Tracking the progress and personal development of Jimmi.
Hey guys, sorry for the long delay in posting. Everything will be explained on http://polyphasic.raapidenterprises.com, which is my new subdomain hosting my polyphasic blog. Please go there for all my new posts, as this one is obsolete now (and all my old posts are in my self-hosted blog anyway).
Thanks,
Raap!d
I don’t know if it is a different attitude that makes this schedule easier, but something definately has. I mean, I still get badly fatigued, and crave sleep at different points, but I can comfortably say that I am adjusting. It was foolish of me to have a half hearted attempt at staying up, with no consequences for oversleeping. Now that I am not oversleeping (or not badly during the night) I am feeling like I am adapting, no matter how tired I am.
This morning was rather comfortable. I was very tired for the majority of the time, and getting progressively worse until 4.30, when I had my nap. I decided beforehand that it was not wise to have extra naps in the morning, and the reasoning being that I will likely oversleep, and doesn’t help getting me over the effects of melatonin. To keep myself awake, I found myself doing push ups and other physical exercises. When 6 am hit, I decided to go for a run, which helped at keeping me awake, and had a cold shower afterwards. Even after getting my 8.00 nap at school I still felt quite tired, and couldn’t seem to do any work until I squeezed an extra nap in my free around 10.30 am. After that I could work at a very average pace through the whole day, until the last lesson, where I really felt the need to sleep (the mid afternoon sag).
Despite this sleep deprivation, I am pleased and highly motivated at the fact that I am not depending on core sleeping anymore, and now am simply struggling with the naps themselves. I know that I should be good to go as long as I can keep this up for the whole week. I realise however that my 31 days to adjust is really not feasable. At my current state, I doubt I would pass any exam, even with a heap of revision. Consequently, I must adjust in the rest of this week to ensure that I can do well. It would be a huge waste if I spent all this time adjusting just to need to fall back into the normal routine for my exams, so that is a little extra motivation to keep going.
My persuits were almost cut short today after school though. I was feeling the need for a nap, and I had one at 5. Being extra conscious of the fact that I really need to get up, I set an alarm on my computer to wake me up. Turns out my computer alarm is better at waking me up than my mobile phone alarm, and so I only set one alarm on my phone. Big mistake. I was woken up by mum at 8, telling me to come out and eat some dinner. I was very unhappy about my oversleeping, and I wondered what had actually caused it. Turns out my laptop was on powersaver mode.
My school is not laptop friendly, and subsequently finding a powerpoint is hard. I use my laptop on a day to day basis at school, so I put it on powersaver mode so that it lasts. When I get home, I plug it into power. My laptop starts charging, but (stupidly) doesn’t turn back to high performance or balanced settings. So, after 15 mins of disuse, my laptop goes into hibernation, and doesnt play its alarms. Additionally, I slept ontop of my bed, which definately helped me in oversleeping.
Despite this, I feel that I can keep going with this schedule, as the oversleep was not very long. I just need to be careful. One massive oversleep and it’s all over. If this happens, I will quickly change back into monophasic for the exams, and restart in the holidays.
Let’s just hope that isn’t going to happen,
Jimmi
Here I am, still alive on day 17 of the uberman schedule. But today feels dramamtically different from all the others. The main reason is that I did not oversleep.
I promised myself today that I would not oversleep, and by using extreme measures of keeping awake (4 alarms, all lights on in room, sleep on floor with only a pillow and no blankets in clothes, get friend to call me if not responding on Facebook after 40 mins of naptime). Oh, please note that the only other thing that I haven’t tried in getting me up, apart from the ridiculous ideas involving cold water and caffeine, is drinking lots so as to have to wake up after a while to go to the toilet. While this sounds like a good idea, the chance of lucid dreaming is far too high, and I don’t want to accidentally wet myself =P .
So, in the early morning I actually didn’t find it that hard to stay up. I suspect that is probably due to having as many lights on as possible to counteract the melatonin production in my body, and due to my slow adaptation to the uberman schedule. Waking up from my 5am nap was a bit of a struggle, but I found that it was alright after I did a few push-ups (physical excersice does wonders in keeping people awake).
