Polyphasic Sleep and Better Thinking

So, I missed my Wednesday update for, like, the first time ever this week.  It's not because I'm dead, or as some were probably hoping, passed out sleeping in a mad 50-hour chunk of making up for three years of Everyman.  ;)

No, actually I'm traveling, more for business than pleasure, though it's been fun anyway.  It has involved driving by myself for 13 hours straight, and sleeping on a couch.  The upside to that is that 4-6 hours of sleep and one nap (one 20-minute nap even) has kept me going amazingly well, so much so that I'm considering tightening up my schedule when I get home to be similar to this. 

I've been doing it three days now, with shockingly little adjustment or issues, and I've consistently woken up without alarms.  The biphasic "6-1 Everyman" may be even more forgiving than I thought!  Or maybe I just need less sleep while I'm on the road?  But I'll get more updates, and a proper post, out to you all as soon as I can.

Happiness and wakefulness to all!

PD

Damn Interesting • The Total Perspective Vortex is a very cool article, of a sort I've been waiting a long time to find. (Thank you madly to reader marzzbar for the tip!)

You may want to read it, and you may not; it can be easily summarized thusly: As it turns out, through a more scientific lens, people whom modern society accuses of being "negative" and "depressive" are in fact being more realistic than "normal", well-adjusted/optimistic people. There is a valid point of view from which our individual lives are largely pointless, our work is all busy-work, and yes, we look pretty ugly to most people who may judge us, 'specially our nethers and nekkid parts. The comments (of which there are zillions) are fascinating too, as generally thoughtful people debate there how useful being a "realist" is versus being an "optimist", and whether the trade-off of being happy is worth being "wrong" to some degree.

The question raised by this (and much else) is not trivial: Honest, self-aware people want to be aware of and functioning in reality, not deluding themselves into happy-happy land. But nobody really thinks that a philosophy that demands that you be miserable is a good one.

"Ignorance is bliss" is in many ways a true statement, but for most people that opens up an ugly choice, since none of us wants either ignorance OR misery.

"Is the truth still worth it if it ruins your life?" …And the answer I finally reached to that question is this: A real truth, a whole truth, wouldn't do that. If your truth hurts you, then what you've got ahold of there is half a truth, or an illusion of truth.

(If you're of a philosophical bent and have not read the beautiful children's book "Old Turtle and the Broken Truth", then for all the gods' sakes get out there and do so.)

(And click "Read more" for, you know, more. ;)

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Waugh, there've been some awesome polyphasic links flying around lately!

I'm going to make more of an effort to catch some and stick them here; this post will be linked to from the Polyphasic Information Portal, so that we can expand it later.

First, an awesome discussion sprang up on the Google Polyphasic Group (which I moderate, but generally don't participate in), when an anonymous "reader" popped in to try and defend Dr. Wozniak's "Myths and Facts About Polyphasic Sleep" article against the charges (by myself and others) that it's, well, B.S. I answered the "reader", but it's the other commenters and their excellent answers to hir criticisms that I thought was really great. Spectacular reading if you're interested in the for/against polyphasic debate.

Then there's the fact that I'm not sure I've pluggged PolyphasicSleep.info recently — it's a wiki project to provide information about polyphasic sleep — it was smaller last time I looked at it, but people have been putting a lot of work in, and it's really getting comprehensive now.  If you have a question, or want to send someone somewhere (besides here ;) for general information, I highly recommend it!

Recently, someone also dropped me a note about TryPolyphasic.com, too — and having poked around at it, I'll admit I'm impressed!  Besides blogs of adapting polyphasers (which admittedly is not of interest to everyone), they have an awesome nap alarm that's as easy as pressing the "Start Nap Now" button — great idea! — and if that weren't enough cool, there's even a map showing where all the registered polyphasers live, geographically.  Very creative uses of the Web for polyphasers, there; I plan to check back to see what else they think of.

There, now as I find more, I'll keep adding them — if you know of a polyphasic site that's more than just a personal blog, that offers information or services to either polyphasers or people looking for more information on the topic, then by all means let me know (mynickname@mynickname.com is the best way, probably). 

And thank you to all the people doing the work out there!  Running websites can be a thankless (and moneyless) job, but I'll appreciate that you do it if you appreciate that I do it, okay?  ;)

PD

OK, so I've decided that the closest to monophasic I'm comfortable getting is 6/1 Everyman.  I flat can't stand this zombie-in-the-morning, yawny-in-the-afternoon crap anymore, to be honest; so it's down to "something else–anything else!".

