Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)
Well, it’s official. The universe hates me.
I was going pretty well with my polyphasic sleep – I felt fantastic after naps, I could fall asleep within 30 seconds, I had good energy levels through the entire day and was getting a lot of productive work done. Most importantly of all, I was loving the experiment. I haven’t enjoyed something so much for months, maybe years.
Then I went on a ski trip and made the decision to deviate from polyphasic for 3 days. When I started the polyphasic again, there was definitely a re-adjustment period; but I knew I’d get through it.
Then I got sick, and I slept copious amounts, again resetting the polyphasic sleep experiment. This time the readjustment felt like it would be just as hard as the initial adjustment right at the start of this experiment, but I knew I’d get through it again.
And just when I was going through what was my THIRD attempt to adjust to polyphasic sleep, the universe slapped me with it’s trump card. I got either food poisoning or a very bad flu. I’ll spare you the gory details but I spent the better part of 3 days in the toilet. It’s no exaggeration to say I spent more time in there than not. I tried to stick with polyphasic but my body was so weak I couldn’t have stuck with it even if I had all the willpower in the world (and by that stage I had very little). I spent every second I could sleeping, and needless to say entirely ruined the progress I’d made with polyphasic sleep.
Coming out of it I’ve tried a few times to “test the waters” as it were and try a 20-min nap to see what happens. It’s felt impossible to get up after only 20 mins, and I keep falling asleep for hours. I’ve also lost that awesome ability to fall asleep within a minute or two, and am back to taking 10-30 minutes to fall asleep.
So let’s do a postmortem. What have I learned? Clearly I hadn’t done polyphasic for long enough for it to become a habit. As awesome as my polyphasic superpowers were, they’re not something you learn overnight; you’ve got to train your body to get used to polyphasic as a lifestyle rather than just an experiment you’re blogging about on the interwebs.
I’ve also learned I have a lot more willpower than I suspected, and I learned sleep-deprivation is both scary as hell and easy to get through (providing diet and other things are in order). I’ve learned polyphasic is a viable and possibly preferable alternative to monophasic sleep (8 hrs a night).
And most of all I’ve learned I really, really, really want to make polyphasic sleep a permanent thing. On that note, I’ve decided to have another run at polyphasic. I’ll be blogging about it on here still, but I’ll reset the day count back to Day 1 (which will be tomorrow).
Wish me luck. I’m probably going to need it.
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