The rest of the day was alright, although I still felt a bit of a slump nearing my 1 pm nap and at the end of the school day. As I am writing this, I can feel that my body craves sleep. The second night is always worse than the first, as I have found out when I was younger, trying not to sleep (got halfway through day 2 and slept irregularly for days and days after) for as long as humanly possible.
I know I keep putting off the writing of the introduction to polyphasic sleep and how to get started blog posts, and I feel the constant need to apologize for this. Half the time I really just don’t have the mental power to start writing about it, and the other half I am too busy and stressed by work to get around to it. Nevertheless, I will start it sometime soon, and judging by the amount of people talking to me about my sleeping schedule and their interest in it, I’d better get writing soon =)
So, that was pretty much the whole day. My mental power wasn’t quite as good, but my motivation is soaring right now. As long as my willpower manages to overcome my lazy subconscious tomorrow, I should be all in the clear.
Well, time to do some work.
Jimmi
I will apologise in advance for this post, as it will be rather short, mainly due to the fact that I can’t be bothered writing the same thing again and again.
It’s rather funny, me and my oversleeping. I really haven’t grasped the concept of actually keeping awake and to schedule, with my motivation sagging when I am tired. The early hours of the morning seems to go far too slowly, and I cannot seem to function well enough to do much work, which is a huge disadvantage. Every morning now that I oversleep, I seem to reach the conclusion that this isn’t working out, I am killing myself (well, I feel like it anyway) and that I should either give up or swap to an Everyman schedule, despite the fact that it would take longer to adapt to. Later on in the day however, when I don’t feel like someone is constantly jabbing me in the head, I feel like everything is working out ok, and that I am all good to continue. I suppose they even themselves out, but I just wish I was more motivated in staying awake in the mornings.
One of my biggest crimes, as I have stated earlier is my habit of taking extra naps, in the hope that it will aid me in functioning properly and reduce the chance of crashing. Unfortunately, it turns out that it does the exact opposite, for every time I wake up, all I can think about is sleeping again, making me either reset my alarms for an extra 25 mins (which are usually set wrong, pm instead of am for example, but this could just be my subconscious being tricky =D) or simply to just lie back down and fall to sleep.
Another bad one is the setting of just one alarm instead of multiple ones. Because my wilpower is so low, the chances of me sleeping through an alarm is astoundingly high, and to counteract this I set as many alarms as possible. Unfortunately, I only have my mobile phone (which can have up to three, one that repeats if not told to shut up) and my computer (which I can set as many as I like, but I dare not set it to loudly as to wake up other household members) to wake me up. An interesting idea that I just had would be to put the lappy on the ground next to me. Then I will definately hear it =)
So, for tonight (and tomorrow morning) I have written a basic list of things that I can do. Unfortunately, they are almost all computer games as my head never seems to like revision or homework at the early hours of the morning if it isn’t essentual, and other activities (mixing, piano, swordfighting, taming cougars etc.) tend to make far too much noise. What I can hope for is that eventually many other friends may join in a similar quest (or just stay up more) to fight against sleep, providing entertainment throughout the night. Until then I will just have to look at Messenger and Facebook sadly, with 0 friends online.
Moving on, today my 1 am sleep was ok, but I felt slightly tired after waking, getting exponentially tired after about 30 mins. At 3 am I took a nap, which ended up as two naps, falling into my trap. Amazingly, I was able to get up and survive for another hour until 5 am, where I had 4 naps in a row, the last one turning into core sleep until about 7:15 when I was awoken. The morning was probably one of the worst that I have ever experienced. I got up utterly exhausted with a huge amount of convincing from my mother, and promptly sat on the couch, staring upwards realising how screwed I am for todays chemistry (redox) and maths (calculus) tests. I managed somehow to find the time to have a nap for about 10 or 15 mins on the couch before going to school (probably around 7:45, although the actual time excapes me), and this nap dramatically helped in keeping me awake, alert and functioning. Sure, I definately wasn’t 100% (more like 50%), but I was up and running. As I got to school, I progressively awoke from my haze, and did my tests. Funnily enough, I am almost certain that I got A’s in both of them, and I bet that if I didn’t get my nap at 7:45 I would have probably gotten a C or worse.
