I was poking around PubMed today, doing research on melatonin and its effects on sleep, and came across this abstract. It says that humans will naturally adapt to a biphasic sleeping cycle if the photoperiod (read, daylight time) is decreased to 10 hours (as opposed to 16).

The sleep periods are broken into evenly spaced segments, spaced apart by a few hours.

It made me think that maybe, with manipulation of lighting and light spacing, one could induce a more-segmented polyphasic sleep schedule. Though, I doubt one would be able to induce Uberman sleep from light cues. According to Wikipedia (under Circadian Rhythm), the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which regulates the circadian cycle in humans, doesn’t react quickly to light changes, so it would probably be difficult to induce 20 minute bursts of sleeping.

It’s a thought, though… (I'm slipping into speculation mode, now) for those that are having trouble initially during those nighttime naps, it could be because the SCN is targeting your body for sleep. Using bright lights (say, a few thousand lux) constantly during this period could convince the SCN that it’s not night time. This might make those naps a little easier to wake up from, since your body would not be preparing for normal sleep.

Of course, generating that amount of lux might be a bit tricky… perhaps just normal lighting shone close on one’s body (like a desk lamp pointed at one’s face) would work. I’ll have to check the math to see what would be needed.

-sean

I've started blogging again on my non-polyphasic sleep personal development. I feel I've reached a stage and stability in this experiment that I can again focus on other pursuits, which was the whole point of me starting in the first place.

As I've stabilized, I started looking again at how to gain financial freedom and let myself live a less structured life. Sean on Personal Development is the blog I'll use for this; it's also linked in the sidebar. This was the original blog that was going to include everything, including the sleep experiment, but the experiment had enough breadth that it spun off into its own entity, which you are now reading.

Much like this Polyphasic / Uberman sleep blog, I want to bring my discoveries out into the open so that others can potentially avoid my pitfalls and can utilize the little victories I discover on the way. I hope it helps.

Happy reading,
-sean

Two weeks. Has it only been that long? It feels like ages that I’ve been doing this. And I’ve accomplished so much more than I could were I not on this schedule. I’m still getting a positive gain in this experiment, according to my goals.

I’m falling asleep much faster than before. When I lay down to nap, I haven’t any of the time to lay and think like I used to when I slept monophasically. It’s mostly lay down, move a little until I get comfortable, and then bam, I’m out.

It’s an odd sensation, and is often a little disorienting. Often times, when I awaken, I’m not entirely sure I’ve slept. I need to check the clock to make sure that I have done so. My perception of time after naps is often very skewed; like others have mentioned, when I nap it feels more like it’s been an hour or two. Sometimes it feels like even more time passes and I get a little panicked that I’ve overslept a whole bunch (and missed work or something), only to hear the alarm clock go off because I had actually awoken before it.

Sunday, day 12, I was so disoriented that I immediately reset my alarm, convinced that I had mis-set it before and not yet napped, and promptly took another nap. I awoke from the double nap a bit groggy, but stretching relieved that. My next nap was the biggest crash I have had yet: 5 hours. But wow did I feel good afterwards.

Except for those that I significantly oversleep, each of my naps had started including a good deal of grogginess after them. To me, this felt very similar to times I woke myself up mid-sleep-cylce. This agrees with the statements on people woken up during “deep sleep” experiencing grogginess (source).

Given that I’ve been falling asleep quickly and that REM generally lasts less than 30 minutes according to here (10 minutes for first cycle) and here (between 10 and 30 during the night), I thought maybe I was sleeping a little too long and moving into deep sleep.

So I decided to experiment with a shorter nap time. I now have been setting my alarm for around 25 to 28 minutes instead of 30. Less grogginess, but it is still present. Tonight, I am going to attempt just setting my alarm for 23 minutes. If I can dispel the grogginess, I don’t think I will have any more incidences of oversleeping. Once I get to that stage, I think I can consider adopting some core sleep to make sure I’m getting at least a little NREM sleep.

I also allowed a small amount of caffeine back into my diet for Monday and Tuesday at work. I was still dragging my feet some, but I needed to be somewhat productive. So, after digging a little, I allowed myself a weak cup of Bigelow's Constant Comment Tea. According to this site, it's only got 29 mg / 5 oz. cup of tea. That's not too much, when I make it weakly and space it out over the whole day. Still, no caffeine would probably be best, but I needed the alertness.

I have a hypothesis that melatonin production is causing my day-long grogginess. See, the last nap before I go to work (around 6 or 7 am) is often taken beside my wife as she starts to go to bed (she works graveyard shift now). As a result, it's taken in a darkened room instead of a well-lit room like with all my other naps. I'm wondering if this could be triggering melatonin production (based off this article), which indicates night time to my body, which causes me to be groggy.

