Sleeping 2 Hours Per Night Using Polyphasic Sleep (Sleep Experiment)

Experiment conducted 2015 during a 3 month visit to Ukraine. The following journal entires written at that time.

Da Vinci, Jefferson, Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, Bucky Fuller, Edison (pictured) and others were all nappers…

They napped at different intervals and slept less at night.

I’ve always been frustrated at my apparent body’s need for 8 hours of sleep on a consistent basis… …otherwise I feel groggy, or worse.

But there is hope!

A modern approach to ‘napping’ called the Uberman Cycle involves 20 to 30 minute naps taken every 4 to 6 hours (or whenever the pull to sleep occurs, just like bathroom breaks).

The trouble, apparently, is the 10 day transition period where people report feeling ‘like zombies’.

But the benefits out weight the negatives.

Imagine gaining 6 hours extra time each day, to achieve more, learn more, create more, review more, become more.

And no, there’s no evidence to show that for people who achieve the polyphasic sleep pattern, that they experience negative effects on their health.

Providing the naps are taken when the body indicates (around every 4 to 6 hours) people report feeling healthier, more energized, more alert and creative than ever before.

In fact, polyphasic sleep is more natural than monophasic.

Babies have polyphasic sleep cycles, and so do many animals.

As well as the Spaniards with their Siestas…

Just as our recent ancestors did a hundred years ago while living off the land in their own farms. Up at the crack of dawn to work. Sleep mid-day, then up again for the evening.

Despite the 10 day zombie transition reported as being extremely hard to endure, I’m well up for the challenge as I want that extra time and also the creative benefits as demonstrated by inventors like Da Vinci and Edison.

I’ll begin the transition in a few weeks once I return briefly to London UK, and I’ll report on progress. I’ll then be in Romania for a month or so writing a course on communication and relationships, where I hope to benefit from the polyphasic sleep cycle. The Uberman Cycle.

Steve Pavlina has a very compelling log of his 5.5 month polyphasic sleep experiment which he seems to have quit due to loneliness during the night.

Polyphasic Sleep Day 1 / Dear Journal

Why do you want to sleep only 2 hours per day Gav?

Isn’t it bad for your health?

…surely it’s bad for your health!

So came the questions and comments.

After reading various sites and blogs on polyphasic sleep cycles (like how the Spanish sleep 5 hours at night and take an afternoon siesta) I’m ready to begin the experiment.

Having had 7 hours sleep last night and 4 the night before (so not an ideal start), my first step in moving away from monophasic sleep (single sleep per day) is to stay awake for between 24 hours and 36 hours — until I break through the wall of sleepiness and get a ’second wind’ of energy.

That seems to be when the body gives up giving you signals that you’re knackered.

At that point I am considered ‘sleep deprived’. No kidding, right?

And I then begin (attempt) to take 20 minute naps every 2 hours for 3 or 4 days until that has become somewhat comfortable (quite ambiguous I know).

The 20 minute naps are supposed to provide me with the much needed REM deep sleep cycle.

24 hours of sleep deprivation supposedly triggers the body to jump straight into REM the moment I start napping.

(This effect means I can get away with sleeping 2 to 4 hours per night and still maintain sufficient regeneration that monophonic provides from 7 hours sleep.)

After a few days of 20 minute naps every 2 hours I should be able to move to 20 minutes naps every 4 hours.

Then I’m home free and will have passed the adaptation phase.

My energy and alertness will supposedly return and I will decide a napping schedule to continue.

But for the next 7 or so days I can expect to be……. well, chronically tired a lot and perhaps not very cognitively functional (zombified).

This morning I woke at 7am. It's 7.25am as I write this.

Staying awake 24 to 36 hours means I can start napping somewhere between tomorrow 7am and 7pm.

I'll journal the experience.

I'll also attempt to read and write although I’m not sure how well that will go…

Besides that, I will seek ways to entertain myself any which way I can to stay awake.

Just another 23.5 hours to go before I can consider taking my first 20 minute nap.

Here we go.

Polyphasic Sleep Day 2 / Dear Journal

It’s approaching 2pm on Day 2.

I haven’t slept since yesterday when I awoke at 7am.

That’s 31 hours awake time.

Experience: So far just intermittently drowsy, noticeable pressure in my head typical of being overly tired, a bit achey around my body (perhaps from sitting around too long last night).

