Intro to Polyphasic Sleep | First attempt (lasted 30 days) | Second Attempt (lasted 7 days) | Third Attempt (ongoing)
Ok, Day 3 people. It was an eventful day, to say the least. Most of my nap times deviated from the set-plan I’d made, but I still slept roughly the 2hrs 40mins I’d previously decided on. I worked 12 hours straight, from 8pm the day before all the way through to 8am this morning. I was absolutely, horrifically zombied for most of it, particularly the early-morning. I was able to take 2 x 20 minute naps roughly 4 hours apart, but they didn’t help at all. I kept almost passing out while sitting at my computer chair, and I must have had about 10 “micro-naps” (falling asleep but waking up literally 1 second later when my head droops down – not fun.) Nothing I did seemed to help – I tried sitting out on the cold balcony to get some fresh air, I used my rowing machine, splashed my face with cold water, ate hot mustard, etc. I tried everything on my “List of things to do when fighting sleep deprivation”, but nothing helped.
So when 8am rolled around and it was time for a nap, I was clearly in a vulnerable position as far as oversleeping was concerned. And yup, you guessed it; I overslept. Luckily it was only by 30 minutes (for a total of 50 minutes), but holy crap it threw things off. I woke up with my phone in my hand so I think I must have woken up, turned my alarm off and just passed out again. I’m glad to know my body woke itself up after 50 minutes though – it could have been a lot worse!
It took me a good 2 hours to wake up from the oversleep, the entire time my head throbbing and screaming at me to go back to bed. I felt horrible, worse than any hangover anyone has ever experienced in the history of ever. I skipped my next nap to compensate, and ended up going about 6 hours before my next nap (more on that in a second).
I was able to overcome it by eating a bucketload of food, particularly a big-ass steak. I’ve probably been under-eating during this entire experiment, because whenever I stuff my face full of food it seems to wake me up almost instantly. It makes sense; I should be eating a lot more given I’m awake a heck of a lot more than normal and am burning a lot more energy.
The good news is I’ve felt fantastic once I got over that bit of lethargy/zombie hell. My girlfriend and I went out for 6 hours in the afternoon and with no chance of me having a sleep in that time I decided to drink an iced coffee. I know I’d previously decided to stay away from caffeine but I was curious to see if it can be used during the rare times I can’t have a nap for an extended period. I felt wide awake, full of energy and most importantly very motivated and creative during those 6 hours. I took a lot of photos while we were out during those 6 hours and I’m fairly happy with quite a few of them. I didn’t even crash at the end of the 6 hours; when we finally got home I had to force myself to lay down for a 20 minute nap.
Interestingly, I woke up after just 8 minutes of that nap and I felt absolutely refreshed, wide awake and extremely peaceful; my head was “zen” and devoid of thoughts. After a couple of minutes of lying there I decided I’d spend the rest of the 20 minutes sleeping some more, so I went back to sleep (only took about 10 seconds to fall back asleep). I woke up feeling just as good; absolutely no sign of zombies this time. Yay! I felt just as good after the next nap I had as well.
So the data: My nap times have been (roughly) 1am, 4am, 7am, 9am (slept for 50 minutes), 2.40pm, 8.30pm, 11.30pm. Most of them were rubbish (meaning I felt horrible upon waking), except for the 8.30 and 11.30 ones.
The naps have been 1am, 4am, 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm
Anyone heard of the whole “YOLO” phase all the kiddies are into? It stands for, “You Only Live Once”. I don’t know if the kiddywinks actually understand its “carpe diem” roots; I think they’re just saying it to be cool. Here’s the irony of the situation: I started saying it constantly, as in every 5 seconds, to annoy my poor girlfriend and amuse myself. Saying it as a reply to every question she asked me has resulted in a “say yes to everything” attitude, similar to the Jim Carey movie “Yes man”. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try, so I’m going to try and keep it up over the next few days and see what happens.
After all, YOLO.
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