type of person who could only sleep in my own bed; I stuggled to sleep in a hotel room or anyone else's bed, and things like sleeping on a couch or on the plane were such foreign concepts to me. These days I can do all that and more. Hell, many of my early morning naps are spent on the hard
- In a way, because I've done been so lax and haven't really stuck to the polyphasic schedule as perfectly as I'd intended, I've trained by body/mind to be more flexible and just "roll with the punches". By that I mean all the delayed naps and subsequent oversleeps have meant I now take a nap whenever I feel like it, without ever thinking about how long it's been since my last nap. The whole day/night has opened up to me and I don't have any particular time I get most of my sleep. The biggest problem with polyphasic (apart from the near-impossible adaption) is how much it can disrupt your day-to-day activities. I don't have that; if I have something on, I don't even think about naps and it's no drama to go 12+ hours without a nap. I'm almost never tired and when I am, I can either take a quick nap or have some coffee (only takes one quarter of a mug) and I'm good to go for another few hours. Sleep is something I do, but it isn't part of my day.

Finally I'll comment on the poll I have down the bottom of each post. Here's the results:

On average, how many hours do you sleep each night?
8 or less (41%, 17 Votes)
6 or less (34%, 14 Votes)
3 or less (17%, 7 Votes)
10 or less (5%, 2 Votes)
More than 10 (3%, 1 Votes)

It's not surprising that most people who took the poll sleep "8 or less" or "6 or less" hours a night. What I'd be more interested to know is how those of you sleeping 6 or less hours actually feel each night? I bet you're tired as buggery. We also had 7 people saying they're on "3 or less" hours sleep a night (one was my vote). To you other six: what sort of polyphasic are you on? Whatever it is, I hope it's working out as well for you as my weird, hybrid style works for me. Before this experiment I was in the "10 or less" category and even that wasn't enough. I'm not either in the 3 or less or 6 or less category, and holy cow it feels good.

I've got other things upcoming/on the go, so look to this space in the next few days and weeks. Also check out and "like" my Facebook page for all my photography and personal news!

And if anyone else if polyphasic sleeping, I'd love to hear about it - drop a comment below!

- Handy Andy Pandy

Polyphasic Sleep v3 (Third Attempt) entries:
Intro to Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic Sleep v3 Prologue
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Day 1
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 2-3
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 4-5
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 6-9
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 10 and on

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Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)

Greetings Earthlings! I haven't updated the polyphasic log in a few days before I had a bit of a crisis. The company I worked for was bought out by a competitor, who promptly fired all the staff without any notice (despite our contracts requiring 14 days notice). I don't want to talk about it too much or I'll be here all day, but it has a happy ending: a third company heard what happened and swooped in and grabbed us all. Yay! I'll still be working from home, though the hours may be a little more strict here. But I'll still be doing 4hr shifts so I should be ok with polyphasic.

So how's the sleep actually been going? I've overslept a fair bit (especially the two days after I got fired - I had no motivation to get up at 3 in the morning). But other than an hour or two here and there, I've kept to the 20-minute naps. I haven't been as strict with the naps times as I should have been, often delaying a nap by an hour or more, especially while I've been getting the new job sorted. Hopefully once I'm settled in polyphasic will be easier.

I'll post more tomorrow.

 

Polyphasic Sleep v3 (Third Attempt) entries:
Intro to Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic Sleep v3 Prologue
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Day 1
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 2-3
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 4-5
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 6-9
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 10 and on

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Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)

Well the last two days have certainly been a bit more interesting, polyphasic-wise. I did a bit of research and checked out what other polyphasic sleepers were doing and came across an interesting piece of advice. One polyphasic sleeper said it's much easier to adapt if you have a regimental nap schedule with naps at predetermined times, then once you're adapted you can move naps around. This is what I did the first time I tried polyphasic and to be honest it worked rather well. Another piece of advice is that while you're adapting, if you miss a nap because you're too busy to take it (which I often am) it's better to try and stick to the schedule than to have the nap. So if you miss a nap you're supposed to carry on as if you didn't miss it, and just nap at your next allocated time.

That seems completely weird and counter-intuitive, but the last 2 days I've trialled it and (surprisingly) it works! Yesterday I pushed the time between naps in the day to about 10 hours, obviously skipping a couple of naps I would have normally taken during that time. When I got home, instead of having a couple of naps within a small period of time, I took 1 single nap and then upon waking forced myself to stay up for another 4 hours before having another nap. At first I was pretty tired and my body was screaming "Go back to bed!" but that faded after an hour, and by the time I'd had the second nap 4 hours later I actually felt fantastic!

