Polyphasic Sleep, Day 7; on napping

Up at 413 this morning.

On napping.  Some polyphasic sleep resources list careful schedules, with recommended times for naps.  I have not found many of them to be useful, except in pointing out the utility of spreading out short naps instead of taking one large nap.  For sleep with a core night period, the so-called "Everyman Cycle," sleep is suggested between 1-4am, with naps at 9am, 2pm, and 9pm.  I do not find this effective.

In my first polyphasic period in 2009, I tried to follow a similar plan, but found that the late night naps were extremely ineffective.  I often woke tired, and it would take 15-30 minutes of grogginess to regain alertness.  I did better simply skipping the late nap altogether, or trying to fit three in closer together earlier and then a long chunk awake before the core period.  Prior to starting that polyphasic experiment, I was going to bed at 10pm.  My first order guess would be that taking a nap too close to a time that your body associates with "bedtime" leads the body to think you are going to bed, and getting up 20 minutes later is a bit of a shock.

I also do not like the idea of having the naps rigorously scheduled.  Of course, it helps to have an idea of when you plan to take them so you can plan meetings and outings, but that should only be done when necessary.  Reading other blogs of people who attempt this, it is not uncommon to see them complaining of trying to stay awake.  Some say it is consistently after lunch for them, some say around 11pm at night.  If you cannot stay alert and functional, is that extra time doing you any good?  Why not take a nap?  The whole point of polyphasic sleep is the claim that a short nap can be as re-energizing as long sleep.

Today I was up at 0413, and I was at work before 0630.  By 0700, however, I was getting pretty sleepy.  So I took a nap.  I took another at 0940.  All of my naps are done with my cell phone as a timer, and last twenty minutes unless I wake up early, which is not uncommon.  I expect I will probably take another nap around 2pm, and be done with naps for the day, going to bed between midnight and 1am.  If I get tired in the evening, though, I can always nap.

If you sleep 3-4 hours at night and take 3 twenty minute naps during the day, you are running one 4-5 hours of sleep compared the the average 8-9.  Does 20 more minutes of a nap as needed make that much of a difference? Isn't it worth it if you can actually be alert for those awake hours instead of just sitting there nodding your head?

The goal of polyphasic sleep is not to only sleep 30 minutes every four hours, or every six.  The goal is to maximize alert awake time.  If you can't do anything while you are awake, you might as well give up and go back to normal sleeping.  If you want to be productive, accept the fundamental premise and Take A Nap!.

Polyphasic Sleep: Day 6

Managed to get out of bed at 430am today.

Last time I went polyphasic for a while, I found it easiest to just make the massive switch from going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 6am to going to bed at 1am and getting up at 4am.  This time around, I am finding the switch harder, but I am switching from a 1-5am schedule to a 1-4am schedule and changing from a single 1hour nap in the late afternoon to twenty minute naps throughout the day as needed, roughly three most days.

I think the less major sleep change does not produce the sleep deprivation that other people attempting this report experiencing, and that I experienced last time.  That sleep deprivation leads to more efficient use of sleep time, and lets you get up earlier.  This effect is enhanced by moving the initial bedtime later as well, forcing the body to stay up later than it expects.

In contrast, I now go to bed at the same time as before, roughly 1am, but I just try and get up an hour earlier. I am actually less tired than I used to be, because the spread out naps are more effective than the one hour nap was.  By spreading out my naps, I can take one whenever I feel the need.  It is much harder to fit in an hour long nap, so it was often less optimally timed.  Being better rested makes your sleep less efficient during the core sleep period, which is, I would hypothesize, why it is harder for me to make a one hour reduction than it was to make a 5 hour reduction in core sleep.

That said, I am getting there.  Thirty minutes closer.  With practice I think I can get it the rest of the way.

Polyphasic Sleep: Weekends and Day 4

Weekends.

How, when you are trying to sleep four or fewer hours per day, do you deal with weekends?  Back when I was sleeping for 8-9 hours a day, it was next to impossible to get me out of bed before noon on the weekends, and 2pm was not an unusual time for me to rise.  I wanted 9 hours of sleep a day, but during the week my schedule would result in 6-8 far more often than 9, and that sleep debt would catch up with me.  On the weekends, all I really wanted was sleep.