(6/1 Everyman:  One 6-hour core nap + 1 nap.  The length of the nap can vary, though 45 minutes seems to be the best base length; 20 minutes is too short when there's just one nap.)

We can argue about whether Everyman 6/1 is even polyphasic, or whether it's a form of siesta/biphasic, or just "cleverly taking a nap so you can sleep a little less at night" — but whatever it is, it still saves me over an hour of sleeping a day to do it, and preliminarily it seems I'm less tired doing 6/1 than I am doing 8 hours of nighttime sleep.  Plus, 6 hours is definitely my limit for one comfortable sleep:  If I sleep any longer than that at once, I feel like half-eaten roadkill when I wake up.  Six hours or less, though, and I feel fine.

(Is that just me?  Or has anyone else noticed that they have a "lump-of-sleep" limit too?)

Remember that, for me, 8 hours is not really enough on a monophasic schedule; I need 9 to feel rested, and I always have.  (It is this drawing-the-sh!t-end-of-the-stick, sleep-needs-wise, that's one of the reasons polyphasic sleep has always been so attractive and amazing for me.)  So to get about 7 hours sleep total and feel great is, while nowhere near as cool as my Everyman 3 schedule, still a whole lot better than "normal". 

So once again, I'm hopping onto a little-practiced schedule to see if it works, because I can't do the more intensive polyphasic schedules I really want.  (This is now a seriously long-running theme for me, innit?)  Also, I'm finally breaking my personal trend of never documenting anything, and I'm keeping daily notes on this "adaptation" (if you can really call it that; it's not exactly hard to adapt to!).  They're currently pretty depressing, since they document two days of 6/1 going great, and then me catching this flu that my mom was so kind to bring home from work; but I'm keeping it up anyway, just notating a break for flu.  ;)  I'll post the notes when they're "done" enough — E6/1 is a small enough change from "other people's monophasic" (heck, for some people 6 hours by itself is enough sleep — I wish I was one of them!) that I suspect it'll need at least a good solid month or two of adherence to make sure it isn't causing a small build-up of sleep-debt that's hard to notice. 

Thankfully, I am now a good solid Expert in noticing sleep-dep.  Seriously, when I should have slept 15 minutes longer, I can tell.  I can do crazy things now like time a 20-minute nap in the mid-morning to make up for being woken up during the night, or place one carefully in the late afternoon to ensure I can stay up late without repercussion — and it works!  Which, even though I know what I'm doing, still surprises me more often than not.  ;)

Does anybody remember Magic: The Gathering (oh, do I ever — I had a HUGE habit until all my cards were stolen by a Denny's manager in Santa Fe; then I never had the heart to pick it back up) and how some creatures would have "Mountainwalk" or "Plainswalk", and that meant that they could always navigate those terrains; i.e. if those lands were present on another player's spread, your creature couldn't be blocked. 

I feel like I have "Napwalk".  Seriously.  I've been mostly-monophasic for two whole months now, but I still can (and will) whip out a well-placed snooze (which I can somehow instinctively tell if it needs to be 15 minutes, 30, 45 or 60) and correct my own sleep-debt, almost no matter what is going on.  I still fall asleep in minutes, sometimes seconds; and if I've been allowed to sleep as long as I need to, I'll wake up right before my alarm more than 75% of the time. 

NAPWALK.  Woot!

And speaking of WOOT!, I've met TWO more people doing Uberman this week!  This is both wonderful — since I love to see Uberman doing for other people what it did for me — and terrible, because it makes me want to get back on that schedule so so badly.  I miss it!!

So that's that. 

Happy napping!

…

Unrelatedly, if you like Matthew Good (i.e. if you're a sucker for a highly-controlled voice and well-turned lyrics, like me), there are some free tickets for the Spring tour of the U.S. goin' on:

Indian-spiced Easy-as-heck Lentil Soup

1 or 2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger (substituting the powdered kind doesn't hurt)
1 cup red lentils
1/2 cup or so chopped carrots (also celery if you like; I don't)

1 can garbanzo beans, drained
1 can other beans (I use kidney, but trust me, it doesn't matter)
1 can diced or other tomatoes (I use whole so I can pick them out)

1 tsp. garam masala
1.5 tsp ground cardamom
0.5 tsp cayenne pepper (more for extra hotness)
0.5 tsp cumin (more for extra indian-spiciness)

Directions:  Heat big pot w/ a little olive oil in the bottom.  Add onions & garlic and cook until not raw.  Add six cups of water and everything else.  Bring to a boil for a few minutes, then reduce the heat and simmer until you don't feel like simmering anymore, and the lentils are soft.

