So today marks the 4th week that I’ve been keeping to the "uberman" polyphasic sleep schedule.  To recap, this is a schedule where I sleep for 30 minutes every 4 hours.  Usually the sleep is kept to around 15-20 minutes, but it takes me a while to fall asleep, so I block off 30 minutes.

In case you’re thinking that this sounds insane, think of sleep like food.  You can eat a really big meal and be full for most of the day, or you can have small snacks all day long.  Sleep is like food for the soul (I think, anyway), so this analogy kind of works.  And if you need more info, look up the book "Why we nap" by Claudio Stampi.  It’s out of print now, but you can still find copies.

Anyways, I’ve been doing this schedule now for 4 weeks, and I can’t say I’ve adjusted yet.  Part of the problem is that every 4 or 5 days, I’ve slipped up and overslept anywhere from 1 to 4 hours.  This is problematic, as the theory is that in order to get your body to adjust and hit REM sleep in the small naps, you need to be sleep deprived until your body catches on that this isn’t changing, and makes the adaptation.

Though, despite my screw-ups, I’ve come a long way.  I can fall asleep pretty much anywhere, anytime, in about 5 minutes or so.  Normally it takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours to fall asleep at night. 

I know I’m hitting my deeper phases of sleep, becasue I’m dreaming and waking up feeling like I slept all night after each nap.  Just today I woke up with a tingly feeling that lasted until my next nap.

Some of the benefits I’ve seen so far are:

• Less joint stiffness and soreness.  For someone with back, knee, and hip soreness, this is a godsend!
• Increased flexibility – the constant motion and more opportunity for stretching, combined with not sleeping in one position for 8 hours has made me feel more limber than ever.  Though my sedentary job and lifestyle tend to counteract this.
• Decreased stress.  With 21-22 waking hours in each day, I’m in no rush to get stuff done.
• Increased energy.  Each nap gives a nice boost, and I usually (usually) have a lot of energy in between naps. 
• Better schedule – in a way..  I can work overnight when everyone is asleep and everything is closed.  Then during the day I can go out and run errands, explore the world, or just relax and enjoy the simple things.

And to be fair, here are some of the negatives:

• Loneliness – 22 hours awake with nobody to talk to is tough.  Not being able to cuddle up and sleep with my wife is tougher yet.   Though we’ve found ways to make it work (I lay down with her and read or do some work or we curl up with a movie till she falls asleep), and if I’m not too sleepy, I can cuddle up until she falls asleep, then sneak away.
• Too much couch time – With all this free time you’d think I’d be all over the place.  Not yet.  I’m still adjusting, and as such have spent a lot of time on the couch working (I make websites) and playing computer games.  But as I’m less groggy, I am getting more efficient in my work, and I’m also changing what I do for entertainment to be more active (ie more TKD, less Final Fantasy)
• Rigid schedule – missing even one nap is rough.  Oversleeping is hard to avoid, and worse than missing a nap if it happens.  The schedule is also tough to fit into the rest of the world.
• Extreme groggy periods – Usually between my 1:30am and 5:30am naps, I get so tired that I need to stay physically active, or I will give in to the temptation and sleep wherever I am.  Also, when waking up from most naps, you need to jump right up to avoid getting sucked back in.  If you can get straight up, you avoid the groggy and have tons of energy, otherwise you could be fighing your eyelids for the next 4 hours…  it’s like tossing a coin sometimes.
• Boredom.  When trying to stay awake, Boredom is your biggest enemy.  Make sure you have things planned, or you can end up wanting to sleep just to pass the time.  With 22 hours, you can get a LOT done.  I usually get dishes and laundry done each night, plus cleaning the kitchen/bathroom every other day or so.  Not to mention dusting the living room, which is something that was rarely done.  Now these are all clean constantly.

A few things I’ve observed that are neither bad nor good:

• Change in appetite – being awake that long, your body craves a 4th meal (at least).  I made the mistake of supplementing with cookies and cereal.  I’ll mention why cookies are bad, but cereal was killing me with both the excess milk, and of course, the loads of fiber.
• Watch what you eat – Certain foods make you groggy.  Others take more energy to digest.  For example, a diet of mostly fresh, raw vegetables, fruits, and nuts, tends to require less sleep than one including meat.  Additionally, any sugars, caffeine, or alcohol will severely impact your sleep.  Caffeine and sugar (synthetic sugars) both affect your energy levels in extreme ways, and should be avoided anyways.  Same goes for high-carb meals.  And alcohol can depress the body enough where you miss REM sleep all together (happens to me during normal sleep, and this sleep is more delicate).  I also found I eat less at each meal.
• Don’t get too comfortable.  I’ve made the mistake a few times of sleeping curled up on the couch with my dog.  Almost each of those times I’ve slept through my 2 alarms, and once missed an appointment.  It’s best to just lay down and get comfortable enough to sleep.  I’ve also taken to sleeping on my back – something I never did before because it took too long to fall asleep.  Though when I would nap before this, I noticed laying on my back left me feeling more refreshed.
• Have backup alarms.  Oversleeping is the WORST thing that can happen on this schedule.  I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true.  In fact, for most sleep schedules, waking up out of phase can leave you messed up.  So as a general tip – sleep the same amount of time each night, and learn to wake without an alarm.   That being said, while conditioning yourself to this schedule, you need an alarm to wake up.  In fact, you’ll need 2 or 3.  I used my watch, which is pretty weak, but does the job, combined with my cell phone.  The cell phone was louder and blasted some techno.  It also vibrated, so I’d put it on a hard surface out of arms reach.  Problem is both of them turn off after 30 seconds or so, and I’ve slept through them both a few times.  So make sure you have backups!  Cause waking up is hard to do.

On my last day, I guess in honor of my struggle so far, I overslept.  Part of this was a desire to give up, and part was just not realizing what I was going.

At first, my thoughts were that since I made it my goal of 1 month, I can just give up now. 

But then I realized that I still haven’t made the complete adjustment – I still need alarms and I still have some intense sleepiness when I shouldn’t.  I know this is because of the frequency which I’ve overslept.

So I decided, armed now with more information and a fresh dose of will-power, that I’m going to go at least 2 more weeks.  During these 2 weeks I WILL NOT screw up.  If I do, then I’m done.  If I can make it work, then I will see how feasible it is to keep this schedule.  Ideally I’d like to keep this going through the summer, so I can maximize my visitation time with friends and family, while still getting my hours in for work.

This schedule isn’t for everyone, and there are variations (incidentally Siesta sleep is supposed to be the best for a vast majority of us) that might fit your lifestyle better.  I am doing this schedule not only because it is the most aggressive, but also because it fits my schedule well as a web designer who works with people 5-6 hours behind him. 

The thing to remember is that we’re all as different as we are alike.  The key is knowing yourself, and always maintaining a healthy balance, no matter what it is you do.

As I move forward, my plan is to schedule activities that are engaging and satisfying – increasing TKD practices to 3 per day (2 light ones at home, 1 tough one in the gym), writing some more, cleaning and organizing, planning and cooking meals and learning some cooking techniques, etc…  I might even take up painting, who knows!

So Jess pointed out to me that I have now been on this sleep schedule for 3 weeks.  For some reason I had been thinking this was my second week.

I don’t feel that I’ve fully adjusted yet.  The average is 2 weeks, but I’ve had a lot of "accidents" where I’ve slept in.  My naps are definitely getting into REM now, but I’m still waking up groggy rather than refreshed, and between certain naps it is very difficult to stay awake.

As cool as it is to have 21-22 free hours per day, I probably won’t do this past the end of March.  I miss sleeping for the sake of sleeping, and being able to curl up comfortably without worrying about whether or not I’m going to fall asleep.

Plus, if you don’t have a lot to do, you can get VERY bored.  And that just isn’t fun.  And you can’t just sleep it off.

Switching back to a "normal" schedule will be tough, so I may still opt for a different pattern.  I’m thinking the "Siesta" model will work for me.

I’ll probably switch back to this schedule for the month of July this summer.  This way I can have plenty of free time for catching up with friends and family, but also enough time to get my work done.  But we’ll see how the rest of this month goes. 

I was in a house that was a cross betwen The Cottage, Yiayia & Papoo’s house, and some kind of factory.

This one went quickly, so there’s not much to tell.

We had been preparing some kind of big dinner, and I wanted to contribute, so I got buckets full of brussell sprouts (yep – brussel sprouts).

I was planning on making them special…  But it rained and something else weird was going on.  Anyway, dinner came around and Dad, Mom, Laura and Yiayia were all there.  Dad had to go do something so he took off.  Meanwhile I went to go get my buckets (now that i had the time) – it was time to make my food and prove myself!

But here’s where it gets weird (okay, maybe it got weird at brussell sprouts).  The buckets were on rafters that jutted out from the second floor, out over the sidewalk.  But they were hinged, and had ropes and pullies everywhere (the whole place looked like backstage of a theater).

I was going to walk out and carry them back, but Mom pulled the right rope and gently started lowering them down.  I acted like I wanted to do it my way, but this way was much better, and I had secretly wanted to do it that way anyways.