Approach: To stay awake I mixed activities including playing mental exercise apps on iPad, talking/chatting to friends, reading news, watched half a movie, and lots of reading.

The 31 hours wake time has primed the pump by forcing sleep deprivation and now I’m ready to begin the initial napping phase.

Next Steps: This page on the Uberman Cycle shows variations for the napping schedule and I’m going to stick with a simple format for the next few days of having 20 minute naps every 2 hours.

Expectations: Keen to see what tonight brings and how I feel after my first nap coming up shortly. I expect some ‘zombie mode' to kick in by tomorrow morning.

If I feel particularly bad then night time naps can be 40 minutes, so as to include both REM sleep and a 20 minute run of SWS (slow wave sleep).

I’m feeling the pull for sleep. The napping schedule begins:

2pm nap 4pm nap 6pm nap 8pm nap 10pm nap (might make that a 40 min) midnight nap (might make that a 40 min) 2am nap 4am nap 6am nap 8am nap midday nap

That's a whole lotta naps…

1st Nap

Easy enough to fall asleep, probably took a few minutes. And slept all the way through the 20 minutes.

Woken by sound in the house rather than the alarm but only a couple minutes out. Alarm was set for 25 minutes so I got my 20. Waking up was easy enough. And felt very refreshed with a big smile on my face.

…By the 10pm nap I’m feeling far from smiley… tonight will be a long one.

Polyphasic Sleep Day 3 / Aches Food & Fun

date: 2015-03-20

Sure enough, last night was quite hard going………

The pull of sleep grips the edge of consciousness beckoning the mind to shut down.

After each nap I muster sufficient will power to re-invigorate my mind with energy to regain control of wakefulness — lest I slip back into sleep and break the adaptation schedule.

My head endures bouts of headache pressure, brief moments of sharp pain that quickly subside to the periphery, yet the internal sensation of mild pressure remains constant.

My joints ache, sometimes with momentary sharp pain.

And my body has felt cold to the touch at times. Yet my ears and head feel hot.

So begins the day time of the 3rd day.

It's probably not really as bad as it sounds. In fact, I'm quite enjoying the process.

Diet Notes for Polyphasic Sleep Adaptation

Few things are crucial for short-term health… not to mention getting enough sleep 😉

So with the reduced amount of sleep I'm getting, especially for the adaptation phase, I want to optimize other factors including light exercise and nutrition.

Here are notes on nutrition for polyphasic sleep in attempt to give my body a super-clean and supportive diet:

Nuts, especially walnuts. I have several varieties of mixed organic seeds & nuts.

Soaking the nuts and also grains for 7 hours or more helps maximize nutritional value (lowers both enzyme inhibitors and phytic acid which blocks nutrient absorption).

Fermented/Sprouted foods including grains.

Oats soaked over night (again to reduce phytic acid) and slowly warmed into porridge with honey, fruit, nuts.

I'll soon start making sauerkraut, with cabbage and also other vegetables such as pepper, carrots, beetroot.

Yeast extract may be good, although seems to be linked to MSG… need to investigate.

Kefir and Kambucha Tea (will see about making my own).

Green veg, especially Kale.

Eggs.

100% grass fed calf liver (yet to try).

Olive oil with salads and Coconut oil.

No or very low refined sugars, processed foods, alcohol, caffeine, heavy meats.

Lots of water.

For exercise so far it’s just walking outdoors or some gentle arm swinging and rotating indoors to move the lymph and general circulation.

I also orderred http://www.intramax.co.uk which looks to be a totally kick-ass nutritional supplement and I look forward to starting on it soon.

Polyphasic Sleep Day’s 4 and 5 / Staying On Track

date 2015-03-22

Evening of day 3 I felt more mentally clear so I went for a brief jog, just 4 minutes or so which felt good. Tonight begins the 4th day and so far the majority of nap sessions have been similar. A bit of mental focus to sink into relaxation…. and then I wake up soon before the alarm if not from the alarm. After each nap I feel a similar dream state experience without any clarity of dream content.

My energy levels have been generally low, mostly feeling lethargic, but I haven’t as yet experienced any chronic ‘zombification’ (as far as I can tell).

Keen to reach Day 5 when I will start to shift the nap frequency from every 2 hours to every 4 hours.

For now, it’s all about getting through tonight and tomorrow night, battling the sleepiness as it builds from dusk until dawn as that clock ticks through its seconds. … Last night I was very drowsy, nodding off frequently with my head jolting and eyes straining to remain awake with a lot of effort needed.