Dump half the soup into a food-processor or blender and decimate it.  (If there's an ingredient you don't like to eat in chunks, like carrots or tomatoes, just leave them big for the cooking part, and then put them all in the food processor during this part.  I put all the whole tomatoes in the blender.)  Mix the halves back together and away you go.

Benefits:  Spicy, cheap, filling, vegetarian, high in fiber and protein, gets tastier the longer it sits in the fridge/freezer.

Spicy food helps clear the sinuses and keep away colds, too.  This soup is how I survive the cold months. 

May it bring you some warmth as well!

(Unless it's already warm where you are, in which case c'mere, I've got a snowball for you.)

Hey, if you've been thinking about getting the Ubersleep book but you're always looking for a deal, here's your chance!

Now through Feb. 15, you can type in the coupon code "WASHINGTON" and get 15% off any order from Lulu.com.  If you're just in a book-buying mood, make sure to browse around; unlike many small self-driven presses, Lulu has some really cool-looking stuff for sale.  And you know for a fact that any author there that you buy from will be your bestest friend forever.  ;)

So if you'd like to buy the Ubersleep book in either PDF or Softcover and save 15%, head on over!

(Alternately, enjoy your "President's Day" however you see fit…or if you hate President's Day, you can celebrate my birthday instead, since it's just a few days later!)

20 things you can do in 20 minutes (and create a sense of momentum) has artist Michael Nobbs' list of things he can do in 20 minutes or less … I guess great (or at least kooky) minds think alike!  I call mine the "Got a Minute List".  They are, I think, especially (but not exclusively!) handy for polyphasic folks, whose time gets cut up into smaller chunks more frequently, and who often have really full schedules.

What's the value of a 20-minutes-or-less list?  Well, if you're like me, there are a thousand things you wish you "did more often", like read poetry, exercise your triceps, practice some visualizations or memory-hacks you know about, etc.  These are things it's almost impossible to fit into your usual daily lists, which are already full of much more important things; and anyway, practicing those memory-hacks takes thirty seconds; you're going to schedule that?  (Not that you shouldn't schedule important small tasks, but for many people there are a lot of nifty small things that would just clutter up a daily schedule, and which don't need to get done consistently, but are nice to do when possible — that's what this list is for.)

Things on this list should be:  1) doable in 20 minutes or less, and 2) things that you'll be happy you did.  The goal here is to turn what would otherwise be a few minutes of staring at a wall or surfing FaceBook into an anchor that will let you think of today as a Good Day, as something more than another 24-hour box you put all the usual stuff in and mailed away to nothingness.  Those little things can make the difference between a good day and a super-productive-feeling day; or between a totally crap day and a day that had at least one good, worthwhile thing in it. 

Here's my list.  I order it, roughly, with the really-fast things on top and the ten-minutes-or-more things on the bottom, so I can quickly pick a task appropriate to the chunk of time I've got.  And of course, I'd love to see your list too! 

• File a fistful of paperwork from any handy pile
• Work on breathing-exercises (can be done to some degree in seconds, but ideally need 5 minutes)
• Repeat a memorized poem/passage or, if alone, a song
• Do stretches and/or the knee exercises I need
• Prepare a healthy snack for later (I used to try and eat something healthy if I had a minute, but eating in the cracks of living isn't very healthy itself…if I prepare something healthy and stick it in the fridge, though, I know I'll eat it later.)
• Do pushups or situps
• Do any shorinryu or kungfu form (avg. 60 seconds to complete, but I can stretch it out by working on specific moves after)
• Tidy up the laundry area
• Tidy up the art-supplies
• Write a few well-chosen words or a short poem (in one of the zillion notebooks available in my house for such things)
• Look over and/or update the to-do lists (incl. gift lists, grocery lists, and lists like this)
• Read a new poem
• Re-read or work on memorizing a not-new poem
• Grab an entire pile of paperwork / laundry / clutter / etc. and put it all away
• Tend houseplants or garden areas
• Do weapons-forms or longer taiji forms
• Empty and organize one shelf or drawer (I set a timer for 15 minutes and work on this really fast, and I almost always finish before it goes off!)
• Meditate (note: requires a timer if nothing else will notify me it's time to stop!)
• Read from a difficult book (difficult books are best done in short chunks, for me; but I usually get sucked in, so this takes 15 minutes on average)

Creative Commons-licensed image from plindberg; thank you!

