Polyphasic Sleep and Better Thinking

Very first thing I want to say:  Wow, were there some great comments on my recent "An Argument for Right Now" post!  That argument is one of the cores of my personal philosophy and one of the main reasons I chose, in the last few years, to align myself with Chan Buddhism and Taoism.  I've made that argument to friends and family and philosophers many times before, mostly provoking the "omg you really are a whackjob, aren't you?" face in return.  To have thrown it at the Internet, and to have so many people offer wonderful and intelligent responses, was a total gift.  Thank you, everyone!  I'm planning a follow-up post soon where I can address some of those excellent points directly, and pull some textual and historical references to support my claim.  Exciting stuff!

The other thing worth bringing up today is the magic of baking soda and salt.  Years ago, on an herbalist's recommendation, I put equal parts sea-salt and baking soda in a grinder and whirred it to a fine powder.  I had no idea at the time how massively useful this stuff would be, but after using it again this morning, I thought, "This is something the Internet needs to know about!"

The principle is ridiculously simple:  Salt is a powerful killer of most germs and microbes, and it also, while stinging quite a lot in open injuries, is a great pain-killer.  Baking soda is a strong base, so it neutralizes acid; plus it has a nice toning and softening effect on skin and hair tissue (which is why you can use it for shampoo and to scrub your face, as well as to soak in a bath with).  The combination of the two is fantastic for basically anything related to your mouth or sinuses, like so:

• If you have, or think you may be getting, any illness that involves your sinuses, put a pinch (just a pinch) of this mixture in your neti-pot, mixed into warm water.  It will kill germs like crazy and also soothe irritated nasal passages.  If I can make myself do this twice a day, there isn't a sinus infection / cold / etc I can't kill in three days, seriously.
   
• Similarly, if there's anything going on with your mouth or throat that involves inflammation, irritation, or infection, swish or gargle with a (slightly stronger) solution of the stuff for powerful painkilling and germicide.  Works wonderfully on swollen tonsils, cuts or injuries in the mouth (not open bleeding ones, because ow ow salt ow — though if you do have an open cut, this won't do any damage; it'll just sting), post-dental-work pain and swelling, etc.
   
• If your teeth are not in the best shape, this stuff is your best friend.  It doesn't replace toothpaste (if you have cavities or whatnot already, you need the fluoride), but it does something that, if you already have tooth-decay, is equally important:  It kills germs, better than alcohol, and brushing with it (while, as you can imagine, totally delicious) is much better at working it into the holes than swishing with mouthwash is.  A tooth with a cavity isn't the end of the world, even if it eventually breaks and falls out; but abscesses and infections are awful, and can even be life-threatening.

…And that's about all I've got today, EXCEPT for this wonderful poem I just ran across — I'll post it beneath the cut.  If you like it, you'll be really fascinated to learn who the author, Peter Erlang, really is…

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The trick, I'm told, is to limit yourself reasonably, in ways that don't interfere with your ability to flow detached through the cruft and crap of life; and which let you hang your hat on proper principles without turning you into a machine or a rote-memorization idiot.

Here is my attempt to define reasonable limits for myself:

1. Relax during relaxation-time and work during work-time.  When it's time to work, leave the TV and other relaxation-things alone; and when it's time to relax, leave the laptop shut.
2. Take bedtime seriously; don't put off naps or do things right before them that I know will screw them up.
3. When giant projects loom, do a little every day — this staves off needless worry.
4. Do not indulge anger in the real world; save it for art.
5. Meditation & practice daily is the default; no exceptions but for emergencies.
6. Choose good food over junk food; if not starving, choose to go a little hungry rather than eat crap.
7. When feeling lost, fall back on good principles.  Do not indulge in doubt when weakened by fear; doubt is for when you're strong enough to do it properly.
8. When threatened, relax, and flow like water.

Man, being "reasonable" is really hard when I'm so used to being OMG CRAZY GUNG HO WOOOOO about everything (i.e. sleep), or else ignoring it entirely (i.e. social activities).  But there's a lot to be said for the idea that having "limits on your limits" is healthier than either having none, or too many; and I'm old enough now that a good system needs to last, and be perfectable over, decades, not the handful of years that's the most anything lasts during one's youth (especially mine).  Still, figuring out how to hit middle ground (lit. "the Middle Way") here was surprisingly tricky.