This brings up an interesting conclusion, that being that I am halfway adapted to Uberman, and half Monophasic. I can’t seem to survive without oversleeping, and yet the only sleeping that actually feels restorative is the REM sleep naps. The long ‘core’ naps, that go for over an hour make me feel horrible and groggy on awaking, but the naps make me feel great (even if I start to feel tired an hour later). This is both motivating and worrying. Any evidence that I am actually progressing with my sleeping schedule is fantastic, but will this damage my normal sleeping? Well, I have never heard of anyone yet that can’t readjust back to monophasic sleep, so I think it will be ok. I’m just fearing that the transition between the two schedules back to monophasic could be a bit of a challenge in itself. Then again, I will have melatonin on my side rather than against me, so I think that would be fine.
So yeah, the only other event was that I set my alarm wrong at 5:25 pm (was talking to mum about the DPRK, got carried away) and slept until 7:00, awoken by my nextdoor neighbour (thank you!). It seems strange that I can now oversleep in the afternoon… It never used to happen. Oh well…
Just at this very moment I found out that Uberman polyphasic sleepers take 2 – 4 weeks on average to adjust. Wow, so I am not all that unusual after all. That is rather relieving, as I really need motivation to keep me going with this.
I said this was going to be a short post.. Heh, I guess I lied. See you tomorrow.
Jimmi.
PS. Wow, turns out I have nothing to complain about in comparison to these insane people: http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2009/07/24/uberman-too-wussy-for-you-try-tesla/ – I am so trying that if I can ever get polyphasic sleep to work for me!
Wow. Here I am, day 15, and still not fully adjusted. This is rather disappointing, as I immediately threw myself into the idea that I was either going to sink or swim after 7 days. Now, after 15 days of attempted polyphasic sleep I am still splashing in the water. However, small changes are taking place, the main one being my ability to sleep and feel good after a very short nap. Even after 10 minutes of sleep I wake up feeling alert and refreshed (this is not often the case at 5:00 am, annoyingly). Another benefit is that when I do arise, I immediately can function as per usual, which is very useful for getting things done quickly.
As for today, things went better than expected, although I did oversleep again (from 5 till 10) which made the day less productive. I don’t know why I cannot seem to force myself to not oversleep, it’s one of the most challenging things that I have attempted in a long time. Tomorrow (today actually) I will force myself to wake up and stay awake by setting a ridiculous amount of alarms (I found out I can actually set about 15 or so different annoying sounds to play at the same time from my computer, and think this will help). Also, I have lots of revision to do for tests tomorrow, so that should also motivate me to stay awake.
So, not much to report today, just hoping that I can get over this obstacle and into some productive polyphasic sleeping =). And yes, tomorrow I will start on my guide to polyphasic sleeping, so don’t worry. Stay tuned,
Jimmi
PS. What do you think about www.raapidenterprises.com for my domain? Yea or Nay? Let me know =D
Firstly, I must apologize for not posting yesterday. I’m sure it would have been a big disapointment to you all =). The main reason for this, apart from sheer laziness and oversleeping, is due to the fact that I was considering quitting the Uberman sleeping schedule. Before you cry out with a “Please don’t” and a “I wont love you anymore”, don’t worry, I’ll still go on with it, but there are various factors that do want to make me quit.
The awesome thing about polyphasic sleep is that you have so much time. So much! With a potential 40+ hours per week, there is so much more that you can get done, and makes the unhappy hard worker into the highly successful socialite (well, probably not, but you get the idea). This sleeping, when perfected of course, makes you fully alert all the time, getting more REM sleep than on monophasic sleep.
The disadvantages are the worst part of polyphasic sleeping, and the worst being that adaptation. If you can stay awake for 3 days and still feel fully awake and alert, you probably wont have much trouble with it. If you are a normal human being, it will hit you like a ton of bricks. In my opinion, it is actually worse than not sleeping, because once you do go to sleep, your body wants to keep sleeping, and consequently getting yourself up is more than a challenge. Apart from that, there is no known health issues associated with polyphasic sleeping, so you could be killing yourself unknowingly. That extra time awake might not be extra time at all. Finally, it doesn’t always fit in with your schedule, and you may become the intravert you have always feared because you can’t go anywhere without having to sleep.