As of Day 4 between nap 12:00 and 14:00 I feel quite good, pressure in head has significantly subsided, eyes can focus well. I feel somewhat tired but not sleepy.

The naps continue to work well, quick to sink into sleep and generally feel refreshed when the alarm goes.

…but as each 2 hour cycle passes I'm grateful for each nap…

I also note that I’m often waking earlier than my alarm by a few minutes. The nap should officially be for 20 minutes and I have kept my alarm set to 25 minutes to provide an initial relaxation buffer but perhaps this can be reduced.

Staying On Track

I had a small ‘crash’ during my 2pm sleep, meaning I overslept. Either the alarm wasn’t set properly, or I slept through it, and I awoke 30 minutes late at 3pm.

Then I missed my 8pm nap time due to a conversation and instead took that nap at close to 9pm and then maintained the next proper nap time of 10pm.

Not sure what effect those changes had, if any.

People who report failing with adaptation show they quit due to adaptation not happening fast enough for their expectations, or more common that they simply crash and burn (oversleep for a long time and thus mess up the adaptation process).

I’ve also seen people report that chronic tiredness overtook them on different days, from day 3 all the way out to day 10. They may have felt relatively ok until day 7 and then bam, zombification hits them and they quit or crash. I’m beginning to think that the dreaded ‘zombification’ state is just an excuse for people giving up. The lure of sleep when the mind is intoxicated by tiredness does certainly feel overwhelming… So I’m looking for ways to keep my edge.

Exercise & Rejuvenation

Today I am introducing further physical exercise, albeit light with focus on circulation, detox and organ work taken from Taoist teachings.

I have benefited greatly from Taoist/Tantra exercises for years and Stephen Chang’s book Complete System of Self-Healing is highly recommended, polyphasic or not 🙂

Naptation

It seems there’s a lot of experimental variation with the adaptation process and also the final nap schedule that people have tried, as suggested by this forum https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/polyphasic/_OamBylxHwI.

The best ’naptation' experience I’ve seen is Ben’s comment on http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2011/05/15/cool-idea-the-naptation.

“I came up with a similar idea about 10 months ago and have used it a few times with great success (never without it “sticking”). The first night, I spent 30 minutes sleeping, 30 minutes awake, alternating during the usual 8-hour block from my monophasic sleep schedule. The next day, I slept 30 minutes out of every 2 hours until that evening when I pushed it back to 30 out of 3 hours. Then throughout the second day, I had only slight sleepiness as I pushed naps back further until, by day 4, I was fully adapted to the Dymaxion schedule (30 minutes every 6 hours). I've been able to stick with Dymaxion for stretches as long as 5 months, stopped only be outside factors. The first time attempting this was with an initial adaptation after being primarily monophasic for over 3 years – I was fully adapted in 4 days as I just described. I used it again for two other adaptations after needing to be temporarily monophasic for 2 two week periods. Those adaptations were both completed after 2 days. No zombie periods, but it was tricky to be 100% on the schedule during the first 2 days – clear your schedule before beginning this!”

So what’s my plan…

As of right now, on Day 5, I’m generally feeling …. Oh damm it’s 4.09 I’m supposed to be asleep! … Ok I’m back. And I dreamed about polyphasic sleep. On an earlier nap I also dreamed about what I'd just been doing before the nap. So a note for later: Maybe I can program my dreams by focusing on a topic during the moments before sleep.

As I was saying… I’m feeling quite good, just generally tired, with periods of drowsiness and periods of alertness. Keen to see improvement but aware that things may get harder with the next phase of adaptation…

At night I listen to ‘epic music’ of which John Wick’s soundtrack is a good mix.

Just re-re-read the Polyphasic Sleep Society's Uberman page to reflect on the schedule variations. The page states “No one has EVER adapted to Uberman without the help of others, often in the form of a human alarm system.”

To hell with that.

If I fail it will be a result of recognizing poor health symptoms, not due to a pathetic failure of insufficient willpower to stay on the schedule! Excuses are ok for unhealthy and immature college students. For me at age 34 with supra-urgent creative projects that need my total commitment, failure to maintain discipline for this adaptation process is not an option.