So, in addition to shorter naps, I'm going to experiment with very bright, full on lighting during naps. This may not work, because as that abstract points out, most indoor lighting doesn't do that. Maybe if I shine lamps directly on me? Who knows?

Anyway, it's time for a nap.
-sean

You may have noticed that the granularities of my log posts are getting coarser and coarser. There’s a reason for that: things are changing less quickly now. It becomes a little redundant for me to repeat what’s been happening with regards to the sleep schedule, when it’s all the same for 2 or 3 days.

With that in mind, though, here’s my shakedown over the (American) holiday weekend:
Thursday went off very well. The bizarre microsleep / narcolepsy from earlier in the week went away – I speculate that this was for two reasons:

• I was not forcing interest in topics – I was genuinely interested in what I was doing.
• I crashed briefly during my 4 am nap for 2 hours.
  

Mostly, though, it’s probably from the crash fulfilling the REM need. :)

The biggest challenge that I ran into was trying to find a quiet place to nap during the Thanksgiving meal / gathering, really. Fortunately, the spare bedroom being used to host the over-abundance of coats was sufficiently quiet, so I dozed there (successfully and with dreams!).

I still enjoyed a good, full Thanksgiving meal without oversleeping or even drowsiness. I am starting to believe more that a modified diet is not necessary to succeed at Uberman sleep, though it may help for a variety of reasons. This probably warrants its own post, though.

Back to the log: I carried through to Friday with nary a hitch. I’ve had to abandon reading as a reasonable task to fill time at night (2 to 10 am), as it caused quite a bit of dozing if I was not fully engrossed by the material.

I skipped a nap in the afternoon on Friday. I was just busy with socializing and interacting with people, and was not in a situation where I could nap. I was also a bit curious to see what would happen. I felt fine at the time, and so just skipped it.

I lasted fine until my next nap, which also got delayed by an hour… It was a total of about 9 hours from one nap to the next. That was rough. I napped fine after that (albeit groggy upon awakening), though I expected to oversleep.

I actually didn’t oversleep again until Saturday at 10 am (for 2 hours). Woke up without an alarm (turned it off or forgot to properly set it) feeling alert and refreshed. If the oversleeping does nothing else, it makes me feel a lot better. Saturday was a really good day with regards to mood, energy, and adaptation to naps (little post-nap grogginess, naps were very restful, etc).

I wonder if limited “permitted” oversleeping would be a viable means of adaptation. Only allow it during times when you would be most active and awake when monophasically sleeping. Use bright lights and other zeitgebers to indicate to your body that you should be awake. The idea being to placate your body, but hopefully limit the amount of sleep it takes. So you’re convincing the body that it’s really getting what it needs, at least in the short term. It’s unlikely to work, but it’s possible, I suppose. I awoke after 2 hours, but maybe I’m just adapting quickly, so my body didn’t want to sleep longer…? I’m just speculating, though.

New activities:

• Stretching. This was mainly adopted to deal with heavy post-nap grogginess. It started after one 4 am nap at which I was very close to just saying “forget it” and sleep some more. Despite the grogginess, I stumbled out of bed, dizzy and bleary, and started just doing deep hamstring stretches, since they required little more than leaning and standing. That felt good and woke me up a bit, so I continued with other leg stretches. Again, felt more awake and, well, limber. I worked my way through most of my personal major stretches and it felt quite good. By the time I had finished them, it was just enough light exercise to get my blood flowing, and occupied me during that time when I felt most drawn back to the bed. The repetitive, physical nature was nice as it required no thought. Plus, I could use the exercise (I work at a desk job, remember?). :)


• Dance Dance Revolution. A classically geek-favored exercise. :) Good aerobic workout that’s entertaining. I have two pads, so sometimes my wife plays with me, which is an added benefit. Making sure that we maintain our social interaction has been a priority to me.

Other notable changes:
I’m waking up more often before the alarm goes off. Now I do so around 10% of the time, and overall, I’m feeling better after naps. More remembered dreams overall, though no more lucid dreams yet. I think I’m over the main humps, despite the previous caffeine use and multiple, almost regular, oversleeping. I have a feeling that this coming week will go well, and that I’ll be able to tackle more complicated tasks at work.

I don’t yet hate my cell phone alarm, so that’s also a good sign… ;)
-sean

I’ve gotten some feedback regarding the fact that I should continue this experiment for scientific gain. I appreciate the sentiment, as well as the implied compliment (I find it complimentary, anyway) that I am maintaining scientific purity. Alas, though, I am not that pure in my execution.

When I set out to do this little test, I wanted to approach it with an analytic mindset. I wanted to find root causes of symptoms and treatments, and to bring a little more light to the odd phenomenon of polyphasic sleeping.