So, the oversleeping and crashing is the main reason for me wanting to quit. For the past two days I have overslept, with my worst one today, sleeping from 2:30 till 12, waking up wrecked and feeling like death. It still just feels like I am staying awake nights on end, which does not feel healthy nor make me happy. In addition to this, I have exams coming up, and I want to do well. If I am completely sleep deprived, I doubt I will do well. Strangely, I feel better if I don’t sleep long. I wonder if this is me adjusting, or something else strange.
However, I will not be quitting or swapping to the Everyman schedule, which does seem rather tempting. Instead, I will suffer, determined not to be one of the so many polyphasic bloggers who have failed. Besides, I said I would do this for 31 days, and I plan on sticking to it.
So, for day 13 and 14, apart from oversleeping in the early hours of the morning, they were very similar to all my other days. I still feel rather rested from my naps, but start to become tired again after 1 or 2 hours of being awake, which is rather a problem. Additionally, I’ve been quite bored and miserable. The boredom I am pretty sure is due to me not having enough of a variety of things to do, with homework and suchlike seeming even more disinteresting due to the sleep deprivation and difficulty to concentrate. The unhappiness is due to the boredom, but I’ve got a feeling it is also due to wasted time (yeah, I know that is silly) and not seeing enough of my girlfriend (I hope that I find things to do, because I don’t get to see her this week).
So, I am soldiering on with the Uberman. Hopefully I can muster up the energy to not oversleep for 2 days, finally getting over the hump. Hopefully the weekend will provide the motivation. And yes, I will be doing my information and guide on polypahsic sleeping and the Uberman schedule. Be patient. I might even get around to doing it in my spare time, who knows?
Jimmi
Ps. I might be getting my own domain, thanks to a friend. If this happens, I’ll host this blog there. I plan on it being www.raapid.com. Any suggestions would be welcome!
Technically this was yesterday, I am now on day 13. Sorry about not posting earlier, but I was tired and not really in the mood. I will try and compensate my actually getting a bit written.. maybe.
Today was not so great. I am sure that you, dear reader, would have experienced sleep deprivation at some point in your life, and it saddens me to inform you that this is what you are going to get if you try polyphasic sleep. It’s usually around 3 am (when the human body is most tired) and onwards untill about 6 that you are most likely to crash and oversleep. However, because I stayed awake so perfectly the night before, I knew I was going to be in for a rough time. I was, but it didn’t seem so bad.
I overslept after my 1 am nap. I remember me wishing for that nap to come, and when it finally came, I had no trouble falling asleep. Then my alarm woke me up. I am not too sure what happened next, although I imagine fell back into sleep. I still find it impressive that I can sleep through 3 alarms set on my phone, with about 5 mins or so between, but I managed it. Oh well.
It is rather a disapointment, as I was assuming I am past oversleeping. Turns out that would not be the case. My body seems to be rather stubborn in its ways, and not adapting rather well. That being said, I always get REM sleep now, and feel dramatically better after naps (except occasionally after my 1 or 5 am naps). My unhappiness with sleep deprivation has decreased too, although I think its me just becoming slightly more desensitized. Many people at school who have seen my ‘blag’ have talked to me through the day. Some want to join me, some want me to stop, but everyone comments how I look like I am dead. To be honest, I could be.
The funny the about this is that I am starting to get into a routine, and it’s rather comfortable. I enjoy being awake in the dead of night and early morning (I just wish there was someone I could talk to). But, of course there are disadvantages. Because I am awake for so much longer, I procrastinate even longer, and when it finally comes down to doing the work, I am either exhausted or about to oversleep, which isn’t good (and why I am going to do some work after this post).
As for the rest of the day, it was mainly normal. The rests didn’t seem quite so ‘restful’, but they were good none-the-less. Because I overslept and realized that if I went to school then I wouldn’t get my nap, I had a quick 15 minute one at home. This made me slightly late, but was much better than risking next nap.
