Category — polyphasic sleep

Hey, I thought of a name for modified / core-sleeping schedules! We can call them “Everyman” Sleep Schedules. ;)

Seriously, I put a lot of thought into this last night (in between bashing out a truly Ubermanly amount of homework!). It completely makes sense (at least in retrospect) that the Uberman schedule would be quite dependent on factors in one’s life that may not be in one’s control. Uberman is not something you can in any way “fit your existing life into”; it’s something you have to tear your life down and rebuild around. (I know this last week has completely fux0red everything about my usual schedule / routines / habits etc., and I didn’t even get through The Razing that Uberman actually requires.) Sure, Da Vinci could do it; he had a 24/7 workshop and a huge quantity of art and tinkering to work on. Ditto Edison, Einstein, Bucky Fuller, etc. Something tells me that if I didn’t have a 9-5 job and was possessed with a full-on workshop and no family to raise, I could snap my fingers and do it!

The upshot is, after much thought, the critical difference between Me Then & Steve Pavlina versus Me Now and quite a few other failed attempters seems as simple as lifestyle. Nothing else seems to bear out: For example, Me Then ate far worse than Me Now and was in many ways *less* disciplined. I know I gave this a thoroughly good shot; I planned it as well as humanly possible, was brutally strict with myself, enlisted help — everything I did last time and then some. What I couldn’t do was change my living situation to be more compatible with being up at night — once I got too sleep-deprived to drive, I was literally stuck in one corner of a basement, and unable to do anything noisy — nor could I change my work/school schedule to accomodate two or howevermany weeks of sleep-dep it was going to take to adjust in my circumstances. (Maybe that’s it: The worse your circumstances, the longer your adjustment period?) So yes. Lifestyle seems to be a MUCH bigger factor than previously credited.

But polyphasic sleeping did something really positive for me last time, when I was lucky enough to have an Uberman-compatible lifestyle. And ever since then, I’ve wanted to see everyone have the shot at being less tired and having more time. If there really is an Everyman schedule (or several) that can really work, that’s FANTASTIC news in my book! I guess I just had to get smacked down by Uberman in order to even entertain the idea, heh. But I never claimed to be smart. ;)

Today has gone well so far, info behind the cut. -PD

It’s rather funny, because if I didn’t have a reason to stay up until 2:00, I would have anyway — I had that much homework. I started after my 10:00 nap (keep in mind I also wrote a paper yesterday morning), and finished at precisely quarter to two. Now I’m only a *little* behind, heh. But I didn’t actually find the staying up that hard; I was yawning and drowsy–about Stanford 3–but it was doable and I could concentrate on what I was doing. Getting up at 5:00 wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t terrible either. (I got up right on time with one alarm, took a shower, ate, read, exercised, and took my time getting ready for work — having the extra hour before work is *nice*, since I was getting up at 6 and now it’s 5.) I was groggy, but I’d slept well and felt generally rested, i.e. not sick. Similarly, I had some drowsy episodes in the car on the way to work, but nothing so dangerous as Thurs. and Fri. last week; I didn’t have to pull over or anything.

So, things are looking good for day ten/one. The clincher for this is going to be, Do I actually adjust to it? Do I eventually stop being groggy? If it’s only this bad on the Everyman version, I can probably handle a longer adjustment period; it’s a little unfun but it’s not tearing up my life or endangering myself and others. And being that I’m still only getting just over 4 hours of sleep daily, the time gain will be totally worthwhile. (And perhaps this schedule could also address Ubermen who don’t like having *quite* so much time; I’ve heard that a couple times.)

So.

Apparently there is something about me, or about this time, that isn’t letting me adjust as easily as I’d anticipated; which, I sense, might adjust if I had the time to sacrifice to “waiting it out”, like one of my role models, Heidi, who out-patiented her body for five weeks and won. Everything in me screams to be allowed to be this badass, but circumstances simply won’t allow. I had a HUGE paper due today that I’ve been unable to concentrate on for several days now, and which I’d counted on the nights to help me finish. DAMN being a grownup; damn it to HECK.

The lesson here is “don’t assume you can adjust in 4-7 days, even if you did before”.

So I slept a few hours last night, feeling like a loser about it, but I woke up fresh enough to finish my paper.