Now, I have told myself that while it would be nice to find that polyphasic sleep is a safe, sustainable alternative to a monophasic lifestyle, ultimately, I’d like to just provide accurate information on the topic. In my initial research, I saw a striking lack of well-documented or cited information, especially pertaining to references to support medical effects or “facts” about polynapping. So, while I wanted to experiment myself, I also wanted to make some of what I learned easily available to the casually curious internet consumer.

Now, to me, the most important part of this was providing well-cited sources for my information. I wanted to make sure to dig deeper into internet rumors, blog postings, and forum quotes to see if information came from reliable sources. I aimed to provide backing for my claims, or label them as speculation if they are as such. (If I have not done this elsewhere in the blog, please let me know about it, so I can fix it).

With that in mind, though, I am not a sleep scientist. As much as I wish I could claim that I’ve been doing this usefully for science, I’m not really helping scientific pursuit of polynapping research in any meaningful way. My methods are scientifically flawed and full of bias. I have no control or even baseline measurement. All my “measurements” are qualitative and subjective in nature. And I’m not working towards verifying a given hypothesis. Heck, I don’t even have a hypothesis. All I’ve got is a personal goal to achieve.

Because of all this, I’m not really helping science much. I doubt my information would be more than a footnote, if that, in a peer-reviewed article. My work may be supported with scientific research (when I make claims, anyway), but I just want to make it clear that what I am doing is not science. :)

-sean

Happy Turkey Day to those in the US. Hopefully, the tryptophan levels in turkey won't put me to sleep off schedule. ;)

Best wishes, all.
-sean

Days 1 and 2(&3) were pretty difficult to swallow. In general, I had thought that those were the roughest of the days, simply because it was gloriously debilitating complete sleep deprivation. With those, I just felt awful. I had thought that I had gotten past the hump and it was all downhill from here. But for these past three days, it was even more of a struggle than the first two, but in a decidedly different way.

See, for the first few days it was an obvious issue. I was not only a zombie, as Pavlina described, but I was more like some sort of vile bog zombie, with nasty nausea effects attached as well. I could mostly treat it with caffeine, though (perhaps a mistake…).

This week, I wasn’t tired, per se. See, I was in a chipper mood each day, and felt motivated and excited. The evenings and night times were again very productive and pleasant with very little side effects. However, from right around 5 or 6 am until about 2:30 pm each day, I was… well, for lack of a better term, narcoleptic.

This sounds a lot scarier than it really was. But, effectively, any time that my interest in what I was doing waned, I would get very sleepy. My eyes would want to close against my will, and I would flip into a mini dream. Usually like a quick snippet of conversation at some odd locale, far away from work. Some were like being teleported far away, while others were like entering into a Salvador Dali painting or something. You know. Weird dream stuff.

My point is that these dreams weren’t special in any way, they were just short. It was a little annoying that they would force themselves on me as my interest levels dropped down (and of course, this week I’m doing some not quite as interesting work).

Now, the mini-dreams (“microsleep”) started showing up on day 6, Monday. I had decided to try removing caffeine from the equation, so that REM was potentially more effective (since caffeine has been shown to inhibit REM). It’s just odd that now the inhibitor is mostly gone from my system, it’s like a flood gate of dreaming dumping into me.

But what I find odder, though, is that after 2:30 pm it’s not a problem anymore. And then, throughout all the other waking phases it’s not a problem either. It’s just that for those 8-9 hours, my body is forcibly dumping REM on me.

Now if I was actively interested in what I working on, it never came up. While at home, again, not a problem. I happily worked on personal projects all through the night. When I re-introduced caffeine to get through a trouble spot, I found that the microsleep episodes stopped (which makes sense).


So, now my plan is to keep out the caffeine, but get my body to recognize that REM sleep will only come during those times that I lay down.

So, I’m still chugging. Holiday weekend coming up (I’m in the United States – it’s Thanksgiving, so we get Thursday and Friday off), so I should have more control over extra naps if needed.

Of course, I will also have limited internet connection as we visit relatives out in “the boonies”.

-sean

I stated in the days 2 and 3 summation that I was worried about the following two days… we went camping* for these, with a large crowd of others.

* Not really camping…we were in a cabin. At least the cabin wasn’t heated, and we (read, “I”) had to build a fire so everyone could stay warm.


This had concerned me. My activity level was about to go through the roof. Usually at these weekend camping trips, I run myself down physically, coming home on Sunday and crashing really hard for most of the day. Since I wasn’t doing as much sleeping, my body would have as much time to heal sore muscles and the like (based on “conventional” wisdom that the non-REM sleep stages are for physical body repair).

I’m happy to say that it was not an issue. I spent the weekend performing as I usually would, except that I didn’t go to sleep when everyone else did, and briefly took naps in the car at night (so my alarm wouldn’t wake everyone else).

What really makes me most happy about it is that after this weekend, I’m actually less sore and run down than I usually am. The soreness is probably from Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), because I lead a programmer’s life and do not exercise as much as I should (and then these weekends are almost constant activity of literally running around or hiking).