I was reading someone elses polyphasic blog, and he was talking about adding extra naps. He failed eventually, and he blamed the extra sleeping. I can understand how that could happen, as I have overslept on a few occasions when I’ve tried to grab another nap. In my opinion, I think that if you are resigning yourself to oversleeping by saying “Hey, I might just squeeze in another nap at 3 am”, making you and your body think that it is ok to go to sleep. Then, upon waking you just feel “Hey, why not just another half hour?”, and then you crash. Well, that’s my personal experience. I suppose everyone’s different. Steve Pavlima pulled it off, this guy didn’t. I really hope that this all turns out for the better.
Oh, just a reminder, yes I will be making a post on polyphasic sleep, the Uberman method, and how to start in full detail (almost definately doing that tomorrow night). Just as a quick reminder for everyone attending some form of education, DON’T start this now. Wait until holidays. Your brain will love you for it.
Until tomorrow (today),
Jimmi
Just a quick note:
Thanks to everyone who is getting interested in polyphasic sleeping and the Uberman schedule, I feel rather privileged. =) If you guys want me to, I’ll make an introduction post to polyphasic sleeping, with information on how to start etc. If you do want this, comment below, or contact me. I’ll get around to it eventually =D
Well, day 11 has definately been one of the better days. I have managed to keep myself from oversleeping for the whole day, and hopefully will be able to continue doing so for the rest of the night. My 1 am nap was rather restorative, but I find that my naps are far less effective during the middle of the night. I suppose this is due to my longing for core sleep, but I really don’t know. I also managed to stay awake until 5 am without having a nap inbetween, which I think helped quite a bit with the oversleeping prevention thing. All my other naps were fine, hit REM on all of them during the day. It still worries me that I only sleep for about 17 mins maximum, it really feels like I should get more. Recently I’ve been getting really tired and sleep deprived, and I know that is because I didn’t have any core sleep. So, tonight is going to be my worst night, with tomorrow my worst day. I have to make sure that I do not oversleep at any cost. If I do manage to make it through another day with no oversleeping, I should be almost polyphasic. At my current state, I am polyphasic with my naps, but still depend on that core sleep after 1 am.
I am feeling exhausted at the moment. This is mainly due to the sleep deprivation, but also the heat, my headache and general uncomfortableness. There is a large temptaion to crawl into bed right now and fall asleep, but I know that I will need to go a substantial time without core sleeping before my body can cope without them. My only worry if I do manage to stay up tonight is if I will have the mental capacity to revise and learn for the Chemistry test on friday.
Well, there really isn’t much else to say. I just hope I can make it through tonight and tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.
Jimmi.
At the beginning of my polyphasic experiment I had the idea that it would be good to record data of my sleeping, or more specifically when I sleep and how much I sleep. In hindsight, I probably should have also recorded my mood for each day accurately, so I could compare that to how much sleep I got in that day. Then again, some other polyphasic sleeper might record his/her mood, you never know…
Sleep Intervals Chart
This is the chart of all my sleeps over 10 days. Quite self explanitory, the blue bars are when I am alseep. While this is obviously a rough estimate of how much sleep I actually get, it is good to see how I am going. A few obvious things to point out are my ‘multi-naps’ (don’t do this!) on Nov 7, and obviously my irregularities in sleeping. As you can see, my afternoon naps are almost perfect, while I tend to oversleep dramatically in the mornings. I wonder if this is an indication that I should be trying the Everyman schedule.
(Ironically, I am using software supplied by supermemo.com to graph my progress. Their website denies that polyphasic sleep is sustainable, good for you, or beneficial in any way, and that most people can simply not achieve it. We’ll see about that =D )
Graphs
These graphs are created from how many minutes I slept in total each day. My target (the red lines) is 200 minutes (3.33 hours) maximum of sleep each day. As you can see, I have had lots of trouble trying to get my sleeping hours down, with dips and spikes everywhere. On this you can also see my best day (day 3) where I easily went below the line. Unfortunately, that was more of me being sleep deprived than an actual improvement.
On the positive side, the average graph shows a smooth line of best fit (x^3 actually) and I am starting to sleep slightly less. Of course these graphs don’t really prove anything, but it is nice to see how I have been going in a graphical format.
