Category — polyphasic sleep

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:

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!

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.)

Here's an odd tip out of the blue, that I've actually been doing for years and just realized (at 4:30 a.m.) was actually a tip!

Need help teaching your mind/body what is sleep-time and what isn't?  Use your shoes!

It's quite hard to fall asleep in your shoes.  It feels "wrong" to pass out while fully dressed.  It's easier to get up and walk around, go outside for a second, or pop into a non-sleep-friendly area (like a basement) when you're wearing shoes; and it's almost impossible to go to bed without taking them off first.

So use your shoes!  When your alarm goes off, put them on right away (and anything else you have to put on in order to wear them, like pants or socks), and leave them on until it's time to go to sleep again.  Use street-shoes or boots for the best effect, as opposed to tennies or slip-ons.

UberTip:  Clothes in general are helpful clues for your body about waking/sleeping times, so feel free to incorporate changing clothes into your routine however much it helps you.  However, people on "Uber" schedules (Uberman/Dymaxion/Tesla) often eschew the concept of "sleep clothes" altogether, since changing in and out of jammies six times a day gets a little tiresome!  …But if that's you, remember it's still helpful to develop some ritual for changing your clothing to indicate sleep-time — even if it's only to take off your shoes while you nap. 

Er, don't do what I did at first, and wear the same clothes for three days straight, though!  If you're on Uberman/etc., it's a good idea to change all your clothes every time you shower — remember, you put 20 hours of living (and possibly also six naps) into them a day!

(Got other tips?  Send them to puredoxyk@[samething].com and receive public gratitude for them!  ;)

Awesome creative-commons-licensed shoe image by Paul Stevenson.

Here's an awesome-looking find over at Lifehacker: HabitForge is a site that you can configure to send you daily emails that ask you to note your success or failure at something — for 21 days. (I'll confess I don't know why they chose 21; I always thought it was 28, and that works for me. Maybe there was a new study or something?)

Anyway, polyphasers are already thinking what I'm thinking: Having to check "were your naps PERFECT?" every day might be really helpful while adjusting to a new sleep schedule. And of course, it could have a ton of other uses, depending on how good you've gotten at ignoring daily emails…. ;)

HabitForge Helps You Form New Habits in 21-Day Blocks – Resolutions – Lifehacker.

13 Most Creative Alarm Clocks – Oddee.com.

…You see at least two alarm-clocks in that article that you a) want to buy, or b) wish you’d invented!

;)

OKAY.

Whew.

So I kicked that cold, and I got through the few days of bitterly cold and dry weather that had my knees rehearsing for what being ninety might be like, and actually I didn’t do that bad in terms of productivity and sanity in spite of everything. (There’s been a lot of everything, having to do with personal and job stuff I don’t think it’s cool to discuss here. Hope you understand.)

BUT, starting tomorrow, I’m healthy again and, with a few exceptions scattered around each week, I will, in the main, have control of my own time for a while. I’ve been convinced of the power of Cal from Study Hacks’ system (which I have no right whatsoever to call Uber Time Management; I’m just amusing myself there) from my part-time experience with it the last few weeks, and now I want to give it a go for real.

However, I should mention that I’m openly interpreting this schedule in a way that I feel will fit my life; I’m not copying it (properly called "Fixed-Scheduled Productivity") wholesale.  I think this is an important point, since I’m always telling people not to interpret or "guesstimate" things too much with regards to polyphasic sleep.  There are reasons I think this is a different thing, though:  Polyphasic sleep works as a system due to some (rather poorly understood) quality or qualities of human physiology.  While consistency in the schedule is necessary to adapt to it, there is not good evidence that any schedule can be adapted to by applying enough consistency; and further, it might be dangerous to push through sleep-deprivation too long, so constantly "working on" a schedule is a pretty bad idea.  Hence, it’s better to stick with what will probably work.  When it comes to scheduling, though, getting it wrong isn’t dangerous; making changes is relatively painless; and one could argue that consistency and discipline alone may be able to make almost any schedule work, if it fit a person’s lifestyle — there’s a lot less in the way of possible biological limits and hinderances here than there is with sleep.  So I feel alright about handrolling this a bit.

My goal is to be able to juggle several daunting "administrative" tasks, while simultaneously putting more and more concerted effort into my writing, and also into things that might make it more possible for me to spend more time writing in the long-term.  (Again, many of those plans and tasks are at stages that it’s not wise to be public about the details; and again I apologize for the ‘tease’.)

Here’s how the schedule looks, starting tomorrow.  (Under the cut in case you don’t care.)

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