Why the difference? My theory: My usual camping activity levels go something like - run around at very high level and then crash out late in the night with no cool down. This is almost asking for DOMS. But now, since I’m not crashing out into sleep (because, well, I hardly sleep), I was much more likely to have time to cool down after activity. At the very least, I wasn't becoming completely immobile shortly after activity.

Alternate theory: Given my misgivings on my ability to heal, I was much more careful about stretching, not over exerting myself, etc…

Alternate Alternate theory: It was just one of those weekends where I didn't overexert myself. It happens sometimes.

In any case, it did not interfere with my weekend in the slightest, and again, my life was enhanced by my chance to do more reading or other activities while everyone else slept (plus, I kept the fire stoked while they slept, so that worked out, too).

A few stumbles on the way, though:
* My lunchtime nap became an hour long nap before my wife awoke me. Nothing huge.
* My 4 am nap (my schedule shifted a little on the weekend) extended itself to a spotty on-off snooze-a-thon for about 2.5 to 3 hours. I seem to have nabbed my alarm clo, -- er, phone in such a way that, as soon as the alarm went off and caused me to be startled, my hand would clench and press the snooze button (yes, my cell phone has a snooze button). I’m so sneaky like that. Whoops. :)

I’m not worried about it, though. Every time I hit on of these snags where I oversleep, or miss my target, or whatever, I just take it as another datapoint in the test. Yes, it’d be nice to skip it all fast and get into a full blown Uberman, but I’m learning. I’m gradually learning little tips and tricks to keep myself from oversleeping. I don’t know if they’ll be useful, but I will see about sharing them with everyone else, too. Maybe later polynappers will have no problems with the schedule transition because of the information all these blogs are collecting. (Yeah, right) ;)

Also, the oversleeping generally causes me to feel exceptionally well rested and happy during the next few waking periods. Perhaps I should consider a core sleep approach…? For now, I’ll stick with just the 30 minute naps and see what happens.


Other noteworthy events over the weekend: Dreams during maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the naps. Notably for me (which has me most excited) was that my dream during a midnight-ish nap was lucid dreaming for large parts of it. That was nice.


And finally: Socially, I was really pleased as well. This would be the first chance for me to explain my odd trial to people that were more acquaintances than friends (I had previously explained it to a good friend). I had expected a bit of odd looks and rolling of eyes, but actually, I was greeted with sincere curiosity. Some people even had a basic knowledge of it (“Isn’t that the schedule Edison used?”). Throughout the weekend, people would ask about time to my next nap, my current status physically and emotionally, etc. Any time I needed a nap, I just excused myself quickly, said I’d be back in ~45 minutes (given travel time to bed and such), and went and slept. Everyone was real cool with it.

Steve Pavlina’s polyphasic Q&A post brings up the point of his readers’ concerns over the schedule being weird and potentially distancing them from everyone else… maybe I just felt distant in general before, but after this weekend and the concern and interest shown, I only feel more connected.


The deeper I go, the better it gets… hmmm…
-sean

I’ve noticed that there are a good number of blogs sprouting up relating to polyphasic sleeping, mine included. Obviously, there’s been a recent boom of people wanting to try it for themselves… the promise of that much extra time is just too much to pass up.

The problem is that we all are going through many of the same problems, but we're not necessarily sharing solutions and false leads. And I think it’s time we started doing just that. Not all polynap testers have time to read the entirety of ever blog on the topic to figure out how to deal.

So, I want to start posting about specific problems faced by polynappers as they attempt to get onto the Uberman sleep schedule. For each, I want to address them with suggestions that may help and hopefully have some cited scientific basis. I want to make these “P&S” (Problem and Suggestion) posts fairly common, so that others that come across this blog get more than just a general coverage of what I’ve personally gone through.

In this case, they will also be able to get suggestion for a specific solution to a specific problem, such as dry eyes, and also see if it has any scientific basis on which to stand (does the research support the suggestion? Is it just armchair speculation? Etc.).

So if you’ve run into any problems yourself while trying to adopt, even if they’re common, let me know in the comments of this blog (or write to me directly). We can start addressing them as a community.

Oh, and don’t forget to give a little information on the schedule you’re trying to adopt and where in the adoption period you are/were when you encountered the problem.

-sean

I’ve had some late posts recently. Like I said in my summation of days 2 and 3, I went camping this weekend, and so connection to the internet has been spotty. I will publish reports on days 4 through 6 soon.

-sean

In my post of my polynapping experiment covering days 2 and 3, I mentioned that I had a period of time where I was extraordinarily happy. Almost manic. It was really nice at the time, because I really did feel just incredibly good, but I also wonder somewhat about what caused it.