Opinions welcome! 

(I know I'm already behind on comments & emails, so if I've ignored you please forgive me.  I still want to hear people's thoughts, or I'd be writing this in my private journal.  ;)

Sorry I missed my update Wednesday.  I get tired of regurgitating polyphasic "news", such as it is, tiny articles on naps here and there and the occasional interesting question that can't be answered without real research; it's not that it isn't interesting, but for me it's part of my routine now, and it gets a little tiring as a topic.  Plus I've been busy as eff and all the busyness has been better suited to being reported in other places than here.  Anyway, apologies.

So maybe it's time to break the stride here with another bit of Better Thinking, or as they've now been called, my "Oh yeah and by the way I'm a monk" moments.  I can see why people who know me would call them that, too; I've been a areligious philosopher for a long darn time, and having me suddenly spouting off with, "You know, I totally get why the Zen tradition says…" now and again, with all the geeked-out connotations of a religious insider, has got to be weird for people.

So.  Zen — the Japanese and better-known word for Chan Buddhism, which includes the Shaolin Order — has a really interesting theory about the meaning of life that I thought I'd share here.

I like it because it is, in my opinion, utterly rational — it's the only "meaning of life" construction I can recall seeing in all of philosophy that doesn't rely on some huge assumption, of god or goodness or order or intelligent design or something; and yet which isn't at all nihilistic or insistent on randomness, either.  It's an answer to "what is the meaning of life?" that neither depends on nor destroys god(s), which works whether the Universe is ordered or kind or not, and which makes basic logical sense with the facts we have.

Not surprising that I'm impressed, is it?

Here's what the Chan/Zen Buddhists (and Taoists; they generally agree on this point) say the meaning of life is:  THE PURPOSE OF LIVING IS TO PAY ATTENTION TO IT.

Note that it doesn't say "to ponder it", "to study it", "to write about it", or "to develop a system for enjoying / improving it".  All of those things may also happen, but the central point — the hingepin of whether you're Doing It Right or not — is paying attention as an active verb.  Paying attention is something that can only be done in each moment — it's like praying that way — but it's also something that takes work and practice* and effort to do well.

Why is paying attention a good "meaning of life"?  Because it relies on only this justification:  You are here.  Somehow you were put here, now, in this exact place and time, and somehow you were given the tools to experience it. 

Whether you view being here as an incredible gift or a terrible curse or neither; whether you think it's a gift from God or an inevitable accident of physics; whether you think you'll be gone forever when you die, or come back here again, or go to another place — no matter what of those is true, it's undeniable that the best way to do this right is to hone and aim your facility for conscious experience at the moments you're experiencing. 

You're a conscious being, and you're here, amid all this, with all these decisions to make.  You'll get some right, and you'll get some wrong, and you'll pass on like everything else.  What determines whether or not you did a good job, lived a good life, took proper advantage of whatever gift/accident/luck/cycle that put this exact you in this exact now?

Right.  The degree to which you paid attention to it.  You are here, and you are conscious; those are the two basic foundations of the question of "what's the meaning of life"?  What's the meaning of being here, and being conscious?  To be conscious of being here.

The perfect answer, I think.

Have a great week, or not, but whatever you do…don't miss it.  ;)

-PD

.

*How do you practice paying attention?  Well, meditation, for one thing, which is a pure concentration exercise; and that's why it's primary in this type of study.  Secondarily, you pick at least one "kungfu" — yes, martial arts works, but not exclusively — one thing that you try to learn perfectly, so that your mental concentration and your physical body can line up, and you can get the hang of paying-attention-while-acting.  Thirdly, you work at paying more and better attention every moment of your daily life, while brushing your teeth, while typing, while pooping, while walking, while everything.  There's a Hindu saying that everything in life, no matter how seemingly small or unpleasant, was put in front of you by "god" (in this case Krishna) for a reason — that's a metaphor the Zen folks would like.  You'll never know the reason if you don't pay attention, though.

Awesometastic Creative-Commons licensed images by MAMJODH — Wow, thank you!

