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

Hello boys and girls! Yesterday I mentioned how fabulously I felt during the normally-atrocious “graveyard” hours (between midnight and 6am or so). Well, I’m happy to report that carried on until about 7am, when I started having some mild-moderate tiredness symptoms. I didn’t have the option to nap so I kept working until 9am without too much fuss. I’m pretty happy with that! In all that time (between midnight and 9am) I only had 1 nap, so  clearly the meditating idea and the light-fix I posted yesterday are working.

I had a nice thought today as I watched the sun rise from my balcony. It’s a rather lovely thought to know I get to see each and every sunrise – I used to miss the sunrise on my old 8hrs sleep schedule. On that note I had a great idea for a photo involving that very notion; I won’t give much more away but it’s a pretty decent concept, if I can make it work. Watch this spot!

Fast forward to this afternoon. After all my frustrations yesterday about oversleeping, what do you think the funniest (sarcasm) thing that could happen would be? Yup, you guessed it, I overslept. I woke up half an hour later than I’d planned (I know, not much) with my head spinning and all those awful oversleep-symptoms kicking in. Frustrated, I grabbed my phone to try and work out why I hadn’t woken up and saw this stupid message plastered across the screen: “The alarm app has closed down due to an error.”

Are you kidding me? The mind is willing but the technology is weak. Unfortunately I’m just going to have to go back to my regular phone alarm, rather than use the fancy app. As much as I love it (and I do LOVE it), if it’s failed me even once that’s not good enough. In the 12 months I’ve had the phone, the default alarm app has never failed so I’ll just use that.

One negative about polyphasic sleep is you never get a chance to unwind. As falling asleep is almost the enemy (other than those lovely 20-min naps!), you can never just laze around on the couch, you can’t watch tv in bed, you can’t sleep away a tiring day. You never get to “veg out”; you’re always on alert. I sort of miss sleeping. I miss being lazy on the weekend – on polyphasic sleep, there are no weekends; every day feels the same.

Though it obviously has its upsides. For all us creative types, polyphasic sleep is a godsend if for nothing else than the amazing amount of extra free time you gain. Being alert all the time and never lazing around means you get so much more done and I guess life feels a lot more interesting for it. Hell, I can spend the late night/early morning doing chores and getting the house clean, so that I have all day, every day free to do what I want. Whenever I get a little sleepy, I reboot with a 20-min nap and I’m good to go for another 4-8 hours. Other than the horrible graveyard hours I was suffering through before, I’m starting to feel like I don’t have to struggle through lack of sleep anymore.

It’s turning out to be a LOT more flexible than others have reported. This SPAMAYL (Sleep Polyphasically As Much As You Like) is clearly the way to go. And I’m only sleeping 7-10 x 20 min naps each day, so between approximately 2 and 3 hours of sleep. Not bad! I’ve eaten crap food (junk food) all day and I feel fine – other polyphasic sleepers report oversleeping a lot of the time when they eat badly. I even spent the night drinking a few margaritas with no effect on my sleep/waking, other than a tiny bit of “mind-fog” (but so little I considered not even bothering to mention it).

I likes polyphasic sleep.

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