In the course of my diggings for information on the possible long term effects of polyphasic sleeping, I stumbled across (naturally) a lot of information on sleep deprivation. It seems that there was some research in the 70’s on using sleep deprivation as an antidepressant therapy. It may have gained some interest again in the last 5-10 years. Maybe this is connected.

Now, with this in mind, one must wonder on the reported mood improvements of polynappers. Could it just be the antidepressant effects? Or the extra productivity: could it just be that once in an enhanced mood, one is more likely to work better or harder? It's hard to say without more testing, most especially actual scientific testing (and not my casual “experiment”).

I also wonder how much of the “improvement” in mood is just that a polynapper is just getting a “fix” of sleep after a withdrawal period. This would be similar to how a first dose of caffeine (or some other addictive chemical) after a fast from it is always much more satisfying, and users will report better moods on initial doses (I couldn’t find a reference to back this up, so take it with a grain of salt).


To speak as a polynapping tester myself, I’m inclined to think that, while the “withdrawal” effect has some connection to why one feels so good, it’s not the entire aspect. Even with only having done the experiment for a few days, there are periods right after naps where I feel just incredibly good. Far better than if I were just on monophasic sleeping… Like I said, almost frighteningly good.


But I guess we can’t complain about happiness unless it goes away, eh?

-sean

I’ve been on a Beatles kick recently. Nearly all of my music consumption has been a rotation of a few of their albums. As a result, I could sum up most of most of the 2nd 24 hours with a reference to track 10 of the first disc of The White Album. It’s called “I’m So Tired”. ;)


Really, though, it all started out pretty well. Early on (at the ~9pm nap time) I was at a gaming session with some friends, and I was presented with the mildly awkward situation of asking for a quiet space to nap. I played it very matter-of-factly, and related to them openly and honestly about what I was doing.

It was a pretty good idea to ask like that, I think, as we actually ended up having a nice discussion on meditation techniques and the benefits thereof. And then he let me sleep in his bedroom, so it was doubly nice.

After that, I read through the night again and did some small chores. Sleep times were just around where I wanted them to be (a little late on the ~1:00 am nap, like 10 minutes) and didn’t last longer than the 30 minutes I’ve allocated for them.

The great thing, in my opinion, came from the 7 am nap. I dreamt solidly through that, though it was not lucid dreaming. I also awoke right before the alarm actually went off. I was ecstatic that I was potentially adapting very fast. Work was a breeze in the morning, but it was a pretty tough drag through the afternoon. Usually when exhausted, it’s my debugging ability that suffers most, so, to cope, I only worked on small tasks that required basic fact checking, or trivial programming tasks that would not require much, if any, debugging. Got through it. Barely.

After my next nap (~5:30 pm) things got rock-solid good. I pulled out my guitar to go ahead and play some. I figured that the creative skill and manipulation were not suffering greatly, and it was a good, engaging way to pass the time. It should be noted that I have a pretty on-again-off-again relationship with my guitar. I’ve owned it for nigh on five years. I’ve even taken lessons. But I play it at just around a beginner level. Most of the music that I want to play, though, is quite above that level, and I don’t know good stepping stones to get better. So, I’ll pick up practicing again, make a little progress, get mildly stuck, and stop playing for another few months.

Why is this noteworthy? I played better than I had played for a long time. The aforementioned Beatles kick lead me to grab the complete Beatles songbook from OLGA. I was surprised to see that I could just about play Blackbird and Rocky Raccoon at full tempo. Like I said, I’m just a beginner, so for me this was very rewarding.

Anyway, after that, I decided to stay on the music binge and pull out my hand drums to play around. Again, very rewarding. The practice of musical instruments seems an excellent way to pass the time for me, as it was both stimulating and along the lines of some of my personal goals.

Later that evening, I was just beaming, I was in such a good mood. Don’t let me mislead you, though: I was still feeling sleep deprived. I had developed a headache from light exposure (my pupils were dilated almost constantly that day). I was just really happy about it. Like really, really happy. Nigh manic happy.

When my wife came home, I just jabbered on and on to her about this, that, and the other. This is a bit odd, because I usually de-stress from work in silence, and so rarely talk about my day in this way. Wonder if this will be a long term effect…? I will post more on my thoughts of the supposed antidepressant / euphoric nature later.

After dinner, we decided to go see a midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, as we’re both fans (and we’re both geeks). As result, I took my ~9 pm nap earlier, and the midnight hour nap later. Didn’t seem to affect much, really. This just re-enforces my guess that the timing doesn’t need to be as rigid as stated by many; but, I’m speculating here.

The remainder of the night involved me reading more and blogging more. However, come my 4 ‘o’clock nap: My first largish over sleep. I ended up oversleeping by an hour. Broke my schedule pretty poorly, but I still took my 7 am nap.

The oversleeping actually may have been a boon, as I *really* felt good during the day, and zipped through a lot of work with a clear mind and a solid focus. My lunchtime nap also contained dreams. They weren’t lucid, but it’s still more good news!