Maybe Homeowners Wouldn't Strategically Default If Lenders Cooperated

Will a Human at B of A Please Modify My $160,000-Underwater Mortgage

Blatantly Racist Subprime Loans

Slothful Loan Modifiers Earn More Money When You're Delinquent

Bank Told Homeowner to Skip Payments, Then Foreclosed

Asymmetrical Norms: Why Homeowners Aren't Walking Away

Rich Investors "Walk Away" from $5 Billion Mortgage

…I just wanted to put up those articles (from The Consumerist, all relatively recent), and weigh in with my Hi-I-Was-A-Foreclosure-Prevention-Counselor-In-Recession-Central opinion…mostly because I would feel really bad if I left the field (which I have) without ever saying it really, really loudly:

THE MAJORITY OF FORECLOSURES COULD HAVE BEEN EASILY PREVENTED BY THE BANKS MAKING EVEN A TINY AMOUNT OF EFFORT TO STOP THEM.

THAT EFFORT IS NOT THERE.  FROM ANY OF THE BIG, BAILED-OUT BANKS.  STORIES LIKE THE ONES ABOVE ARE THE NORM, AND LAZY OR SHADY HOMEOWNERS WALKING AWAY IS ALMOST 100% A BANK-CREATED FICTION.  (Please don't be surprised that huge mega-banks can influence the media in this country.  I will have to punch you.)

DO YOUR PART and STOP HELPING TO SPREAD THE LIES.  THE BANKS CAUSED THIS PROBLEM BY ALLOWING THEIR OWN PROFESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES TO SELL UNSUSTAINABLE LOANS, AND THEY ARE PERPETUATING IT BY FAILING TO TAKE EVEN THE MOST BASIC STEPS TO TRY AND HELP HONEST FAMILIES WHO WANT TO PAY (often who want to pay on exorbitant terms that they really should walk away from) MAKE REASONABLE MODIFICATIONS TO THEIR LOANS.

I saw it; hundreds of times.  I met maybe five–maybe?–actually stupid homeowners, and one shady jerk, in three years of counseling; but I lost track of the number of times I personally witnessed:

• banks telling people they needed to miss payments before they could receive help; then foreclosing once the payments were missed;
• banks setting deadlines and then forcing people to miss them, and then foreclosing;
• banks "losing" paperwork over and over again, and refusing to extend deadlines because of it;
• banks offering "help" in the form of a modification that raised the homeowner's payments, often also making their loan terms worse (and how many sad, sad times homeowners accepted that modification, assuming that since they'd asked for help, they'd get it, and not wanting to be "rude" by reading the fine print and demanding a better deal) — and then foreclosing if the modification isn't accepted, or if it is and the new, higher payments can't be made.

I'm counting on you, Internet.  Don't let this whole foreclosure mess go down in history as a problem with consumers:   That was NEVER true.

Thank you.

(Bonus Happy Link:  Americans for Fairness in Lending)

Hey, Internet…most of you are probably aware how crazy things have been lately (and in saying that I mean no offense to crazy people; they are generally nowhere near as unpleasant as the recent rollercoaster).  I haven't been able to talk about a lot of it in any public forum (like this one), since it involves The Man, and The Man has a fragile ego; but you know how life can get.  I hate to ask for your sympathy without offering details, but I suppose that's exactly what I'm going to do anyway.  ;)  When things change so that I can say more, I will (in a way that doesn't force it down the throats of those who don't give a crap, of course). .

The reason this merits an Announcement is that I think it's no longer fair to call me polyphasic.  My once-predictable work schedule has dissolved into something, not unstructured, but structured in a different way almost every day.  It's also (still) very stressful.  That stress keeps me from sleeping well, and the random scheduling makes getting regular naps nearly impossible.  I don't think I've kept the same sleep-schedule for more than three days straight since the holidays, to be honest, and I miss so many naps that when I can sleep at night, I tend to sleep all the way through, because I'm making up for other lost sleep.  It's safe to say that I've been off my schedule since December (since that's when it really started to crumble), which would mean that my total "run" on Everyman 3 was from July 2006-Dec 2009, or 3 years, five months.  Which is not half bad, right?  Right!  \o/

…But that certainly doesn't mean polyphasic sleep, as a subject, is over for me.  Actually, my perception of it is that it's getting really interesting lately!  I've gotten more requests for interviews, I hear from a ton of people by email (and I will get a system in place so I can stop falling behind on that, darnit), and I'm more than halfway done with the Second Edition of the book — which I'm really excited about.  There's a lot of new information out there now, and I'm finding as much of it as I can.