Now, I’ve said that core-sleeping doesn’t seem the same as Uberman, and it doesn’t. I’m not sure how, or if, the body could adjust to it; reports on it are confusing and many people who go that route seem to fail (however, I’ve recently heard from a few who didn’t). So, since I’ve put a week of gut-wrenching work into this and cannot continue it in its present form, I figure I’m in a good position to do some research. My goal is to lessen my sleep amount AND not be tired; since I don’t have the time to beat myself into adjusting to Uberman for some reason, I’ll take this core-sleep thing for a test-drive.

(Details behind the cut.)

I’ve noticed from the last few nights that, if I just pass out and sleep, I sleep a maximum of 4 hours, and I feel pretty much fine (as in, no sleep-dep symptoms). Four hours seems too much to justify all those naps, though, so I’m going to try 3. Naps at 10a, 2p, 6p, 10p, then from 2-5a. That’s 4.3 hours sleep a day, a definite gain over my usual 8-minimum — IF I can actually adjust to it and do it without being tired. If I can’t, I’m just going to have to go back to the drawing board for now, and wait for another opportunity. To be honest, I’m still skeptical that this semi-uberman thing can work, so it feels like giving up to me to be trying it, like I’m just taking a middle step between failing and quitting…but this whole episode has had me in a pretty negative mood lately, so I suppose I should just attribute it to that and shut up so that I can give it an honset try.

Hmm, I think I may move the 10a nap to 9, too. That way I’m not up 5 hours in the morning, but rather in the midday, when it’s easier; and it cuts into my workday less, too.

Thanks to all who encouraged me not to give up outright; it really made a difference. And I want to hear from everyone who’s core-sleeping, especially who’ve made it work stably and/or are transitioning to Uberman…I’m still collecting data for the book, because, well, you never know. ;)

-PD

Succeeded in sticking to perfectly-timed naps all day. Didn’t help in the slightest, apparently. Was groggy on and off all day; now I’m back to fighting Really Nasty Sleep Dep again. Joy, oh joy.

Now I can see (blurrily, but still) why doing this on a college campus had such an immediate huge advantage: Numerous ways to be distracted and kill time, within walking distance. None here. And since I can’t drive, pretty much every minute is a long slow countdown to when I can sleep again. Fell out like a brick at 2:00, and needed my husband to wake me up again, btw.

Am seriously upset that I still feel so ungodly horrid. My homework is suffering, since I’m not able to concentrate well day *or* night, and things don’t look good for my being able to drive on Monday, unless I experience a rapid turnaround between now and then. And practical considerations aside, this is *no fun*, and yes, I knew it wouldn’t be any fun for a couple days, but we’re talking ten days now. I can handle anything for a few days–anybody can–but this is FAR too nasty to have to face the prospect of dealing with it indefinitely. How long is this going to go on? And what on Earth did I do wrong, or differently, that made the difference between the schedule “taking” last time and leaving me stuck in limbo this time?

The honest truth is, as a responsible adult I should have quit already; I didn’t have a whole week to blow and I sure don’t have two. I did this largely because I’m ridiculously short on time, and now I’m seeing how I’ve actually made that problem *worse* — which made sense when I thought it would get better any day now, but the longer this goes on the more doubtful I get. And of course, being stressed out on top of sleep-deprived isn’t helpful either.

I wanted this to work so badly, though, and I’ve already put so much effort into it, that I’ve decided to keep it up through the rest of the weekend. If Monday is still this bad, though, I’m afraid I’m going to have to hand in the towel for the time being. My workload is just too heavy to accomodate a week and a half of being a zombie…If I feel just a little better, though, I may give a shot at a core-sleep schedule; it isn’t what I wanted and I think it won’t have many of the benefits, but hopefully it would let me recoup some of the lost time, at least.

Darnit, I was really looking forward to writing a book on this, too. I suppose I could keep my notes and research in case I get another chance, but from here, that looks pretty slim. Or maybe I’m just letting my disappointment get the best of me. I really wasn’t prepared to fail at this, figuring that I’d done it so well before and all, and the sleep-dep doesn’t help when it comes to being morose, I’ll tell ya. One thing I would do differently if I started all over again is put up a “DONATE” box for my husband — he deserves to be compensated!

Well, off to wander in circles, maybe take another cold shower, and who knows, I could get some homework done in there, too. Ta!

-PD

Wow, I feel like a ship that’s still dripping from a nasty, freaky storm.

