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

Alright. After my initial foray into polyphasic sleep went a little askew at the 1-month mark and my second attempt only lasted a few days, I’ve decided to go back to basics. I’ve read through all my old blog posts and it’s clear to me the reason I was successful for a month during my first attempt was the fact I had a clear-cut plan of attack and I stuck to it. So that’s what I’m going to do again.

I’ve commented before that I’m technically already doing polyphasic sleep, just not the type I want. I’ve been sleeping, on average, 4 hours a day (spread out across the day). Most of that sleep time has been 20 minute naps but every day or two I’ve been failing to wake up from naps (mostly due to poor choices like leaving the alarm right next to the bed, leaving it way too long between naps (sometimes up to 12 hours) and poor food choices). In these instances I’ve slept between 1 and 3 hours but occasionally it’s been as bad as 8 hours.

However, even with the oversleeping (which is supposed to ruin polyphasic sleep and leave you feeling like a zombie) my energy levels are pretty consistent throughout the day and night, except when I push the time between naps out to 8hrs+.  It’s awesome having the day and the night; being able to go out at 4am to take photos of the sunrise without feeling any semblance of tiredness is amazing, as is having what seems like the entire day and the entire night to do whatever I like. I work throughout the night (I work from home) while the world is sleeping, and don’t miss out on the daytime either.

So, one might ask, if I’m already sleeping around 4 hours a day on what is technically polyphasic sleep, and my energy levels aren’t taking a hit at all, why am I acting as if I’m failing? Because, compared to the polyphasic goals I set when I first started, I am failing. The goal was to sleep between 2 and 3 hours a day in ONLY 20 minute naps, with no oversleeping ever. I succeeded for a week or two, and holy crap it felt amazing. There were so many benefits including the ability to fall asleep within 30 seconds, consistently-high energy levels (save for an hour or two early morning), incredibly vivid and awesome dreams that felt like they went on for hours (even though I was only asleep 20 minutes) and of course, bragging rights.

I also got a lot more done on “proper” polyphasic sleep because it was “go, go, go” all the time. The last month I haven’t done much of my to-do list at all and while I’ve been taking a lot of photos, there’s so much more I want to do that I’ve lost the motivation/time to do. This brings me to the main reason I’ve been oversleeping and failing at polyphasic: my attitude to sleep has changed. Before, I saw the 20 minute naps as a “reset”; a way to quickly reboot my system and keep going with what I was doing. In that regard, they were no different to going to the toilet, or grabbing something to eat, or having a shower, or going for a quick jog. Each nap felt like such a minor, insignificant part of the day that I sometimes even forgot to take the naps, especially if I wasn’t feeling tired.

In contrast, now I’m laying in bed too long before closing my eyes to go to sleep and have been reading before most of my naps. I’m taking too long to get up, lazily lying in bed for 20 minutes (which often results in me falling back asleep). I don’t have that insanely-productive motivation that I had before, so I often can’t compel myself to get out of bed when I’m really sleepy. I’ve gone back to my pre-polyphasic mindset, where I viewed sleep as a big part of my day, an event. All of this is resulting in oversleeps, grogginess following each nap and a severe lack of motivation towards my todo list and polyphasic itself.

So clearly I need that aforementioned plan of attack. Here it is:

Type of polyphasic I’m aiming for: SPAMAYL (Sleep Polyphasically As Much As You Like). The idea is to take as many 20-minute naps as needed (taken whenever you start to feel tired, but well before you’re extremely tired), spread across the day/night. The one rule is you have to fully wake yourself up between naps; otherwise it feels like 1 nap with a break in between, rather than 2 separate naps. To ensure I meet this requirement, I’ll set an arbitrary 1 hour minimum time between naps.

SPAMAYL gives a lot of flexibility, as you can “stack” naps before an event that requires you to be awake for an extended period. For example, if you knew you had to be up for 8 hours during the day, you could sleep 2 or 3 (or more) naps during the hours beforehand. Other types of polyphasic sleep (Uberman, Everyman, etc) don’t give you this flexibility; if you miss a nap by as little as half an hour, you absolutely die and your body starts to shut down, forcing you to sleep. I don’t see how that’s doable unless you work from home (which I do) and never ever go out for more than 3-4 hours (impossible). Or, you’d have to start sleeping in public places as some people do; this is not something I’m comfortable with, especially when I’m usually carrying a few thousand dollars worth of camera equipment.

Ideal number of naps: Ideally I’ll be trying to put roughly 4 hours between naps. However, since the name of the game is flexibility, that’s only a guideline; if I start to zonk out before the 4 hour mark then I’ll lay down for a snooze. So the number of naps isn’t hugely important to me (as long as I’m not sleeping more than 3 or maybe 3.5 hours a day). By the way, I’m counting each day as starting at exactly midnight, just like everybody else does.

The challenge comes at night; I work for a company that requires me to work in 4 hour blocks at times that differ from day-to-day, so last time I did feel like I was going through hell towards the last half hour of some of those shifts, especially really early in the morning. I do havea few tricks up my sleeve though.

Diet: Last time I was on a raw food diet and ate almost nothing but nuts, fresh fruit (including homemade juice), vegetables, milk and meat. I tried to cut out carbs entirely, other than the fruit of course. Oh and no coffee :( I’ll try for the same diet again because it definitely made a noticeable difference, but I’m affording myself a bit more leniency towards carbs (wholemeal bread for example). Since I love coffee so damn much, I found myself some organic, chemical-free decaffeinated coffee to have every few days as a special treat. Yum :D

Todo list: Part of the success the first time around was having a massive todo list to be constantly working on. That way the naps felt like a quick energy boost and I always had a reason to jump up when the alarm went off and get back into it. I was also damn happy and very proud of myself and I felt constantly productive. To that end I have my todo list back up on screen and it will never get closed.

Waking up: Before I was launching myself out of bed as soon as the alarm went off and even went as far as to make it a personal challenge to be out of the bedroom within 5 seconds of the alarm going off. To get back on track with that, I’m keeping that thought firmly in my mind as I drift off to sleep, so my subconscious will kick me out of bed before my conscious brain has even had a chance to wake up.

Start date: I’m going on a rockclimbing expedition in two days with no chance of a nap during it, so it makes sense for me to start this polyphasic attempt after that. So Monday 29th will be my official Day 1. Wish me luck; I’ll need it.

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