Mm, another Lifehacker article by a tech-startup-consultant-rockstar who's going to teach us all to be clean, slick and productive through the magic of a daytime nap. *yawn* (No, I'm not tired. ;) Anyway, dutifully I read the article, amusedly I chuckled at the first comment being about polyphasic sleep (which is either too weird a topic for LH to really cover, or lacks the prerequisite of being presented by a sufficiently slick techstar) — and verily I note for you, who are probably curious but also probably know more about napping than this guy, the short version:

• You don't have to actually fall asleep to nap – it's enough to drift off to a half-sleep state
• Even if it normally takes you 30+ minutes to fall asleep, you can benefit from 20 minute power naps
• First, learn what you're aiming for, for example by using something like pzizz.  Then, practice reproducing that feeling – plan for a few months before you get good at it
• Don't over-sleep when power-napping, it will only make you feel groggy

from How I Mastered the Power Nap

…And all of those are good points, I suppose, even though they all come down, as far as I can tell, to "have some discipline and really try it".

Which does–I freely admit–work!

There's more than a little Evil wandering the maps today*; did you notice?  Sometimes there's not much you can do to keep from tussling with it; but there are ways and means which, if you avail yourself of them when you can, will keep the worst of it from being attracted to you.  It's kind of like walking through an alley at night in a bad neighborhood, but with some special considerations for the fact that this is the world, not a few angry humans, that you have to brush shoulders with here.

Evil is not, itself, bad.  Like a wild animal, it can hurt you even by accident; but similarly, if you know what you're doing, you can walk right through it and suffer no harm.  Here's what I know about the kind of thing that's going on lately (which happens to be a kind of "Evil" I'm pretty familiar with).  Consider it a sort of horoscope, except having nothing to do with astrology, and pretty much applying to everyone (unless you exist somewhere, or in some state, that makes the current influx not apply to you).

Keep the evils away from you by carrying a bright light.  Make your light brighter with donations, smiles, offers of help, meditations and art.

Don't ignore these things, like you often do.  There's enough bad things loose today that to go out without protection is perilous.  This is a great time to give a few bucks to those various people in need you hear about and usually look over.  Make sure not to tell anyone about your good deeds, at least until this fell time is over with — you don't want to bleed the energy out of them while you still need to keep it close, to protect you.

Keep the fumes of the Evil from sinking into and poisoning your mind by remembering that it's necessary, that the world needs its high-cycles and low-cycles.  Pay attention to it, feel it, let it exist without letting it take over your thinking.  (Do not start fights with the demons; they have a right to pass through here, too.)  Grant, but do not indulge.  Feel, but do not own:  Sacrifice your reactions, your pain, your guilt, your doubt, your fear — put them in the cauldron and let the One who owns this Rancor collect its due.

(That's right, God doesn't just keep pink-shirted chihuahuas with white teeth and bows; sHe has more than a few dragons and Rancors too.  Respect them, and do not cuss when you step in their poop, or else.)

Do your part:  if the Evil spares you, then spare yourself some time and patience to listen to and comfort those it did not spare.  Do not wince when the phone rings; you owe, for your luck.

Don't make any big decisions or change any big plans that were working fine before this week.  Things you were doing wrong already may come to a head, as the bad things take advantage of the holes in your armor; obviously, if you've been putting off fixing something and you're under attack now because of it, fix it fast!  But unless that's the case, don't be fooled into feinting:  Walk firm and keep your head up, and yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of suck….

*bows as you pass*

*Depending on where and how you live, "today" could be any days in late March.  Keep your eyes open and you can't miss it, though.

Awesome CC-licensed image by Fabbio; thanks!

So, for all that I've hax0red sleep a bit, which I'll admit to being cautiously proud of, apparently the subtle art of taking notes is just horrendously beyond me.  This is the first I've written of any of it since last week!  *d'oh*

So this is the, um, end of the first week of Everyman 3 again, after about three months monophasic–er, wait, when did I make that post?–or roughly so.  (Look, scientists, at what a terrible job I'm doing!  I'm worthless at data!  Somebody should really do this right, in a lab!!)  But hey, gimme a break; what I just experienced can only barely be called an adaptation. 

A more accurate term, I think, is "I just fell back into the sleep schedule I've had for the last almost four years".  And I've been busy enough at computery-stuff lately that I haven't had free time that I could spend in front of the box, not unless I wanted my neck to stage an outright revolt.  Plus, what to write?  It was…well, it was nothing, really.  I was tired for like, an evening.  I couldn't get, or sleep for, one nap or another for the first couple days, but if I just missed one I plowed through and kept going, and if I missed two naps, I slept 4.5 at night — which is basically how I always do it, with some variation.  I went back to making adjustments-on-the-fly almost immediately, though I'm trying to be more disciplined so that hopefully the habit will weather some upheaval.  I have been pretty good compared to my average behavior the last 3.5 years.