Other naps for the day went as planned. Then, I packed for the weekend – we were going camping, which vastly increases the physical activity I do daily. It also takes me away from a large number of potential activities with which to spend the time and avoid sleeping. Both of these were going to be pretty big challenges…

-sean

As I dig further into the very odd world of polyphasic sleep, it occurs to me that I never made it clear what I, personally, was trying to accomplish by performing this bit of life hacking.

In my prologue post, I implied briefly that I feel slightly trapped with my life situation and wanted to be able to devote more time to personal projects.  That obviously is one of the goals.  But there are a few other conditions that I wanted to make sure to include:

Do it without minimal impact to the rest of my life.  I’m not heavily changing the quality of my diet.  I’m not changing what many of my activities are.  I’m not really increasing my activity levels (though I may pick up playing DDR again…).  Some polynappers have suggested that these things should be done to help contribute to the success of a polyphasic sleep experiment, and they very well may be correct in that claim.  In fact, they’re not bad things to do for health in general.  But I’m skeptical that they actually do anything directly to affect my success in the experiment.  For now, I’d like to give a go with minimal other changes to my lifestyle, to see what it does to and for me.  If it seems that I will need to modify other aspects of my life to succeed, then I will investigate that further.  For now, though, let’s keep most of my life constant.

No real rigid schedules or rules.  Casually and curiously was how I wanted to run it.  I may take an extra nap or two.  I have and will float the timing of the naps to accommodate the rest of my life.  The idea being that I can demonstrate that one employed in a standard desk job can adopt a polyphasic sleep schedule as well, without necessarily having complete control over one’s schedule.

No matter what happens, I’ve always got a net gain.  As long as I’m doing this, I want to make sure that I’m getting something out of it.  I don’t want to continue if it looks like the health or sanity costs will outweigh the extra time / personal insights.  This is probably the one most likely to give me trouble, as I’ve been known to occasionally stubbornly hold on to a personal project well after most say I should have dumped it.

I may think of more things that I want to get out of this, and I’ll update this list as time goes on.
-sean

So it's now 24 hours into it.  It's not as bad as I thought it would be.

Now there's a key point to be noted in the specific terminology "not as bad":  it's still bad.

Okay.  “Bad” is a strong word.  "Uncomfortable" or "unpleasant" might be better substitutions.


Generally, I feel like (surprise, surprise!) I haven't slept.  

So, I’m gonna give a catalogue of the first 24 hours… this will be in quite a bit of detail, actually, but I don’t think I will maintain this level of detail unless things start getting “interesting”.  The main reason I include such detail is that it is my plan to follow the general course laid out here:  lots of activity (so I don’t just sit and fall asleep), mentally stimulating activities (at least early on, when I am able) spiced with some menial “thoughtless” tasks.  If things change, I’ll let you know.


So… on with the show!

Starting yesterday, 2005.11.15:
1st polynap at around 5:30 pm or so.  Generally worked well, as I’m used to napping at this time, just not getting up so soon.  My body protested getting up a little, but not much.  My mood was generally good, but then, at this point, I’d gotten the same amount of sleep as usual.  Spent a good deal of time setting up the blog and creating the first post.


2nd polynap at 9:00 pm.  Again, slept without a hitch.  No lucid dreams though, but I wasn’t really expecting any on the first day.  Shortly after the 2nd, I made and ate dinner.  Generally at that point, I spent some time catching up on my blog reading and reconnecting with friends.  I was still good mood and had no noticeable downsides.  Of course, still in basically normal sleep mode, with actually a little extra bit of short naps.


3rd polynap at 12:30 am.  My body didn’t protest this one at all, really.  My wife was still awake, so I wandered back to where she was and, again, continued my catch-up on information.  Made myself some Earl Grey tea and had a few cookies, along with some orange juice.  The juice was included specifically because there have been spotty references around that fruit juices in general eased the transition.  Some point specifically to grape juice, but I think that this is probably someone taking the armchair speculation of the kuro5hin post on polynapping as fact:

     …I will often crave strange things that I don't recall craving in the past. One great example of this is grape juice; I now drink this regularly, but before I switched I don't recall ever wanting it. My speculation is that my body isn't producing enough of some chemical that it would normally produce in stages 3 and 4 deep sleep.

I recall some other places claiming that one should just drink more juice in general, too, with no scientific backing for it.  But even if the basis for the “drink lots of juice - it makes it easier” claim is bunk, a bit more orange juice in my life certainly couldn’t hurt me.  And usually if your body craves something, it needs it for some reason*, so I think the kuro5hin poster was justified.

* Even with addictive chemicals, if I recall – your body just adapts to the presence of the addictive chemical, and relies on it for functioning.  Remove the chemical, and then your body “needs” it.  Could be wrong though.


