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

Quick sidenotes: I should mention I’m counting each day as roughly 1am to the next 1am, so a new day starts after my 12.30am nap ends. I’ll also mention that there are lots of different types of polyphasic sleep routines; the one I’m doing (6 x 20min naps) is called the Uberman Schedule.

Early Morning (1am onwards):

Well, the first half of today was a struggle-and-a-half. At around 6am and my eyes kept wanting to close and my brain felt like mush. I can remember thinking, “Am I alive?” Yesterday I commented that 4 hours between naps wasn’t so bad and passed quickly; this morning those 4 hours felt more like 4 years. As soon as I hit the pillow, I’m falling asleep. And when I’m yanked out of my beautiful, precious sleep by that damn alarm clock I can’t remember any sort of dreams. Dreams are a sign of REM sleep, which is what I’m trying to achieve. At the moment the best way to explain it would be to say it feels like I disappear into a deep, dark hole for 20 minutes. Upon wakening I keep having this feeling like I just disappeared off the face of the planet for 20 minutes, as if I failed to exist or something. Strange feeling.

I spent most of last night not doing much other than watching Arrested Development and editing some of my photos on the computer. I did a few chores but there’s only so much you can do quietly without waking the neighbours (and my girlfriend!) Nights are definitely the hardest on a polyphasic sleep circle, made worse by the fact you can’t go out at night to relieve the “boredom”/tiredness. I’m finding it hard to have any energy but I think that’s the time I need to dig deep and really focus on something to distract myself from how tired I feel. I’ve noticed when I’m actively doing something (eg cleaning the house, having a shower, etc) I’m more awake than when I’m doing something passive like watching tv.

Other polyphasic people have mentioned adding in a couple of 20-minute naps whenever they’re really feeling horrible (usually late at night/very early morning). This page even dabbles with the idea of throwing in a lot of them. However, at this stage I don’t want to “cheat” if I can avoid it. I don’t feel that I’m in danger of sleeping through an alarm or anything, so as long as I can keep up the willpower through the night I should be fine. The worst time is the gap between my 12.30am and 4.30am sleeps – that drags on for aaaaaaaaaaages.

Day (9am onwards):

Wow, what a difference I feel only a few hours later! In direct contrast to the nights/early mornings, the days seem a LOT easier to cope with. I’m groggy for half an hour max (usually less) after waking from each nap, but after that I’m good to go. This morning I left the house to go for a walk and I felt about 9/10 in terms of alertness and general happiness! I’ve done quite a bit of housework and gotten a lot of photography done and I felt like I could have skipped my 4.30pm nap (but I didn’t!) Pretty crazy when you consider I’m getting 2 hours sleep a day.

I’m still not experiencing REM sleep (dreaming) though. According to other polyphasic sleepers, when you start to dream that’s the sign that your body’s started to adapt to your new cycle. I would REALLY like an REM sleep just so I can have some sort of concrete evidence that I’m doing it right. It is only early days though, with most other people not REMing until at least 3-5 days and often longer. Maybe I need somebody to say to me, “Patience, my son. Patience.” :)

Evening (5pm onwards):

Still feeling pretty fabulous, especially immediately after my 4.30pm nap. However I definitely still have a minor “mind fog” thing going on. It’s really hard to explain; it’s like my brain is foggy and tired, yet I feel pretty damn good (8 or 9/10). I’m able to carry on a conversation perfectly well and I’m not having any trouble doing anything (though my movements do feel ever so slightly slower than usual). But I can’t shake this feeling that I’m not fully awake yet. I’m not describing it very eloquently but it’s as if I’m awake and asleep at the same time.

I’ve spent a bit of my time reading a bunch of other blogs people have written about polyphasic sleep. A general trend is that almost all of them oversleep. I haven’t even felt like that’s a danger (so far), and to be honest I’m really worried about getting complacent – I need to stay vigilant until I’m over the hump, so to speak. For the most part this has (so far) been agony BUT I’ve never felt for a moment that I’m about to pass out or sleep through an alarm. That’s got me thinking… What am I doing differently to the others who fail? The greatest polyphasic sleep success story comes from Steve Pavlina who, thankfully, has been very detailed in his log-keeping. He did a lot of things right that most people aren’t doing, and I think that’s why so many people are failing. Reading through his logs and looking at my own methods, these are some of the things I think are working for me.

• “Raw” diet: I’m eating bucketloads of vegies, fruits and nuts, and then some meat (but never within an hour of a nap)
• No coffee, no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, no stimulants.  All of these muck with your ability to reach REM sleep easily
• Alarm clock that you can’t snooze: I’ve got an awesome alarm app on my phone that requires me to answer 5 maths problems before the alarm will turn off. That stimulates my brain quite a bit and even gets the adrenaline flowing because I’ve got to race through the questions to shut the alarm off. Everyone, whether a polyphasic or normal sleeper, should consider using it. It’s bloody awesome.
• Work from home/flexible work situation: working from home on my own schedule means I can afford to be a zombie for the first week or two while I adjust and I won’t get myself fired
• Huge to-do list to fill in the free time. Normally I feel like I never have enough time for my photography and everything else I want to do, so I have an almost infinite amount of things to keep me busy
• Already on a biphasic (sleeping twice a day) schedule. For the last few months I’ve often slept under 8 hours at night and then made up for some of that with an afternoon siesta. This is great preparation for polyphasic sleep; it gets your brain used to the idea of having a gap between your sleep times.
• Curiousity = great motivation. Seriously, how cool does polyphasic sleep sound? I also love a challenge and I guess I love knowing that the vast majority of people who try this ultimately fail (quite early on too). I want to do better than them!
• Familiar with sleep deprivation. Maybe I’m an odd duck but I’ve done things like this many times before. In my university days I was a terrible procrastinator; I used to leave things until a week before they were due and then have to work practically non-stop until they were finished. I’ve also spent many nights in the past pulling all nighters after a night of clubbing followed by work the next day. As painful as sleep deprivation is, I’ve done this before.

That about does me for today! Not sure if anybody’s interested in giving this a whack themselves, I’d be interested to know what people think of polyphasic sleep. Does it sound awesome? Stupid? Am I crazy? I’ve had a number of people mention wanting to do it but nobody seems to be in the position to do it (REALLY requires a flexible work schedule). There’s got to be someone out there who’ll give it a serious crack with me!

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