Er, if my failure to make "adaptation notes" or something disappointed anyone, I'm terribly sorry.  There just wasn't much to tell — other than that I feel awesome, and wow am I glad to have that back.  Better still, it looks possible — far from guaranteed, but maybe doable — that I can keep this schedule straight through my upcoming transition.  When I tell you what happened to suddenly make this a possibility, you may find your jaw in your lap all a'sudden; I did.  But I can't yet.  Then again, only being able to have my Everyman schedule back is hardly a fail!

Details, though — I can provide some more of those.  Click through if you'd like to read them.  And….woot!  \o/

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::breathes deeply::

Aaahhh, four a.m.  I've missed this time of day — it's so peaceful, and there's time to watch a whole movie (or whatever) before the sun even comes up.

Today is Thursday; yesterday there was no chance I was getting my weekly post done (nor was there on Tuesday, when I usually actually write them).  This is great because I have a job again — YAY! I still won't know I get to keep it for a few months, but for now YAY AND YAY AND YAY — but awful, because said job is eating a good 10 hours out of the middle of a day that had already filled up with several hefty non-job tasks…none of which have gone away now that there is a job.  Waugh.

In short, after working (for the moment, I work from home) on Monday, I looked at my husband and said, "I don't think I can do all this, without my Everyman schedule back!"

He agreed that, even on paper and using a calculator, I actually have more work to do than I can be awake for, even if I work continuously (and eff that), sleeping monophasically. And let's not forget that I'm not actually getting enough sleep on a monophasic schedule anyway, and that 6/1 as a substitute was okay, but not great, and I was missing the nap far too often and just ending up sleeping 6 hours.  Yikes!

So I checked in with my BFF and she agreed.  Now, I have managed in the course of my life to attain a very high-quality best friend and husband, and when they both agree on something, I almost never buck it.  Together they are more powerful than you can imagine, like one of those click-together giant robots.  ;)

…I had quit polyphasic sleep, remember, because my schedule got way sloppy when I lost my job, and it was difficult almost every single day to carve out time for my naps.  Now, what's happened is that my schedule got that full, and I have no choice but to force myself (and others) to make time for the naps, because I *can't* make enough time to do without them!  But I almost don't care what the reason is; I'm polyphasic again, hurrah hurroo!  ;)

So, two days ago (Tuesday) I took all my naps.  My husband took a look at me at ten o'clock that night and said NO.  "Sleep debt accumulates," he told me, "And you still haven't managed to catch up any of the sleep you missed [going out of town recently].  I demand you get one night of more than enough sleep before you start this."

We all know that sleep-debt is part of what makes the brain/body switch over to a polyphasic schedule, but we also don't know whether starting the adaptation process while already sleep-deprived is a good idea or not; so I had mixed feelings about his advice.  But in this case, he was very right; for the last seven days straight I'd been operating in a thick fog, and I didn't even realize it until I slept 9 hours (like the dead) on Tuesday night.  WOW did I feel better on Wednesday.  So I took all my naps again yesterday (couldn't sleep for one, but I laid down anyway), and then I stayed up last night — I was tired, but not horribly so.

Getting up at 4a.m. … yes, well, there are more fun things than that, especially the first couple times.  But I'm here and I'm quite functional, barely a yawn, and in less than 4 hours it'll be naptime again.  (On Everyman 3, I get up at 4 and take my first nap at 8; then my next at 1-2pm, then another at 7-8pm.  That's the schedule I held, with very little modification, for a few years there.  And it's back!  I'm so geeked. WOOT!)

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes me to "switch back".  I was on this schedule — Everyman3, which is one three-hour core nap and three 20-minute naps — for over three years before I quit it, and it's been, um, about 3 months since I started having such trouble getting my naps and "gave up".  But good lord, that "giving up" cost me almost four hours a day, plus a lot of soreness and grogginess and quite a bit of stress and feeling rushed, all of which could have been so easily solved…by a little 4am-time.

Good morning!! 

PD

Gorgeous creative-commons photo by Martin Pettitt — thank you!

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