Anyway, these types of tips are some of what are throwing up warning flags for me:  a lot of the information out there is not based on any sort of scientific basis, and are really just rumor heaped on speculation.  I’ll post more on this later.


Back on the topic of the last 24 hours:  I spent the hours between 3 and 4 finishing the catch-up, and then re-reading the first 2 chapters of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.  I must be the only geek who hasn’t finished this book.  I’ve started it about half a dozen times, and always got distracted.  Usually when I get distracted for long enough, I need to start all over again to satisfy my sense of completeness.  As a result, it’s still unread.  In any case, it’s one of the things that I’m determined to finish as a result of my extra time.


4th nap at 4:00 am.  Honestly, this one was a bit tougher to wake up from.  While still clutching my cell phone (my portable alarm clock for this experiment), I seriously considered spontaneously going for the schedule that has 3-4 hours of “core sleep”, but figured that, were I to give in to that little temptation so early, I would probably do it again.  So I skipped it, forced myself into a brightly lit room, and my drowsiness cleared in a minute or two.

I grabbed a bowl of soup at this point and some cold water, and picked up my reading again.  This time I started reading I’m Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown, which I’ve been borrowing from my brother.  My sister-in-law was already emphatically asking to have it back less than a week after I borrowed it, so I figured that it needed a higher priority on the reading list.  So far, so good:  it’s clear, concise and entertaining.  Plus, it contains all the info on cooking that recipes don’t tell you:  the whys of cooking.  Apparently his show, Good Eats is of a very similar format.  I haven’t watched it yet (no cable), but I might just make a special effort if this quality continues.

I also did some minor chores around the apartment (watering the plants and mild cleaning), but it’s less interesting than the reading, I think.

That’s how I continued until I needed to get ready for work, around 6:30 am.  At this point, I was getting a little fatigued, but the shower really felt nice.  I felt good.  I had to switch out of my contact lenses at this point to my glasses, because my eyes were drying out somewhat and getting irritated.  This was an unforeseen, but perhaps should have been an expected occurrence.  I will probably get some drops to accommodate it tomorrow if my eyes don’t adapt.


5th nap at 7:00 am.  This one was placed here so that I could get a nap before work, one during lunch, and then one immediately after work, so I could still keep with it in light of my desk job.  No problem waking up this time, as I had the pressing need of going to work.  However, I don’t recall the moments of napping my alarm and exiting the spare bedroom (where I’ve been doing all the naps), just entering the kitchen.  Weird, but not unheard of when I’m sleep deprived.

Cup of Earl Grey in hand, I was off to work, where things went pretty smoothly through the morning.  No real problems focusing or programming yet.  Just hope that continues until the weekend or Thanksgiving.  

6th and final nap of the 24 hour stretch at 11:30 am.  Right on my lunch break, I went out to my car and leaned back the front-passenger seat to nap.  Worked out well; I was asleep quickly, woke with no problems, and felt quite invigorated as I walked back to my desk.  I really felt positive about this whole thing at this point, hoping beyond reason that my transition period was freakishly short.  In retrospect, the invigoration probably had to do with the briskness of the air as I walked from my car to the office building (it’s chilly here!) combined with building adrenaline regarding a presentation to be made on my project status.  The alertness and clarity carried me clear through the presentation and ensuing discussion, though, so I can’t complain.

Interestingly, my speech during the presentation often felt very detached, and I was having mild trouble completing thoughts completely coherently.  Oddly, though, my use of floundering words (“uhs" and “ums") was significantly reduced during my presentation.  I’m not sure if it’s a result of the sleep dep, or just me making a much stronger conscious effort not to use those words.  Maybe I should have waited a day or two to start this, but it’s all past now.  

So I was riding high after that, in a good mood and all.  But it started getting rough right around 3:30 – 4:00 pm.  I’m wondering if that stretch from the 11:30 nap to the 5:15 nap is just too long; I can probably delay it some, and will do so tomorrow, moving it back to more like noon-ish.

I made it in the end, slugging through some non-mental work until I could get home for that nap.  It was kinda hairy there, though, and I did find myself very muddled sometimes.  I don’t want to resort to caffeine in most instances, especially if I’m within a few hours of a nap, but I’ll certainly do so if I have to.  The point was to perform the experiment in a way that was compatible with a standard day job.  Caffeine, in particular cases, may make it a little more compatible.



So, here I am, ready for round 2, and looking forward to reading more tonight!

-sean

Polyphasic Sleep Experiment: Prologue

Recently in my life, I've been running into a very serious brick wall to my personal goals both internally and career-wise: I, as an adult, need to sleep a set number of hours every day, usually 6-8.

In and of itself, it didn't seem like a big problem to me. When I set out to go to college, get a job, etc., a standard desk job seemed like a valid occupation. I felt I could still achieve my other goals (all of which take time) while still working on hobbies that I love (which also take time).