Oh yeah – and it was raining.

Then I woke up.  The sprouts could have also been potatoes or pickels…   you know how the feeling of dreams changes often and at weird times.

So I guess maybe tonight I’ll boil up a big bucket o’ brussells!  (or maybe not)

I just realized that I had posted my sleep schedule, but never went into the details of the surrounding schedule, to show how I fit it into my life. 

Since I have another 30 minutes until my next nap, I figure this will be a great way to fill that time.

You’ll notice I only have a total of 6 hours "scheduled" for work each day.  This is because those are the hours I’ve set aside for just work.  Otherwise, I will fill in the remaining work hours whenever it works during the day.  Usually this is in the evening, around 6pm.

I’ll start the schedule at 2am, since that is when I "officially" start each day:

Preface

As a result of the polyphasic sleep, I am remembering my dreams much easier now, and thought it would be kind of cool to write them down (as best as I can).  This also gives me an activity to help bring me out of the sleepiness.  Right now it’s bad because I’m still adjusting, and have managed to begin getting more REM sleep, buti have not yet reduced the time of the cycle yet.

Anyways, without further ado, here is what I can recall of this dream:

I’m at my cousin Jay’s house, just wandering around.  Drifing, almost floating, between groups and individuals.  I’m not sure if something’s going on, or if it’s just a hub of activity. 

Something’s going on, I can’t remember what, but we’re out in the woods, just returning.  My cousin John mentions something about losing an arrow, or that it’s stuck in a tree somewhere.

"Take a look at this", Jay says, and leads us to a small, felled tree.  The tree still has it’s leaves on it, though it could be a pine.  I’m not really sure.  What is clear, though, is that the bark is all scraped up in strange patterns.

Someone asks if it was a buck, but Jay is silent.  Something happens to distract a portion of our crowd and Jay shrugs, pointing to a particularly large section of exploded bark.  "That’s where your arrowhead was" he said to John, before walking away.

From there, there may have been some kind of segway, but we ended up walking down a white sidewalk, next to some houses with neatly trimmed yards.  They weren’t unbelievably immaculate, but they were clean and very homey.  Here the dream shifts, and I have memories of something to do with kids of two neighbors getting together. 

One was causing a bit of a stir, and his mother was out scolding her.  She looked like a young, non-distinct polish woman.  One of my friends, I think Jason B.  Maybe Josh.  Breaks off from our group to relentlessly hit on this woman.  She is very nice to him, but naive of his intentions.  Nothing happens and we continue on our way, making fun of our friend.

It’s around here where the alarm goes off and I scurry out of the warmth of the blankets to turn it off before it wakes Jess.

This one wasn’t very exciting, and it was very spotty, but I wanted to get started on writing these dreams down before it joins my procrastination pile.

I realize I haven’t been nearly as dilligent with these blog posts as I had originally planned, so I’m going to try and summarize my experiences from the last few days.

I have had a few more oversleeping episodes, accompanied by some nod-offs.  However, rather than oversleeping for 4 hours, it has only been for 1 hour each of the 2 or 3 times I overslept lately, so my body is making some kind of adjustment to the schedule.

The oversleeping has been bad, because it not only leaves me so groggy that I’m nearly incapacitated, but this last time it caused me to sleep through one of my tutoring sessions!

I’ve been trying to avoid oversleeping by using 2 alarms: My wristwatch (weak) and my cell phone (better).  The cell phone goes off 1-2 minutes after the watch, and plays a techno song, as well as vibrates.  I usually leave it on a hard surface so it rattles up a storm.  However, I have apparently been turning it off and going right back to sleep.  So today I turned the volume to max, and set my laptop to go off at the same time.  Let’s just say I woke up REAL quick that time!

Another contributing factor to the oversleeping is the dog.  She likes to cuddle, and I like to let her up to nap with me.  However, 15-30 minutes is just enough time for her to get comfortable.  And when you have a warm, comfortable puppy snuggled up on your stomach/chest/neck, it makes you sleepy, too.  I swear, even if I’m working and she’s laying across my lap, I get incredibly sleepy.

So the concensus is more alarms and less dog.  At least until I’m better adjusted.

In addition to oversleeping, I’ve been missing a fair number of naps in trying to work with the "real world" schedules.  But I’ve been able to make it work many times when we thought I wouldn’t, so it hasn’t been too bad.  And missing one nap only just makes me a bit more tired until the next one.  It’s not debilitating.

