By this point, you might have goofed up again, and probably decided to take a break and make another go of it after some restful, regular sleep, and that would be wise. Or maybe you’re still at it, in which case hang in there and stop goofing up!

What’s happening to you is normal: Day 2-3-4 is HARD. Major sleep-deprivation is not something most people ever have to deal with, but you’re describing it exactly when you say that naps don’t help at all, that you sleep through all your alarms and even people trying to wake you. That’s normal, believe it or not. That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about the serious sleep-dep, the “hump” that you have to get over in order to adapt to Uberman. (There is a reason that only a handful of people have ever succeeded at adapting to Uberman, and days 2-4 is that reason.)

You can still be successful, but I bet you have a better idea now of how serious you’ll have to be in order to make it happen. In order to succeeed, you MUST NOT oversleep. You must get through days 2,3,and 4 feeling like a total zombie, and darn near needing the apocalypse to wake you up. (This is why all the discussion, in my book and on this site, about clever things to rig up to help you wake up: It’s not because people usually need those things on polyphasic schedules. It’s almost all for days 2-4!)

If you can be that serious, then step back and make some hardcore plans, and figure out some alarms that will work. A friend who’s willing to pour ice-water on you and physically drag you awake can work; so can really extreme alarm setups involving ice, light, water, or danger. (I wouldn’t recommend the last one for fear of a lawsuit, but I did talk to one genius who had a loud alarm, and a second alarm 60 seconds later that would have dropped a whole bucket of forks right on his head. Ouch! But it made him get up for that first alarm.)

You need to be 100% committed in order to get through that period…and it’ll seem long while you’re in it, but it’s really just a few days; by the end of day 4, with no mistakes, most people are feeling tons better, and by week two it’ll be nearly effortless. The sleep-dep is really unpleasant, but it isn’t dangerous. What IS dangerous is continuing to oversleep and keep going anyway — that can hurt you, if you do it too long. So where you’re at, it’s time to commit or get out of the kitchen, really.

For what it’s worth, I and the others who’ve adapted to Uberman do think it was worth it. We also shudder whenever we think about those few days of adaptation…it’s a world-class challenge, no lie. Of course, the benefits on the other side are also amazing. Now that you’ve had a taste of what’s involved, you should be able to make an informed decision as to whether you want to continue pursing (what I like to call) the Golden Fleece of Sleep!

LUCK!!!

I’ve been trying the Uberman pattern for several days now and I’m stuck and depressed.

On Monday through to Wednesday I managed the pattern, but then overslept for six and a half hours and ruined the pattern.

From Wednesday (2 in the evening) until 17:00 today, I managed to stay awake.. but I’ve just overslept for an hour and a half and nothing seems to be working. I’ll take a nap but I won’t recover at all. I become so tired that I sleep through all alarms and nobody can wake me up. I’m really stuck as to where to go from here in terms of making this successful and can find nowhere else to turn.