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

Well, today is certainly a different day! I’m not going to break today’s entry down into times; my energy and nap schedule were about the same across the day. I’m running late doing this blog entry so I’ll just jot down some stuff of note:

Just a reminder I’m on the SPAMAYL schedule (Sleep Polyphasically As Much As You Like). This means whenever I feel I need a nap, I set my alarm for 21 minutes (previously I was using 25 minute alarms) and I grab some shut-eye. I’m doing this on average 7-9 times a day for a max of 3hrs sleep a day. I’m falling asleep really really quickly now – usually within a minute. I can, however, stay awake if I chose to (even with my eyes closed). I don’t pass out when I lay down; sleep now seems to be a conscious decision. Despite the fact I should be tired with just 2-3hours sleep per day, I actually seem to crash less than I was on 8hrs sleep.

I’m starting to feel a LOT less tired and I’ve got a heck of a lot more energy, even more than when I was on 8 hours sleep per night. I do feel like I have some sleep to catch up on from all the torture sleep deprivation I went through at the start when I was using the Uberman schedule (6 x 20 minute naps, always at the same time with no extra naps allowed).

I should note after each nap there’s about a 3-10 minute period of strong grogginess, but this is always gone within 10 minutes (at the very latest) and I feel 100%. I believe this will go away though as I get more adapted, so fingers crossed. Besides, compared to being tired for an hour after sleeping for 8 hours straight and often even requiring more than 1 coffee, this is nothing compared to the grogginess I was going through before starting polyphasic sleep.

My girlfriend and I seem to be coping OK with the fact I’m up all night while she sleeps. She’s a pretty heavy sleeper so she doesn’t really miss my presence too badly. And I’ve got a to-do list that’s probably going to take the rest of the year to complete so my nights are far from lonely. However, it is odd to be up while she snoozes. Sometimes I feel like she’s hibernating; 8 hours seems a LONG time!

During most of my naps I’m dreaming – not vividly, but a dream nonetheless. The details are usually a bit foggy when I wake up. There’s some serious time dilation going on too; every time I wake up after 20 minutes, I swear to god it’s been several hours I’ve been asleep. I can’t shake this feeling and it happens consistently with each nap now. Sometimes I even double check my watch because I can’t believe I’ve only been asleep for 20 mins. My brain can’t seem to believe it’s been that short a time span (it’s sometimes even less than 20 mins) even though I know it has. It’s a very strange/interesting feeling.

Twice now I’ve woken up before the alarm has gone off. I don’t feel tired when I wake up prematurely like this; in fact on one of the two occasions I actually felt more alert than normal. However, I wasn’t sure if I should get up or go back to sleep for the remaining 5 minutes. I chose to go back to sleep and when I woke up I felt more groggy than I had 5 minutes previously. So clearly I need to just get up if I wake up early.

Other than the 3-10mins of grogginess after each nap, there is no tiredness on this sleep schedule. Think about that for a second. I’m sleeping 2-3hrs a day and I’m less tired than when I was sleeping 6-10 hours. Mid-morning tiredness? I simply have a 20 minute nap. Late-afternoon energy-drain? I have a nap. Tired late at night but want to keep going? I have a nap. 3am and feeling zapped? Nap time. Anytime I feel tired, instead of relying on the crutch of caffeine/sugar, instead of struggling through low-energy/tiredness, I fix the problem by taking a nap.

Napping in this way feels more like “hitting the reset button” as Steve Pavlina puts it. It feels like taking a few minutes to regather myself, to recharge my batteries and come out raring to take on the world again. When you sleep for 8 hours a night you’re relying on that sleep to carry you through the next 16 hours, regardless of how much energy you expend, how stressed you get or how badly you need a rest at some point. Is it healthy to need coffee to get through the day? Is it healthy to be so tired you almost fall asleep at work/school and just ignore your body’s warning signs? Polyphasic, specifically SPAMAYL, is all about listening to your body. As soon as it tells you it’s tired, you pause life for a short 20 minutes and then keep going.

How has this not been studied in depth? Why are crazy people posting on blogs on the net (like myself) the only ones doing polyphasic sleep? (PS anyone want to study me? :D) Even though it’s less hours of sleep per day, it seems FAR healthier than what the rest of the world are doing. Just because most of humanity sleep 8 hours or more doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the best option. As I’m sure we can all attest, people are smart, but people in large numbers are stupid.

I was thinking about how much more time this will give me. Let’s say the average person sleeps 8 hours (conservative for some people!) Let’s say I sleep for 3 hours a day (it’s sometimes 2.5 or less). So with conservative estimates we can say every day I’m gaining 5 hours. Over a week, I gain a minimum 35 hours. Think about that; that’s almost a full working week. What would you do with an extra working week every single week?

Every month I’ll get roughly an extra 6 days more than the rest of you. In a year, even using these conservative numbers, I will gain 76 days. That’s two-and-a-half MONTHS. I’m 25 now; if I keep this up and live to 85 I’ll gain 109,575 hours in my lifetime. Four-thousand, five-hundred and sixty-two point six free days. 151 months. Work it out; In a way I’ll have lived until I’m ninety-seven and a half.

So, how much time are YOU wasting in bed?

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