Last night was just icky. I was worried at the time that I might be sick or something because of how bad I felt, but looking back, yeah, that’s just “really nasty sleep-dep”. However, to have RNSD on day 8 is quite counter to what I think I know about this schedule, and definitely counter to how it went last time. I’d think that it was just me having a bad memory, except that Steve Pavlina, whom so many uberwannabes look to now for an example, seems to bear it out: His Day 7 post shows it clearly, that by then he was having no tiredness except for a bit at night. He says that perhaps being a vegan helped him (no offense, but I’ve found that people on a special diet always seem to think it gives them advantages everywhere…”See, I tied my shoes faster because I’m a vegetarian…”) — but his report is pretty much exactly what I remember from last time, and I’ve never been a vegan and never will be, since (if you care) I have abnormally iron-rich blood and would have to take tons of supplements to keep from feeling anemic if I didn’t eat at least a little meat every day. (I also eat lots of broccoli, which helps too…and I loooove broccoli!)

Anyway, enough digression. Perhaps it was my daily few-minutes-here, few-minutes-there oversleeps that were keeping me from adjusting; I certainly intend to find out, and have cut them out completely–none for over 24 hours now–so we’ll see. It’s possible that during the adjustment period, every minute counts, and keeping that in mind without someone to bug me about it was certainly harder this time.

I had been thinking maybe about allowing an “indulgence” of a couple hours on Saturday mornings, per my last post; thankfully yesterday was Friday, so I had a palatable solution to that awful sleep dep and I took it. I slept from exactly 6 a.m. to 10 (I had the alarm set for 10:20, but woke up just before 10 and decided to run with that). Now I feel functional again, though not terribly alert. I do wish I hadn’t had to mess with things until at least the first month was over, but I figure, obviously I wasn’t adjusting well anyway, so if this little “reset” throws me back a day or so, oh well. My biggest concern now is, will I be able to drive on Monday morning? I absolutely can’t avoid it, so if I can’t get some clear-headedness in the mornings pretty soon, I may be in trouble.

I’m going to have to cross my fingers and do *perfectly* this weekend. So I will — I really want this to work, darnit.

-PD

Ah: The Low Point. I knew this was coming, eventually.

Day Eight (counting 6 p.m. Fri 7/7/06 – 5 p.m. Sat 7/8 as “Day 1″) went just swimmingly. No mistakes, no “snoozes”, no nothing; like clockwork. Except that I woke up from my 10:00 feeling like hammered hell again. I wandered around the room, too tired to be interested in anything, way too muddled to concentrate on anything, desperately fighting a bone-deep urge to sit down and knowing that if I did, I’d be asleep in seconds. Then I lost my grip for a while.

It seemed, at that moment, so totally, cosmically unfair that it couldn’t be stomached. Work has been Hell, school has been twice that, my living situation has been a constant annoyance (which it was before too, but only for half as much of the time), all my attempts to find things to “go do” or be social at have failed (which wouldn’t surprise you in the slightest if you knew me; Lord knows why it surprises *me*), and I’m so damned tired of being disoriented and dissatisfied and stressed out and uncomfortable that, for a while, I would have given absolutely anything to never have had the cursed idea of trying this again. Oh yeah, and I have a nice solid history of depression, and I haven’t even gotten around to buying more multivitamins since this started. That has nothing to do with any of it. Nothing at all.

My achingly brilliant husband brought me Kleenex, made a pot of decaf, and badgered me until I went for a walk. Yes, I feel a bit better. No, eight days is not an uberlong adjustment period and I should quit overreacting. Yes, it’s understandable that doing this in my circumstances would be a black diamond affair. No, I won’t give up.

He also told me flatly that a “core sleep” sounded right for someone in my situation, and suggested I should try it. Part of his reasoning is that I just have to spend a lot of my time sitting in front of the computer–hell, I should be doing homework right now–and the night I accidentally slept two hours, I did feel much better than I have since; less groggy and more alert. He’s also worried about how tired I am while I’m driving to work (me, too, actually). But I turned him down, mostly because I think it’s still too early to experiment–I want to give the pure “hexaphasic” schedule more time to take, simply because backing off from there is easy, but moving up *towards* “pure Uberman” is, well, just like this, and I’d much rather not do it any more than I have to.

Thoughts are, of course, welcome.