Although saying that, perhaps zombification will get me in the next phase of napping every 4 hours… Here’s my current plan to progress with ’naptation’ (adaptation to polyphasic sleep cycle via graduating nap schedule) as I move through Day 5:

• Every 2 hours: 4am 25m (done) > 6am 25m > 8am 25m > 10am 25m

• Every 4 hours: 2pm (first 4 hour nap gap) > 6pm 25m

I’ll assess how I feel at that point and perhaps add back a nap at 8pm and/or perhaps do a 40m nap at 10pm.

My goal is to stay close to Uberman cycle of 20 min naps each 4 hours but adapt to it flexibly with a bit of experimentation based on how my body feels as I proceed.

My tools seem to include adding extra 20 minute nap where needed or extending some of the night time naps to 40 minutes.

…seems totally sensible to me.

Edit: As of 07:02 Day 5 I realize last night was far easier than the previous nights. Very little drowsiness. Still feeling mildly tired but mental acuity feels high 🙂

Polyphasic Sleep Experiment Day 6 / Dream Scape, Sleep Crashes, and Photo of my Eyes)

Feeling goooood.

It’s quite surprising how good I feel given the lack of sleep these past days.

Today I shifted from naps every 2 hours to every 4 hours, starting at 6am, so I napped next at 10am, then 2pm, 6pm, 10pm and just now at 2am.

I’m groggy. But surprisingly good.

Dreamy

The most interesting thing of note today is about the sleep experience itself.

It's happened several times that when the alarm sounds after 25 minutes I feel I’m in fact already awake and not sleeping… that I’m already ‘up’. This gives me the cognitive impression that I should stop the ‘false alarm’… at which point I open my eyes so as to locate the iPad… and at that point realize I was in fact ‘dreaming’… or ‘asleep’… and then for the next 30 seconds or so having sat up I still very much feel the dream world I was just in before the alarm sounded…

Strange. And definitely a different dream-scape experience than normal.

Perhaps a gateway to Lucid dreaming, which is reported as likely with polyphasic sleep.

Health Status

My body feels a little bit like the days after having been ill or doing a few day detox diet, as the illness/detox has ended but the body has been left somewhat delicate after a release of toxins. And I feel a bit cold.

Still a sense of groggy pressure in my head. Ears have had slight sharp pains in them (also reminiscent of the beginning or after-effects of infection).

I may in fact be detoxing a little bit as I have changed my diet to be squeaky clean.

I just need to keep drinking lots of water. And I very much look forward to starting on my nutritional supplement solution (which seems to have every possible ingredient packed into one formula) which I will start on Wednesday on arrival to Romania for a writing trip.

At this point I would not recommend attempting polyphasic sleep without nutritional support and a very clean diet.

It’s now 3am and my next nap is 6am.

These are hours that I never normally have available.

What to do with them…. …

Sleep Crash

Ok so last night and today was really hard! Napping 25 mins every 4 hours literally means ~2 hours of sleep spread across the 24 hour day.

I had kept on schedule until now, and just had a second ‘crash’ of uncontrollably over sleeping… My nap time was 10am and I woke at 11.30. That’s a 25 mins scheduled nap plus an extra 65 minutes of sleep giving me a 1.5 hour total nap time.

A 1.5 hour nap would be considered a ‘core sleep’ and fits the ‘official’ methodology. I had in mind to take a planned 40 minute nap later today if I still felt super groggy. And upgrade to a luxurious 1.5 hours late tonight if the 40 minute didn’t help resolve the chronic deficit.

Having had the 1.5 hour unplanned core sleep, I really feel great again.

Which is remarkable if you consider that:

• The past day I’ve slept just 2 hours total

• The previous few days I’d napped 6 hours total per day

• The day before that I didn’t sleep for 31 hours

• And just before that I'd felt knackered after a 4 hour night sleep

I think feeling this good (mentally clear, very minimal internal head pressure) as of 1.30pm today really helps to validate the short-term effectiveness and relative ease of adapting to a much reduced total sleep time.

Eyes particularly blood shot? Terrible dark circles?

Not really, if you consider this is quite a close up and that I often look tired even after fairly regular nights of 7 hour sleep so this photo is not that bad at all. (although my eye lids do look a darker purple than normal). It’s not makeup from last night — I swear!

Normally, if I tried sleeping the reduced hours I’ve had now, my eyes would definitely look far more chronically knackered than they do in this close up photo.

The experiment presses onwards!