My schedule-implosion will, if things go as I hope, resolve itself by August (at the earliest), and I am keeping all relevant body parts crossed in the hope that my new situation (which may not be settled until next Xmas, eek!) allows me to do at least a three-hour Everyman schedule.  It's possible I could have stable-r periods before then, too, and if that's true I'll probably re-adapt again…though, my "re-adjustments" when I fell off the schedule for a few days or even weeks only took 2-3 days (for the last 2 years or so); I don't know if that'll still be true in a couple months, so I'll have to plan for that.  Anyway, what I'm saying is that heck yes, I'll be re-adjusting eventually — to Uberman if somehow life magically lets me, but I'll be honest, full-time work is going to be my order-of-the-day for a while, so that's probably a ways off — and heck no, I'm not done with the whole polyphasic thing.  I've just been thrown into one of those life-situations that flat forbids the kind of sleep-schedule I'd like to have.  ARGH.

What I'm back to, for the most part, is the ol' uncomfortable-adult-5-to-8-and-10-on-weekends schedule, the one I like least, but also the one that takes the least planning and cooperation from the rest of the world.  BUT, on days that I know I'll be able to catch one nap (which is most days; I can usually get *one* nap somewhere), I'll sleep 6 hours at night, because I find that equally tolerable to sleeping 8 hours, and they both make me feel the same:  "Eh."  If I don't have to get up in the morning and I was tired the day before, I'll sleep 9 hours, and wake up rested but really, really sore.  This utilization of 6-1 Everyman-style-sorta-like-siesta napping has surprised me by cutting 1.5 hours off the total sleep-time I need at no cost to how I feel.  (Mind you, I don't feel great; but I don't feel great on 8 hours, either, and regardless of whether I get 6-and-a-nap or 8, I still catch up on "free days" just the same.)  So that's an unexpected win!

One upside is that, probably not long after the release of Ubersleep, Second Edition (oo! Can we call it "Mark II"?), I'll be doing a big really-from-scratch readjustment, and I'll be able to really do a nice walk-through of one, maybe even with video (depending on where I'm working & how they'd feel about that). 

Weekly posts will continue; I probably have enough material "saved for later reading" to do posts on for a year anyway!  Things around here (on this blog) will be getting re-focused and brushed up over the next year, too; I HAS PLANZ.  Surprisingly well-thought-out ones, even.  ;)

Now, a call-out:  If you're polyphasic, and you have a thought on the topic that seems worth sharing, send it to me, will you?  My email is the shockingly-hard-to-decipher "mynickname@mynickname.com", OR you can leave a comment here.  If you're the verbose type, I'm up to being asked about you posting your own article here; having some guest-bloggers would be neat.  Also, this is a good time-period to toss me suggestions for how to make this site more user- and community-friendly, if you have any burning a hole in your skull.  Thank you in advance!

pd

P.S.  Bonus awesome picture, for reading this far:

…Yeah, that's the signal I'm getting lately, too.  ;)

A tool that's really helped me out lately is Wakerupper.com. 

This simple, no-registration-required free service does exactly what it ought to do:  It rings your phone at a certain time.  It's very accurate and hasn't missed for me yet.  I like it much better than the other services I've found, which are either insanely full of ads, or aren't really free, or make you jump through a ton of hoops and pages to get your call set up.  This one can be done literally in the last five minutes before bed!  It makes a great backup alarm, especially if the phone gets you hustling, like it does me.

Backup alarms aren't just for adaptation, by the way.  I've been through many times–including recently–when things got crazy enough and missed naps and lost sleep were common, and a backup alarm or three can be a huge help, then.  Ones that can be set for odd times, especially, if you're having to catch up naps off-schedule.

By the way, has anybody ever read the essay On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt?  It's one of my favorite philosophy papers ever.  I was thinking the other day that someone should do one about the value of swearing as a nonviolent form of self-defense.  Really, I wish more people would consider and teach the valuable skill of verbal control of a pre-violent situation.  A well-placed scathing cuss can back off a surprising number and variety of people, and the technique sometimes works even better for women, children, the elderly, etc.  If you're concerned with avoiding fights, I think, you'd do well to learn how to win at confrontation. 

So anyway, someone should write that up.  It could be called On Fuck Off, yeah?  ;)

(Completely unrelated picture I happened to like courtesy of Mr. Ducke and Creative Commons.)