-PD

Okay, a minor *yay* for making it through week one with no major scarring. Last night went well, no major oversleeping for the 3rd day straight, though I did succumb to the snooze button again; I also took a mid-cycle “emergency nap” at midnight, due to being so tired from my daytime naps getting messed with that I knew I couldn’t last until 2. The emergency nap did help a bit and I was able to stay on schedule the rest of the night. (I say, if you have to take an emergency nap, do; it’s better than oversleeping; BUT, be warned — take it right in the middle of a cycle, and only there. You don’t want it messing up another nap!)

Mentally I’m still a bit slow, and physically still uncoordinated, both of which are aggravated right before and right after sleep. This morning I walked out of the house and stuck my key in the lock of my neighbor’s car. ;) I still feel like I can do everything I used to; it’s just a tad harder and takes a little longer like this. I’m not constantly tired or anything, but when I am tired, it’s like the Granddaddy Long-Legs of tiredness; I can’t stop thinking about sleep and doing everything possible to get some. It’s a surmountable feeling, but not a pleasant one.

I woke up *before my timer went off* this morning (6:00), which is a first (for nighttime), though because of an episode I had yesterday where I unexpectedly lost some time, at first I thought I’d overslept and ruined everything — and then I noticed that my timer was still going! Well, I was cozy and so what do you think I did; when the timer went off I congratulated myself for being so punctual and then *reset it for ten more minutes*. I distinctly remember that I didn’t feel drowsy when I woke on my own, but after that extra ten minutes, I was so wasted tired that I genuinely scared myself a couple times driving to work. Could it be that my stupid snooze-bar problem (which is much more of an issue at 6 a.m. than in other places) is the cause of my morning trashedness? I guess this week, I’ll find out. I am less trashed, now that I’ve stopped driving, than I have been over the past couple days at this time.

Other than how shredded I was last night about 11:00, staying up during the night has become much easier the last couple days; I haven’t even had to go out in order to stave off the drowsies for the most part. I seem to be getting trained again to wake up after 20 minutes, though it’s sloppy, and again, I think I’m going to blame my habit of snooze-barring once or twice a day on that. Baaaaad, snoozebar. No more snoozebar. (Or resetting the timer or, my personal favorite, bugging my husband to please be a dear and wake me back up in ten — I have no recollection of having the conversation, but he swears I did it.)

Thinking more on that, I think part of the reason I do it is that I miss being able to snuggle into bed and chill for a bit, which in recent years has been a common stress-reliever for me. And I’m a big believer in stress-relievers–shutup, I didn’t mean for that to rhyme. Seriously, though; my father and I are both Type A crazy work-till-death types, and watching his example has taught me that one should make damn sure to keep at least one strictly-chilling activity in place at all times. In my present situation, sleeping in on Saturdays was pretty much what I had, and there’s a good part of me that’s pissed about having to give it up.

Would the schedule bear, I wonder, scheduling in a “chillin’ sleep” once a week, say from 2-6 or 6-10 a.m. on Saturdays? I wouldn’t dream of making it random, or of less than determinite length, or any of that; but I also think that I’d have a better time with my snoozebar problem and overall mental view of this if I knew that I’d still get to snuggle and chill once a week.

Hmm.
-PD

Ah, I was waiting for it to start demanding funny sacrifices to The Schedule Gods. Accoutrements de Vehicle demand that I buy them before next week, to prevent those pesky fellow humans from waking me up no matter where I park, as they did 3 or 4 times today, ruining my afternoon.

It’s like sacrificing yourself for your Art, except instead of making something beautiful, you’re tormenting yourself. It’s like…sacrificing yourself for sacrificing yourself.

Personal Rule # 8,654,282,071*: Do not contemplate what the hell you’re doing to yourself while you’re doing it. ;)

Other than having a borderline headache still and not quite having recovered from my broken nap this afternoon, I is fine. I do want to formally thank the living heck out of the Uberman group at Yahoo — there’s no substitute for the advice and musings of lots of successful polyphasers, pure-Uberman and just about every other possible combination. And some that aren’t possible. And some that are made of cheese.

*sigh* Sleep dep blows.

Over soon…

-PD

*Note: I am capable of making one personal rule a second, which means I’m 274 years old. Respect your elders, dammit!!

3.8.7 spm

So, here I am with only 2 naps to go of “Day 6″, and last night was a pleasant surprise indeed. That headache made me decide not to take my usual trip to the cafe–I just wasn’t up for driving, even after I’d pretty much killed the actual headache–so I figured, well, I’m going to bite the bullet and stay home all night. And I did. I didn’t even take a walk or rollerblade; my neck gets so sore after those sinus episodes that I wince like an old lady when I even have to walk across the room. Still, I was really worried about it being a hellish struggle of a night, a real naked trip through Mordor, and about messing up when I’ve done well for the last couple days and would rather stick with that, thanks.