My next nap time is scheduled for 2pm, in just 20 minutes. I wonder if I’ll easily nap this time or not, given that I’ve just had that 1.5 hour core sleep. … 2pm nap was good. Quickly down into the dream-scape for the full 25 mins.

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 7 (nodding off, minor injuries and schedule disruptions)

date 2015-03-24

…Head bobbing up-and-down as my consciousness slips into sleep and scramble back into as much wakefulness as I could muster…

…very hard work between 4am and 8am fighting to stay awake…

Changing activity helps: light exercise, electronic music, pacing the room, focusing on reading. Today, my overall feeling is like I’ve slept late for a couple nights in a row…

…while in fact I’ve slept a total of 2 or 3 hours per day for the past couple days and 4 or 5 hours for a few days before that, starting with 31 hours of no sleep at all.

Incredible!

Normally when I don’t sleep enough for a few days my eyes sting a lot. Now it’s just very slight, yet in terms of quantity hours slept this past week I am ‘extremely sleep deprived’.

I have noticed my body seems more sensitive to mild injury. For example, I knocked my hand on an unforgiving wooden chair earlier and my hand throbbed for longer than I would have expected.

Bumped into a friend (whose been reading my polyphasic sleep blogs) and we had a good catch up which delayed my 6pm nap by 30 minutes and I think I feel drowsy from the delay, like having jet lag from a couple hours time difference.

He said I do look tired but not terrible — gee thanks dude 🙂

My goal is to maintain a precise schedule of napping 20 mins every 4 hours at least for a couple more weeks until the adaptation phase is in the bag — and then experiment with flexibility in the nap schedule.

Can’t say I’m looking forward to the struggle to stay awake that I expect to endure again tonight. Looking forward (hoping) that it will get easier very soon.

I’ll report back when I have something new.

Polyphasic Sleep Week 2 (ok, ok… 2 hours sleep isn't enough, but 2:40…)

date 2015-04-01

As of Week 2

Ggggrrrrr…. how dare I be tired after a full 3 hours of sleep!

The past few nights have not been any easier than the previous few.

My attempt at 6 x 20 min naps per 24 hour period is looking more like this:

• 4am nap 20 mins (yay)

• 8am nap 20 mins (yay)

• 12am nap 20 mins (yay)

• 4pm nap 20 mins (yay)

• 8pm nap 20 mins (yay)

• 12pm nap ….. 2.5 hours (Gggrrrr!)

NapChart provides a tool for creating a chart of polyphasic sleep schedules.

Despite having a schedule…

At least once a day I’m either sleeping through an alarm… or two different alarms! Or the alarms are not being set properly (self-sabotage due to zombification maybe…).

Either way, my body seems to be grabbing a small ‘core sleep’ of at least 1.5 hours sleep per night.

Such chutzpah!

On balance, I’m getting significantly less sleep time per day and generally feeling good from it — except for the struggle with drowsiness for about 4 hours each night (very unproductive hours). …

Start of Week 3: Moving to 3-Hour Cycle

I now agree with Steve Pavlina (who adapted to Uberman and kept on it for 5.5 months) when he said:

“Whether you wake up from SWS (slow wave sleep) or just have a hard time getting up, you can’t trust yourself to be rational at this time. Self-discipline does not work in a cognitive fog”

I thought I could resist drowsiness, but that’s before I tried sleeping just 2 hours per day for over a week… it AIN’T EASY!

Self-Discipline really seems to be a lost cause during the cognitive fog of extreme drowsiness and chronic sleep deprivation.

After daily occurrences of oversleeping between 30 mins and 1.5 hours, plus way too many bouts of fighting against EXTREME drowsiness each night, I’m shifting to the alternative ‘Uberman’ cycle based on a 3 hourly rather than 4 hourly cycle to see if the extra sleep and different rhythm better suits my body. Waiting 4 hours between naps is quite a drag. The alternative cycle means naps every 3 hours.

I’m also feeling something of a detox happening, perhaps due to metabolic changes due to sleep deprivation and possibly due to the extra clean diet I've been on and the new nutritional supplement I started taking which seems quite potent.

So starting week 3 here’s my schedule:

22 min naps at these times: 1am 4am 7am 10am 1pm 4pm (optional) 7pm 10pm (optional) That’s a lot of naps, but even if I do all of them, that’s 2 hours 40 minutes total sleep time each 24 hours. I’ll try that first and then look to drop one or both of the optional naps at 4pm and 7pm. … Having stuck to this 3-hour cycle for the past 24 hours I've noticed that my body knows when it's time to nap, as about 15-minutes before each nap time I start to feel drowsy and check the clock, surprised to see how close to the 3 hour nap time it is.