Data
| Day | Minutes | Hours |
| Day 1 | 506 | 8.43 |
| Day 2 | 284 | 4.73 |
| Day 3 | 122 | 2.03 |
| Day 4 | 455 | 7.58 |
| Day 5 | 405 | 6.75 |
| Day 6 | 402 | 6.7 |
| Day 7 | 548 | 9.13 |
| Day 8 | 361 | 6.02 |
| Day 9 | 365 | 6.08 |
| Day 10 | 278 | 4.63 |
(in case you are interested)
I’ll put up more statistics in another 10 days to keep tracking my progress. Hopefully I will be comfortably under the red line in that time.
Jimmi.
Today was rather an interesting day, although I am not too sure what to make of it. My 1 am nap was good, per usual, but not highly resorative. Working on some assignments, and generally just mucking around on the computer (games, reading blogs etc.) I heard a tapping at my window. “Jimmi!” a voice wispered.
Turns out it was two of my friends, one of them doing the same polyphasic shedule as me (I showed him and got him inspired, and now I think that he is adjusting far better than me) and the other one an insomniac. I went outside and met them, and then snuck out. We had a deadline for being back home, which was 5 am, as we needed to nap and get home before parents woke up. Funnily enough, this is the first time that I have snuck out of my house. I really just don’t usually see the attraction in it. Anyway, our adventure wasn’t that fun. We had to go back to our homes to get money to buy some food, found out that everything except service stations are closed, that 24-Hour Subway doesn’t run for 24 hours on a Monday (outrage!), and a black cat bit me.
However, it was interesting to note the strange feeling of being polyphasic in a monophasic world. We were walking lots, so I didn’t feel tired, and this seemed a strange comparison to all the people sleeping soundly, awaiting the next day. I didn’t really understand (apart from strict schedules) why people like Steve Pavlima and PureDoxyk (wow, just realised how to pronounce that!) stopped their polyphasic sleep routines, but got a feeling of how it would be. I am a bit of an intravert by nature, especially at night, so that isn’t much of a problem, but for all the people who feed off social situations and need other people, polyphasic sleeping really isn’t for you. Not only that, but you are always doing things when everyone else is sleeping (I imagine the novelty wears off after a while, but it seems pretty awesome right now), and the polyphasic schedule can interrupt social events (eg. movies, Star Wars marathons).
I managed to get back home for my 5 am nap, but did my sleep conpensation habit, which I know is one I need to get rid of. When I wake up and feel absolutely dead inside, I have a tendancy to set my alarm for another 30 minutes, and go to sleep again. While you may think this is beneficial, it really doesn’t help the polyphasic sleeping, and after I do this more than once in a row, I tend to sleep through the alarm. Perhaps it would be better if I slept once every hour or hour and a half when I get really tired. This could help, as it would train me to get more REM from naps, while counteracting oversleeping. I’ll try this tomorrow night, but tonight I need to focus on my Specialist Maths (test tomorrow!). So, I awoke at about 7.30, which wasn’t all that bad. When I got to school I managed to still have a nap in the morning, making sure I still kept to schedule.
My 1 pm was fine, as always, but I crashed when I got to 5 pm. I don’t know what happened. I vaugely remember talking to my girlfriend on the phone, but I imagine that I probably sounded like a very unhappy drunk cat (note to self: email apology). When I woke up, it was 8.15. I do not remember when I fell alseep, but I do remember that I woke up after my 5 pm nap, even if it was for a very short time. Subsequently, I did not sleep well at 9 pm, barely hitting REM. Oh well…
Apart from these few stumbles, I am quite happy with how things are progressing. It just shows how helpful other people are at keeping you awake and moving, with the addition of physical excercise. I do not think I could’ve survived from 2 to 5 without falling asleep unintentionally. So tonight I will also try and keep myself up by doing physical excercise (rigorous training, as we call it) every half hour or so. God, I need to be awake, otherwise I will fail the test tomorrow =( .
Next post is all my sleep data and statistics, in case you were wondering how much I have improved.
Jimmi.