Well, I’ll be darned if it wasn’t twice as easy as the night before had been. I was able to read most of the night, taking breaks when I got woozy to do menial things like shower or clean a little, and I even got a solid chunk of homework done between 2-6, when I would have least expected it. I wasn’t more than “moderately” tired until I woke up from my 6:00 (still have to figure out why I’m so doggedly drowsy then). My headache started to come back at 3:00, so I made a snap decision to try taking an extra nap at four, and that was quite pleasant and actually did help get rid of the headache. (Funnily enough, I sat straight up and whipped my eye-cover off ten minutes into the 4:00 nap, convinced that because I’d slept so well, I must have overslept.) But even the extra nap didn’t help the 6:00 problem, though I should point out that I was only about 60% as drowsy this morning as I was yesterday, which was about 60% as much as the day before; so likely I just have to be patient (and persistent).

Oh, and my “couple cups of half caff” turned out to be about 1 cup total, over the whole night; I was all set to indulge but then that’s all I wanted! No negative sleep impact; I’ve been passing out quickly and sleeping like a brick for the last 2 days straight now (which, tellingly, is also how long I’ve been without oversleeping or mistiming a nap).

More later then,
PD

Wow, challenge upon challenge lately. The 2 1/2 hours of homework I did yesterday and the 2 I did today didn’t even put a dent in what I still have to do.

The humidity here has got to be like 9007%, except in my office at work, where the air conditioner pumps straight in, making everything a bone-chilling forty or so degrees and dry as the Sahara. Result? Staggering sinus headaches. I’ve been staving them off pretty well, but today was too much, and by the time I got home from work I pretty much couldn’t move.

Thankfully, it’s a bit better now, because I think my chances of staying simultaneously motionless and awake were, oh, nil or so. For now I’m a bit groggy–Stanford 3, maybe 3.5–but as long as I’m not trying to study (darnit), I’m okay. I’m permitting myself a few cups of half-caff tonight, partly to stay awake, partly to keep the headache at bay (because if it weren’t for coffee I’d be taking Sudafed, and there ain’t no sleeping on that stuff).

On the psychological front, I realized today how often I’ve caught myself “craving sleep”, exactly as one craves a smoke or a drink or a chocolate or ten. Not, I quickly realized, for any other reason than that it’s a nice long escape. My grandfather-in-law is the kind of person who never slept longer than three or so hours a night his whole life, by choice; he always said that some sleep was good for you but that most people indulge in it too much, and it begins to act like a drug. I would have laughed, but Buckminster Fuller said something very similar too. And my cravings since I’ve been “off sleep” for 6 days have a physical component, yes, but also a very strong needy psychological one. Hmm.

-PD

Waking up seems to be hardest, physically speaking, after the 6:00 a.m. nap. The way my day is planned out, I get up, get ready and go pretty much straight to work, so I do get up (I *can’t* be late at my job, and that panic is a fantastic motivator). But I’m stumbly and fumbly and all kinds of not-focused, which has already resulted in a few annoying incidents of forgetfulness and/or clumsiness. And, I’ll admit it, I do worry about driving this way, even though, blessedly, moving my day up an hour avoids the morning traffic rush. But then I get to work and I’m pretty much a dead rag until after 9:00 (after my 10:00 nap I perk right up).

But this is, what, day 6? No, day 6 starts at 6 tonight, I think. So this is still day 5. And though I didn’t screw up 5, I haven’t done a perfect job either. So more than likely, this is one of those hang-in-there things. *sigh* I hate those.

I suppose I’m right on schedule, though, when you think about it — I started feeling lots better yesterday (day 4), and last night I had my first I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-torture night — staying up was work, but not 3v1l. Oh, and if you ever want a movie you *can’t* sleep to, try The Crucible. Yiiiikes. (The book is better, of course, but reading…)

In other news, I went to the chriopractor yesterday and got a bit of a physical, just to be sure. He said I appeared to be just fine, and my blood pressure was “excellent”. To which I turned to him and shrieked, “I’M NOT DEAD!”

I like to keep people on their toes. ‘Specially when I forgot mine in my other pants.

-PD