Whilst you can successfully stack naps as a preemptive measure before you plan on staying up for a long time, it doesn't seem to work if you stack naps after you get home. The problem with this if you're having multiple naps in a short period of time when you're really tired, which almost guarantees you'll oversleep. If you wake yourself up completely between naps there's less chance of oversleeping, because your brain knows that you don't want to oversleep, no matter how tired you are. But if you don't fully wake yourself up in between naps, that resolve to not oversleep fades somewhat and your subconscious talks you into staying in bed and going back to sleep for hours and hours.

So to cut a long story short, today was the first time I've pushed the time between naps to a significant amount of time and haven't overslept or died from it. Finally, success!

 

Polyphasic Sleep v3 (Third Attempt) entries:
Intro to Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic Sleep v3 Prologue
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Day 1
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 2-3
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 4-5
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 6-9
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 10 and on

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Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)

It's been an interesting 2 days! Yesterday (day 2) I stacked up on heaps of sleep before embarking on an all-day (5am-9pm) outdoor rockclimbing adventure (click for pics). Stacking up on naps was clearly the way to go; I got through an entire day of extremely-intense exercise, in the hot sun, without a lot of food (and certainly no caffeine). It's nice to know when I have no chance of a nap I can make a preemptive strike by nap-stacking.

However, around 9pm I started getting extremely tired. My girlfriend and I were in the city and I made the (silly) decision to take her out for dinner instead of going home to nap. By the time we got back home it was well after 11.30, and I was definitely feeling the need to crash. I lay down for a nap and... Surprisingly enough, woke up without much drama!

However, staying awake was the real problem. I was incredibly tired, and my body was screaming at me to go to sleep. I couldn't keep my eyes open and kept "micro-sleeping" (nodding off for 1 or 2 seconds). I went and sat outside to wake myself up and after about 30 seconds I started feeling somewhat OK. At this point I had two choices: stay up for a couple of hours before having another nap, or go straight back to bed (I'd only been awake 45 minutes). A few days ago I promised myself I'd make sure I was 100% awake before going back for another nap, and I wish I'd done that. I ended up half-waking up from the next alarm and being half-asleep enough to fall straight back to bed 5 seconds after setting it. I ended up sleeping for a total of 7 hours.

Of course it's frustrating, but I'm choosing to use it as a learning experience, a way to test the boundaries and iron out all the kinks, so to speak. Now I know that while it's possible to nap-stack and go on an all-day, extreme-exercising adventure, I certainly can't underestimate how tired I'll be afterwards. I need to be more diligent next time and make sure I'm 100% awake between naps. It's too easy to stay in bed when you're half-awake.

In the hours since the oversleep I've stayed awake as much as possible and have only had 2 naps in a 17-hour period, in an attempt to get myself back to the sleep-deprivation stage. I'm feeling good right now, so I'll keep this motivation going.

Polyphasic Sleep v3 (Third Attempt) entries:
Intro to Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic Sleep v3 Prologue
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Day 1
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 2-3
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 4-5
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 6-9
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 10 and on

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Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)

Bugger it. I know yesterday I said I'd start polyphasic sleep in a few days but I had the urge to just go for it today so I jumped right in and started.

I had an interesting early morning (3am to 10am); I was tired as buggery and felt a little like a zombie, but I was able to push through it rather easily. Eating food (especially fruit) really helped, as did sitting outside in the cold every few minutes to wake myself up. I managed to get a lot of work done as well. The time between naps was on average 4 hours.

Tomorrow I'm spending the entire day rock-climbing with zero chance of a nap, so from midday onwards I started having a nap every hour or two to ensure I don't zonk out tomorrow. Waking up from the naps has been very easy, with the grogginess/lethargy only lasting between 1 and 5 minutes after getting up. After that I've felt 100% fine, if I had to rate it I'd say 10/10.

Two things are the same as the first time I attempted polyphasic sleep. Falling asleep is like hitting a switch; one second I'm conscious and fully awake, the next second I'm asleep.

The other thing that's the same is when I wake up, it feels as if I've entered some sort of void and have lost 20 minutes; I'm not having any dreams and I don't even feel like I've slept, I feel like I disappeared from time and space for 20 minutes somehow, like I failed to exist. It's a very, very, very strange feeling, certainly takes some getting used to. Last time it only took a week for that feeling to go and for me to start having proper, vivid dreams. Can't wait!

Tomorrow, with the rockclimbing, I'll have to get through 16+ hours without a nap. To be honest I'm very nervous about falling asleep, so I'm taking a small amount of coffee just incase. Fingers crossed all goes well.

Polyphasic Sleep v3 (Third Attempt) entries:
Intro to Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic Sleep v3 Prologue
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Day 1
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 2-3
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 4-5
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 6-9
Polyphasic Sleep v3: Days 10 and on

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