So how has this changed now that I am sleeping 4-5 hours scattered around the day?  I still consider weekends to be a time to indulge in extra sleep, and to catch up for missed sleep during the week.  The real difference is in what the body considers indulgence.  While I used to get up between noon and 2pm on weekends, and would be rather upset if I had to get up before 10 for some event, on the weekends now I can't sleep past 7am, and 6am still feels luxuriously decadent.  When your alarm normally goes off at 4 am, 6am feels great, and by 7 I feel how I used to when I would get up at 2pm.  The big difference is that, rising at 7 instead of 2, I still have an entire Saturday ahead of me.

Today is Monday, though, and it is a different matter.  Went to bed a little before 1am, with the alarm set for 4am.  Somehow slept through until 5am.  Oh well, try again tonight

Polyphasic Sleep, Day Two

I have already encountered a hitch in my polyphasic sleep plans.  It was, in my opinion, the largest hurdle there is when it comes to adopting this lifestyle, namely social pressure.  My wife was upset that I would basically be spending no time sleeping in bed at night, and asked me to not do the Uberman schedule that is based entirely on naps with no core.

As I mentioned earlier, I had previously done the so-called "Everyman" schedule that is a core of sleep with three or four naps.  I proposed going back to this cycle, and my wife was supportive, so I am changing gears and will be documenting my progress with this plan.

I will be sleeping from approximately 1-4am every day.  Naps will be as needed, but are loosely planned for 9am, 2-3pm, and 7-9pm.  When I did this plan before, I found that I had a decent amount of flexibility in my nap schedule, so I think I should be fine with this plan.  My workplace has an empty office right next to me.  I have a pillow stored in a cabinet there, so when nap time hits I can go in, lock the door, close the blinds, and rack out on the desk.

Starting a polyphasic sleep schedule

Previously, I maintained a polyphasic "Everyman" sleep schedule, where I slept for three hours at night, from 1-4am, and then took three 20 minute naps scattered throughout the day as needed, for a total of 4 hours of sleep. My nap times were fairly flexible, although there was some criticism from friends of my odd sleep habit.

I had to abandon that cycle during a cross country relocation. The trip took a month, and we stopped numerous times to visit friends and family over the holidays, which meant numerous social engagements that I could not politely escape to take a nap.

Once set up in my new home, I quickly and naturally fell into a biphasic pattern, sleeping from 1-5 am, and then taking a 1 hour nap around 5pm, for a total of 5 hours of sleep.

I am now about to attempt to go polyphasic again, with an attempt at the "Uberman Sleep Schedule." This entails 6 naps a day, 4 hours apart, for 20-30 minutes each, and no core chunk of sleep at all. I tried to start yesterday, turning my one hour nap into two twenty minute naps at 5 and 9pm. When I went to bed at 1am, though, I slept through my alarm and woke up on my own at 5am. Interesting because normally I need the alarm to get up at five, but disappointing because I failed to get up again at one. Although it isn't quite correct to say I slept through it. I set my cell phone alarm, which is much quieter, and in the interests of not disturbing my wife as I got up, I was getting up slowly and fell back asleep. Not quite the same thing, and I just need to be more assertive about getting out of bed when I try tonight.

Why do we sleep? Because we have nothing better to do.

An interesting article on the purpose of sleep has just been published. According to the article, lots of reasons for sleep have been proposed, but when looking at the animal kingdom as a whole, none of them holds up as a reason for why we do it. The article proposes that instead of evolving for the purpose of immunological function, hormonal regulation, or memory synthesis, sleep exists to optimize energy conservation.

The example of the brown bat is used, which sleeps for 20 hours a day. Why does it sleep so much? Because its prey is only available during a short window of time, and to be active outside of that window would be using energy with no ability to catch food to offset the expenditure. Being more active would also leave the bat more vulnerable to predation from birds. So if there is no benefit to being awake and active, why not sleep? I think we can all relate to this idea. How many lazy summers as a kid did we spend sleeping excessively solely because we had nothing else to do?

This has interesting implications for those of us interested in polyphasic sleep. There is very little real science that has been done so far on the topic, but there are quite a few blogs out there by people who have tried it. One theme that crops up again and again is people struggling with or giving up on the polyphasic lifestyle due to having "nothing to do" with those extra hours. I maintained a polyphasic sleep cycle for a few months in Seattle, and a common question by friends was "Why would you do that? What would you do with the extra time?"

If we sleep because we have nothing better to do, the answer seems intuitively obvious: find something better to do.