Other than that, sleep has been going well, and I’ve felt pretty fine during the waking hours.  I’ve noticed my naps getting deeper (contributing to the oversleep), and I’ve had an increase in dreams, but not quite the "all the time" experience yet.

One of my main concerns is how this schedule will affect my performance in tae kwon do.  So far it’s been widely varied, but hopeful.  I had one day where I felt I was exceptionally awake, but at the same time, more relaxed than I’d ever been.  I felt fully in control, and when I worked out, everything felt right.  I had great snap on everything, and I was quick and sharp.  I was also more limber than I’d been, and my kicks stretched upwards easily.  But just yesterday I had the exact opposite, where everything felt sluggish and heavy, like I was moving through water the entire time.  I got tired quickly, and had a pretty poor workout. 

I’m guessing that once I’m adjusted, I’ll be more often in the wakeful state.  I know I’m more tired now because my sleep is getting deeper, but not finishing.  The days I’ve felt extremely lucid have been the days where I’ve either slept just right, or was just the right amount of over-tired, before the exhaustion sets in when the body is in high alert.

At the rate things are going, I’d give myself probably another full week before I’ve adjusted completely.  It’s going slower than I’d like, but I think part of that is that each week feels at least twice as long, so I feel like I’ve been doing this for months, when in reality it’s only just over 1 week.

By oversleeping, I of course mean sleeping for 4 hours.  Yep.  It happened again.  Same time as always – 1:30 – 5:30.

I woke up feeling as if I was still asleep, but not as bad as the other morning when I wrote.  I was so tired then I felt drunk.

Anyways.  My additional precautions clearly were not enough to overcome my body’s rebellion.  I don’t know if I’m proud of that, or annoyed by it.

The basic principle is that you have to "starve" yourself for sleep, and limit your sleep to the nap blocks, forcing your body to adjust to those blocks as the only times it will see sleep.  Eventually, you will adjust to be able to get restful sleep during those short blocks.  Then the new pattern becomes normal and things should level out.

Unfortunately, I’m stuck at the half-way point, oversleeping every few days and throwing my progress backwards.  It’s very frustrating. 

So to try to combat this, I had taken a few extra measures:

1. Set 2 alarms, staggered by a few minutes
2. For the second alarm, I’m using my cell phone with sound and vibration.  Then leaving it on the glass table where the vibration is the loudest.
3. Leaving a light on – it is apparently easier to wake up (and I agree with this after doing it a few days), which helps avoid falling prey to the "Sleep Inertia" and going back to sleep after waking for the alarms.
4. Eating less meats/more vegetables.  I’ve been doing this anyways, but paying more attention as it is supposed to help improve your sleep quality and reduced the number of hours needed when on monophasic sleep.

Clearly this was not enough.  Especially when you consider my tendency to be able to turn my alarm clock off, even when I was sleeping "normally" and for a full night. 

This seems to be what happened this morning.  I woke to find my cell phone on my chest, and the alarm set for 30 minutes later than when I had initially set it.  I have absolutely no memory of this.

But this tells me I need to keep the cell phone alarm out of arms reach. 

I may also need a third alarm that won’t shut off after 30 seconds.  The watch and cell phone both don’t run for very long.  So far they’ve been adequate, but now that it’s really getting tough, I’m not sure they’ll get me through.

So, all that being said, I’m in for another day where I’ll start out really tired, then I’ll be so rested that I’ll have trouble with naps, making me tired again later on and finally getting the proper naps and evening things back out.

I had considered dropping this experiment if I overslept again.  But I’ve come too far now, and I can’t give up until I’ve succeeded, or it becomes clear that I simply can’t do it.  But for the moment, there’s still hope that I can pull it off.  But only if I step up my efforts.

I almost really overslept again this morning.

Almost.

As I approach my 5:30 am nap, I tend to get very sleepy.  In addition, by this point I don’t have much to do.  It’s either too loud, or not engaging enough to keep me from passing out.

So I’m sleepy with nothing to do.  This is where I would, in the past, grab a nap, or just go to bed.  But I don’t have that option anymore.  So when I woke at 6, overly groggy both from the nap and from the time, I felt the need for a little more.  So I layed down for another 15 mins or so.

Between Jess’ alarm and the ones I set, I managed to sleepily bat them away and keep resting.

But this has led me to the belief that, although this schedule is great for maximizing my time and allowing me to do more, I’m not doing it because I either don’t have enough to do, or I can’t do it at night (big portion of my ‘free’ time) or I’m just too tired to do it.

That being seaid, I’m having trouble finding the benefits of this schedule at this time. 

