Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)
It’s just occurred to me over 2 weeks have passed since I started polyphasic sleeping. Crazy! One strange effect of polyphasic sleep is night and day start to become less defined. Night to me is the time when it’s darker and I don’t go outside. Day is the time when it’s bright and I do go outside. Other than that, there’s nothing separating the two. It’s strange how I’ve lost track of individual days – as far as my brain is concerned, I’ve been up for 15 days straight. 20 minute naps, as refreshing as they are, don’t seem like more than a quick recharge. It feels like I’m a computer than never gets turned off, only reset once in a while. Imagine your body is a battery, and you spend all day draining it. When it’s at about 2% power you lay down and sleep for 8 hours to recharge it. I’m taking a different tact – my battery never gets below 80% because I keep topping it up with naps. I like my way better.
So let’s get to the title of this post – I overslept this morning. It was by an hour and this time it was most definitely my fault. I slept in my lovely warm bed this morning and when it was time to get up, it felt so damn nice I decided I’d just have one more little 20 minute nap. Of course in all that blissful tiredness I forgot to reset my alarm, so I slept another hour. I was extremely frustrated, as this is about the 5th time I’ve overslept in 15 days. Granted, none of them have been longer than 2 hours, but I was aiming for perfect and I’ve fallen far short.
But then I came to realise that’s just it, isn’t it? I was aiming at perfection and not giving myself credit for how far I’ve come. So this post is a little self-indulgent; I’m going to focus on all the positives of my polyphasic sleep experiment:
- I’m sleeping 2.5-3.5 hours a day and I’m feeling more energetic than I ever did on 8hrs. More importantly my energy levels are consistent and the only time I really crash is early morning. Unfortunately I work during those hours so a nap isn’t possible but I’m sure just one nap would eliminate that tiredness.
- Anytime I get tired, I can fix it in just 20 minutes by napping. Compare that to everybody else who just has to push through the late-afternoon blues, either with coffee or some other stimulant. They might start feeling tired around 2/3pm, but they don’t get to go to sleep until 8 hours later. Ouch.
- No matter what time of day it is, I’m doing something. No more “peak energy levels” or any other bullshit like that. I can work at midday, midnight, 2am, 2pm, it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same to me.
- I can sleep on the hard floor. Seriously, seriously cool. Especially when you consider I used to be a fussy sleeper; conditions had to be perfect and I’d still take an hour or more to fall asleep.
- On that note, I can now fall asleep practically instantly. No more frustrating tossing and turning. No more wasted time. When my head hits the pillow it’s lights out.
- Meditating/weird dreaming; I’m meditating before falling asleep and also sometimes having a funky awake/asleep dream. Pretty awesome. My dreams are also a lot more vivid, and who doesn’t love vivid dreams? I love recalling all the weird things that happen in my dream.
- Bragging rights (although I’m yet to really start using this – I’m waiting until I’m fully adapted). It sounds cool telling people, “I sleep 2.5-3.5 hours a day and I bet I have more energy than you.”
- More time with my girlfriend. I used to be tired in the evenings with her and I’d often have a sleep-in/afternoon nap on the weekends, wasting valuable time. Now I’m up more than she is and anytime I’m tired it’s, “Be back in 20 minutes.”
- I’m doing something that hasn’t been scientifically studied. It’s both scary and thrilling to think the health effects of this have never been studied. In fact, most doctors would tell you it’s impossible, or at least unhealthy and extremely nonviable. So why do I feel so damn good, doc? (This is somewhat similar to the “F–k the police” attitude. Stick it to da man!)
- It’s a good excuse not to eat terribly all the time. Although I’ve had a few junk food meals, for the most part I’ve stuck to a raw food diet in order to not mess up my REM sleep patterns. I doubt I’d be so vigilant with a diet if I wasn’t doing polyphasic sleep.
- Less likely to skip social functions due to tiredness. Somebody could suggest a party at 2am on a weeknight and I’d be able to say yes without fearing how I’d feel the day after.
- It’s fun. More importantly than anything else is how ludicrously fun this experiment has been. I’m enjoying myself and I can’t see myself wanting to stop.
So I guess I’ll try to be a little more forgiving of myself if I oversleep once in a while. It’s hardly the end of the world; people on 8hrs of sleep still manage to sleep through alarms and rock up to work late. So I’m not doing all that badly!
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