*Transcendental *Logic

Oh for heaven’s sake.

I was terrified at first that I’d managed to completely sleep through an alarm again, for no good reason, but it turned out to my minor relief that I’d set it for 12 noon instead of midnight. (My alarm kinda sucks in that it’s really easy to do this sort of thing.) I woke up at 4 a.m., in plenty of time for work, but missed out on my writing-time and my chance to watch Full Metal Alchemist with no-one awake to laugh at me. ;)

So, here, I never explained the Boomstick and obviously I didn’t get to implement it, but this gives me a good chance to offer up the New Tactics for display.

By the way, I should mention that I actually think all this failure and backsliding on my part is pretty funny, and not at all bad (though it does piss me off, don’t get me wrong) — the first time I adopted the Uberman schedule, it pretty much went off without a hitch, and a small country’s worth of people has since struggled to take it up after me. Now I get to come back and walk the hard road, which is not only fair, but gives me a chance to test a whole bunch of theories about how to adapt that I never would have been able to otherwise, and which gives me far more first-hand info for the book than another “smooth” (relatively speaking) transition would have.

My goal, in case you’ve lost sight of it (and so I don’t), is to nail down Everyman with the 3-hour core (2 x 1.5s seems to work best for me) and then attempt to reduce the cores, all the way to Uberman if possible. But after almost 50 days I’m still backsliding on Everyman. This is good, hard proof that any polyphasic schedule requires serious vigilance for at least a month. In my case, I never got better than “mostly adapted”, which is a phase you can hang out at quite a while in Everyman, but of course if you stop there, you’ll backslide the second you miss a beat.

Darnit, does anybody else have the Toadies song “Backslider” in their head? ‘Cuz now I do. ;)

Anyway, jump the cut for The Boomstick tactics. And Happy We Found More Oil Day — with all the shameless language-games the GOP seems prepared to play this election, I’ll be shocked if it isn’t a national holiday by the end of the week. >_<

The Boomstick: Tactics for Bullying Yourself into Polyphase

The core goal of Boomstick tactology is to Train Thyself to get out of bed the second an alarm goes off. Not wake up — that’s what the alarm does — but get out of bed and, just as importantly, stay out of bed.

It’s understood here that almost every polyphasic sleeper sleeps in different locations throughout the day; these exercises are primarily meant to combat the tiredness almost all of us feel at one particular time, usually a chunk of the middle of the night, which can be debilitating and utterly resistant to logic (being that it rather neatly disables your brain). By adapting the Boomstick Tactics to your lifestyle, nighttime oversleeping can be greatly reduced (I think. It’s a good assumption, but I’m still trying it out myself.).

Step One is Basic Training. At least ten minutes a day, do the following excercise:

Lay down in your usual sleeping spot. If you wear an eye-mask to sleep, put one on. Try to simulate the experience of being asleep as closely as you comfortably can, though the laying down is the important part.

Set an alarm (your usual one, if possible) for less than five minutes from now. If you can do this without knowing exactly what you set it for (i.e. jab the “minute” button a couple times), that’s best. You want to be unable to expect it when it goes off.

Now–I bet you see where this is going–close your eyes and relax as completely as possible.

When the alarm goes off, LEAP out of bed and onto your feet. Shut off the alarm, stretch, stamp around a bit, shake your head. Now you’re awake.

Now reset the alarm and do it again. Remember to LEAP out of bed; think “electrocution”.

This exercise would be ideal to master *before* beginning any polyphasic schedule, but it can’t hurt if taken up later, either. Laying in bed after the alarm wakes you up is deadly.

After Basic Training comes Advanced Tactics.

Pick at least one activity that’s very simple, and which you can do several times a day — I use taking a vitamin (I can take 6-8 of these pills a day, so taking one per nap is cool.). Other possibilities are changing clothes, doing situps or something similar, singing a short aria, etc. etc.

Now practice doing that activity *every time you get out of bed*. If you have trouble adapting to it, use a version of the Basic Training exercise above: Every time you “LEAP”, get up and do the first couple motions of your chosen activity.

For many people, that’s enough — having Basic Training under your belt, and a small thing to do each time you wake up, can push you through at least the initial hump of even really nasty sleep-dep. You’ll still have to have a list of things to do and lots of coping techniques lined up for the majority of the nights in your first week or so, but even after you stop needing those things, you may still need the Boomstick tactics to stay on course for up to several months, or permanently. Not that permanently remembering to do your situps or take your vitamins regularly is such a bad thing. ;)

If that’s not enough, consider adding a Complex Activity in addition to the simple one. For instance, have your routine be get out of bed, immediately do situps, then walk around the block. It doesn’t have to take up much time; only enough that you have to stop obsessing about going back to bed — ten minutes is usually plenty.

This entry was posted 2 years, 2 months ago on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 10:15 am and is filed under polyphasic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.