I’m almost convinced now that i’m going to abandon this experiment in favor of some bi-phasic schedule.

I will probably try this again for the summer, when we are travelling and my wife has off, but I still need to work.  But again, if I can’t sit at a computer that late for that long without falling asleep – then this won’t work.

The real problem is that my job is sedentary, as is my lifestyle.  I had hoped to use this schedule to get the boring, sedintary stuff done behind the scenes and go out and do something active during the day, but so far I haven’t been able to do this, and have needed to try to work during the day to cover the nighttime hours that I spend staring at teh wall.

So I had an interesting experience this morning.

First – a little background. 

The past few days, I have been extremely groggy just before my 1:30 am nap, up until just after my 5:30 am nap.  This has resulted in several oversleeps, which I have been extra viligant of.  Usually, during this time, it is a struggle to keep my eyes open.  I don’t believe it’s so much because I’m exhausted – it doesn’t happen any other times and I’m usually just as tired.  I think it has more to do with my day/night, light/dark rythms.  Or, maybe more believably, it is when I would hit my deepest sleep phases back when I was sleeping on a monophasic schedule.  Which makes sense to me.

This morning, though, at right about 4:00 I was doing all I could not to fall out of my chair, when suddenly it was like a fog lifted, and I was no longer tired.  It was almost instantaneous, and a little disconcerting!

But, this tells me that my body is continuing to adjust, and I’m still on track to eventually making the switch.  I also had a fairly vivid dream during my 5:30am nap today, which is another good sign.  This means I’m hitting my REM sleep within my brief naps.  Another sure sign that my body is making the adjustment.

I’m still not 100% there, and I’m sure there’s still a fair bit of struggle left to overcome, but it seems things might start becoming gradually more and more downhill from here on out.

One of these challenges is that I tend to let the dog sleep with me for my naps, but this makes me that much more comfortable, and thus that much more difficult to wake up!  But I’m doing good and reminding myself to snap awake when the time comes, and get active as soon as possible.

With the amount of times I’ve overslept, I can’t really say how far along in this process I am anymore, except that I ultimately started just over a week ago (going on my 12th day).  Yesterday I overslept twice.  Once I fell asleep with the wife (she wasn’t feeling well, so I curled up with her and got too comfortable) – that was a roughly 4 hour oversleep.  Then, the next morning I woke and was so groggy that I cancelled my TKD class and took a few more naps.  Unfortunately it was almost another 4  hours (on and off) before I was up and moving again.  A shower reinvigorated me, and from then on I was wide awake.

So, I still have a hump to get over, and it looks like it’s not going to be easy, but I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, and I’ve steeled my resolve.  To me, this is more than curiosity or getting more free time.  It’s also a challenge of willpower.

I’m still surprised that I’m not more tired (but maybe with all this oversleeping, I really shouldn’t be).  Though, I’ve had times between certain naps where I couldn’t hold my eyes open or walk a straight line, it wasn’t so much because my body was tired as it was that I never fully regained control over it after waking.

I know that doesn’t make a ton of sense, so let me explain.

What I think is happening is that I’m hitting my REM sleep, but waking up right in the middle of it.  That leaves my brain all addled and confused, and wanting to get back to sleep to finish the cycle.  Physically, I feel great.  But my brain is a bit slow at the controls, and I continually nod off.  This only usually happens just before, or just after, my 5:30am nap.  This has been the most difficult one, and really the only major challenge as far as the sleeping goes.

Today was probably the first day that actually felt the way I had expected my days to be when I first thought of the idea of working from home overseas.  I spread my work out into small chunks over the entire day, and was able to get chores done, relax and play some games, cook a good dinner, study some Polish and get out of the house and walk around a bit.  The only thing I didn’t do is go explore the city some more, but that takes a significantly longer time, and I haven’t quite optimized my schedule to allow that yet.

Other than a few spans of extreme sleepiness, I haven’t really noticed any ill-effects.  Though I do feel that if I don’t get up and do something active with a certain amount of frequency, I will start to notice joint troubles.  My neck is already a little sore from spending so much time on the computer.

The most difficult part of this whole transition has been the fact that I can’t curl up and sleep with my wife.  Well, I can, but only 30 minutes or less, and I have to worry about my alarm interrupting her already spotty sleep.  I also can’t curl up and take random naps.  At least, not yet.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to eventually, but sometimes, when I’m feeling a bit lazy, and that blanket is looking awefully inviting, I just wish I could curl up and doze off for a few hours.  Especially when the dog is asleep on my lap.  That’s like a sleeping pill! 

I’ll try to check in every few days or so to report on how it’s going.