...but I've been finding myself more and more wrong as I've gotten into my adult life outside of college.

I've always been more of a "night owl", really. I would be unlikely to get productive work done in the morning or afternoon, but after about 7 or 8 pm until the sun came up, I could program, do homework, etc. efficiently and steadily. I had enormous focus during those hours. If I had a choice, I'd see the sun when I woke up (setting) and again when I got ready for sleep (rising). One of the best times of my life was a semester when I had no classes before 2 pm... I could sleep from 5 or 6 am until just around 1 pm every day. I got so much done, personally, and I felt much more fulfilled.

But, alas, my "grownup" job is not structured like that. I work as a scientific software engineer for a large manufacturing company; I write software simulations of their processes. It sounds like the sort of job one would be able to take home to work and set a very loose schedule. But it's not. I need to go to meetings, and support my users, be available to other developers for informal conversation... you get the idea. It boils down to being tightly stuck on a "be awake by 7 am" schedule. Of course, this then results in me sleeping through my most productive hours.

It really hit me hard this past weekend. I have a personal programming project that I'm starting work on, still in the design phase. I was up around 11 pm, had gotten comfy with the laptop in my office on a spare bed and really went at it. But I just ran out of time before I "needed" to sleep. It was frustrating.

Then, last night, my mind was abuzz with ideas. I was sorting them out in my head for a lot of the evening while idly doing other things. But when I had to go to bed, I was again frustrated in that I wasn't done with my thinking. I was up until 4 am, completely unable to sleep because my mind wouldn't sit still.

I finally took it as a sign that I needed to do something to increase my personal time.


I've been reading a little on Steve Pavlina's attempt at a polyphasic sleep schedule, and have been somewhat intrigued. For those not aware of what polyphasic sleep is, I suggest hitting the Wikipedia article on it Wikipedia article on it. The concept just seems a little bizarre, given that we've been trained to assume that we need to sleep nightly, and that most of society is based on that same assumption.

When I first heard about the concept, I was decidedly skeptical about trying it. While there are some reasonable hypotheses behind a lot of it, it doesn't seem like there is a lot of scientific evidence around to demonstrate that it is safe or useful.

I long ago promised myself that when I perform personal experiments, I would do them safely and responsibly, prefaced with a good deal of research. At the very least, I would attempt to understand the possible consequences and determine if they were acceptable.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that there is an awful lot of formal research on the topic. (But if you know of a lot of good sources beyond the book by Claudio Stampi, feel free to email me about it) Only a (growing) collection of anecdotes seem to support it.

To be fair, that's only on a cursory examination of the phenomenon. I'm digging deeper, but my frustration has reached a pretty high point, so I've decided to go ahead and try a modified Uberman Schedule before I have dug up everything I can find.

At first, this seems a little irresponsible, but I've weighed the potential risks, and I'm going to go ahead with it based on the following (in ascending order of importance to me):

1. It sounds cooky and fun. It'll be interesting to explain to people that I only sleep 2 hours a day.
2. I really enjoy having more lucid dreams.
3. The extra time is worth it. And I really mean that. Many things that I would really love to do instead of lying down doing nothing.
4. It can't be worse than the large and long amounts of sleep deprivation I experienced (suffered?) in college. If I recall correctly my Psychology 101 course around that same time, one could fully recover from the detriments of complete sleep deprivation / "sleep debt" with extra sleep, so it makes sense that full recovery from polyphasic sleep is likely. I'm no doctor, though.
5. I often slip into REM quickly anyway. No, really. I can nap just about anywhere. I slip into it quickly, and often have dreams in short naps. I did it all the time during college during my free periods.
6. I already sleep polyphasically, in a strict sense of the word, anyway. My wife works 2nd shift, which is 1:00 pm to 9:30 pm. My aforementioned desk job keeps me at work 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. The offset in schedule meant that if we slept "normally", our time together would be drastically reduced. And I like spending time with my wife. Heck, I married her, did I? :) So, to allow us to spend more time together, I usually take a 2-3 hour nap shortly after I get home from work until I need to start making dinner around 8 or 9. This is just another step that way.
7. It's not a permanent decision. I figure that if it becomes a problem, I can always abandon it safely later on and recover.

So with that in mind, I’m going to give it a go and follow my intuition on it. Currently, my plan is based around my work schedule (I still have my day job, after all… bills and all that).

Naps at 7:00 am, 11:30 am, 5:00-ish pm, 9:00 pm, 12:30 am and 4 am.

I’m concerned that it may not work out as well, mostly because I’ve had to spread out the time in the day and then, as a consequence, also compress the time between naps at night. But if it works out, I’ll have the keen advantage of being able to do the schedule while still working a pretty standard 8-5 job.


Here goes nothing…

-Sean