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

Fairly boring day today! This morning I did some more sleep-stacking and had about 4 naps before starting work at 2am. It definitely helped, I made it through to 6am before I started feeling tired. I’ve been sleeping a lot of naps today; I’m trying to catch up on all that sleep I missed out on during the first few days. Hopefully that will help relieve some of the zombie-ness during the early hours of the morning. Not sure if the theory’s sound though, but we’ll see!

At night I went another 5-6 hours without a nap, and walked for a few hours during this time, and ate a LOT of food including bucket-loads of carbs at a Mexican restaurant and even had a couple of shots of tequila (I practically never drink, so 2 shots is considered a lot for me). All of these things are considered huge no-nos during your adaption period to polyphasic sleep. Then to really push it (I’m all for experimenting), I had a coffee (another no-no).

Predictably I had a little crash around 10pm on the way home, but I think I’d chalk that up to still being behind on sleep rather than all the crap I ate/drank. It’s 11pm now, I’ve just woken up from a nap and I feel better (still a bit tired though). I feel like as long as you’re willing to toughen up and suffer through a bit of sleep-deprivation symptoms, polyphasic sleep is more flexible than most people are reporting. Sure, the symptoms suck if you don’t follow the “rules” to the T, but if you go in with the mindset of, “Bad luck body/brain, you’re going to suffer through tiredness every once in a while because I’m not giving up my social life/fun” then your body has no choice but to follow your orders and adapt. I’d rather the zombie-ness after a decent night than to be lame and say, “Sorry, I have to go home for a wee nap.” Lamer than a horse with no legs.

Every time I nap now I’m having extremely long sleep sequences and experiencing serious time dilation – every nap now feels like it’s been 3+ hours. No matter how much logic I throw at my brain, it refuses to believe that less than 3 hours has passed. I know why it happens (my brain is lying to me) but it’s still insanely odd to me. And fun.

I forgot to mention earlier that I’ve been doing some light exercise (mostly cardio) the last few days and haven’t felt any different to normal. My energy levels seem to be exactly the same, though once I’m a bit more adapted I’m going to go back to more hardcore cardio (Tabata Sprints, motherbitches!)

I’ve been asked a few questions about polyphasic sleep so I’ll summarise the answers here.

The Hipster Lifestyle asked:

You post a lot about the positives of polyphasic, what are the negatives?

The start was HELL. I’m only 11 days into it so I’m hardly adapted, but those first 3 days were pure hell on Earth. “Torture” is the best way to describe it. Though it’s definitely easier now, I still feel zombied between midnight and 6am (though this can be countered by exercise, cold showers, standing outside, etc).

Another negative is if you didn’t have enough to do, you’d get extremely bored during the night time hours. Even with lots to do, you sometimes feel a bit ostracised from the rest of society because you’re always awake and alone.

And let’s not deny it can suck only being able to go about 12-13 hours without a nap. When I did that on Day 7, I had to sleep a lot afterwards just to return to normal (mind you, by “a lot” I only mean 1.5-2hrs. But that seems like a lot when you’re a polyphasic sleeper). The next day I tried it again and didn’t last quite as long.

However, I haven’t experimented with caffeine (yet) and other polyphasic sleepers have blogged that they can push it another 3-5 hours on one or two cups of coffee. Though I’m sure that would make the crash that much harder still.

Lots of people have asked:

Why are you doing this?

Come on, it’s insanely fun. Who wouldn’t suffer through a bit of sleep deprivation just to see what would happen? Haven’t you ever done anything completely out of curiousity, experiment for experiment’s sake?

But there’s a couple of other reasons – I never have enough time to do all the things I want to do. I feel like I could triple my hours on this Earth and then I’d only find ever more things to do and need even more time. Polyphasic sleep goes part of the way to solving this for me.

I’ve rarely ever felt good after sleeping, regardless of how long I sleep. I’ve also always taken hours to fall asleep. I read that polyphasic sleep fixes both, so I’m giving it a shot.

Brendan asked:

How is your girlfriend coping with your polyphasic sleep schedule?

My girlfriend read a lot of other polyphasic sleep blogs with me and I was only ever going to do it if she was 100% on board.

During the day it never gets in the way – I simply say, “I’ll be back in 20 mins”, set my alarm for 20 minutes and come back into the room before she’s even really realised I’m gone. It’s the equivalent of saying, “I’m just going to have a shower”.

When we’re out I just delay my naps until I get home. As painful as it is, I don’t fancy the idea of sleeping in a park or something. I’d sleep on a train/bus if I had the chance but the train ride home is only 10 minutes anyway.

Nights are the only time polyphasic sleep really has an effect on our schedule. When she goes to bed I go with her, I’ll wait until she’s asleep and then I set my alarm for 20 minutes and then I’ll get up. She’s a deep sleeper so it doesn’t wake her up. From that point on I take the rest of my naps on the couch because 1) I don’t want to wake her 3-5 times a night and 2) I find it way too hard to get out of bed (something about being under those nice covers makes me want to have 10 x 20 minute naps in a row!)

Living Out of Focus asked:

I exercise heavily; how will polyphasic sleep affect my recovery?

I’m not a health expert so take this with a grain of salt (and do your own research!): I’ve been doing light cardio the last few days and I haven’t felt any negative effects. If anything my body wants the exercise more because it wakes me up during those zombie hours, very useful. In my research on the interwebs, other bloggers who do more hardcore workouts (including bodybuilding) are all saying the same thing: polyphasic sleep hasn’t affected their energy levels during workouts, their recovery or the level to which they can perform during the exercise. If anything, polyphasic sleep could help: you can nap straight after a workout. Post-workout naps have been shown in many studies to be extremely beneficial to energy replacement and more importantly muscle growth, so you could shove a protein shake down your gob and hit the sack.

I’ll say it again though, I’m no expert. If you plan on trying polyphasic, do your own research, and obviously listen to your body before, during and after workouts. I’d also advise going very easy during the first few weeks (mostly likely you won’t have the energy to go hard during the first few days anyway).

A few people have asked:

How long are you planning on doing this?

I started it with the mindset that I’d do it for as long as I could. That is, I’d try and fight through any bad side-effects, but if they got too bad I’d pull out. Being a week-and-a-half into it now, I really don’t want to quit. This is so insanely strange/weird/amazing/awesome/different/quirky that I can’t imagine myself stopping it for at least 6 months or more. Even though I haven’t fully adapted to the schedule and still get zombied-out at night, I believe the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

How come you’re so awesome?

Actually nobody’s ever asked me this except for my girlfriend because she’s got a heart of gold. Pure f–king gold, folks.

If you’ve got any more questions, absolutely any at all, fire them off to me. If you’d like me to experiment or try something new, I’ll see what I can do – just don’t ask me to do drugs or cut myself to see how quickly I heal or drink 32 shots of vodka or anything like that. I’m likely to decline.

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