Each nap has a rich dream experience, some dreams I remember. I had 3 nightmares in the past day! I also awake almost every time feeling as if I've slept for several hours, possibly because of the amount of dream activity that I feel aware of.

It also takes about 15 minutes after each nap to feel fully alert again.

Here are photos of me finding a quiet spot out in the city to do my 20 minute naps:

More from me soon. Until then, here’s another polyphasic sleep journal that I’ve found useful http://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule

Polyphasic Sleep At The 2 Month Mark

date 2015-05-21

The last update was after 2 weeks starting the polyphasic sleep schedule. Today's update is almost bang on 2 months since starting.

I’ve not done an update in a while as I didn’t want to repeat myself too much.

Saying that… here’s me saying pretty much the same thing 3 times in one go:

A friend asked about my experience and I wrote:

…hard work as hell to not be so drowsy late at night, fighting desperately head bobbing up and down stealing micro-naps, struggling struggling.. but gradually that's reducing and it's becoming easier to stay alert during the night times. I do crash quite often though, whether the alarm doesn't go or it does but I sleep right the way through it and wake up 3 hours later. sometimes the body just takes what it wants. but going well I think, I feel surprisingly good and optimistic that it will get easier. I like the feeling of having more time available.

That was a month or so ago.

Last week my sister sent me this article published in the BBC about polyphasic sleep:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32702410

Here’s my reply to her:

"I still haven't been able to fully adapt, meaning that I still have ‘crashes' which means uncontrollably oversleeping. This either happens because I don't hear my alarm (whether it goes off or not I'm not sure or if it does then I sleep right through it) or sometimes inbetween naps when I feel tired I try to ‘rest' by lying down and reading but the brain switches off into sleep.

However some days I feel really great and nap perfectly on schedule for 25 mins (gives a few mins to get to sleep and a full 20 mins of REM nap time).

The article doesn't seem to speak with insight about adaptation to polyphasic sleep. If those pilots are going into it without adapting then yeh they'll be sleep deprived.

The point of the 20 minute naps is that it cleaves off the REM stage of sleep which takes less than 20 minutes.

The full 90 minute cycle includes other stages of sleep, many of which are deemed as relatively unnecessary for rejuvenation. So the 20 minute naps forces the brain to go straight to what it needs most which is REM. The added theory is that a 40 minute nap or a 2 hour core sleep every once in a while can help rebalance any loss of ‘slow wave sleep' (another cycle) that may be becoming deprived. When I achieve a consistent nap schedule for several days straight I experience very little drowsiness and no apparent micro-napping. I just feel sleepy about 15 minutes before nap time. And I feel more alert and clear headed than a lot of the time I've had in the past on monophasic 8 hour sleep schedule. So I'm optimistic that full adaptation is possible and can feel better, healthier, with more alertness than standard sleep.

The only remaining question for me is in terms of long-term health. I think any struggle with drowsiness probably indicates a strain on health. My goal right now is to maintain the consistent 20 minute nap every 3 hours, which is 8 naps per day totalling 2:40 and converting 1 or 2 of those naps into 40 min naps whenever I feel particularly tired.

G

And here’s my blog update as of 6.55am today 🙂

Polyphasic sleep fans.

Some have asked how it’s going so here's the skinny:

‘Adaptation' has completed when I generally feel as ‘well slept' as when on monophonic sleep cycle… I’m still not there yet.

I haven't been able to fully adapt in-part due to travel which disrupts nap times, partly due to zombification mode (it's real), partly due to my alarm apparently either not working or my brain not allowing me to hear the alarm… a loud alarm… for minutes at a time…

When I ‘crash'. I.e. end up sleeping for a couple hours or longer (longest crash seems to have been almost 5 hours which happened once), it gives me jet lag which then takes days to recover from.

So I'm still kind of struggling on through sections of most nights…

However, putting it into perspective:

The majority of nights I have gained hours of extra waking time. During the days I'm pretty much completely fine, until 15 minutes before nap time and I start feeling sleepy.

People around me go to ‘hibernate' each night for ~8 hours or so which seems kinda crazy to me now. It's amazing what the body can adapt to.

I just need to get better at going to nap on time, and getting woken up appropriately.

For example…

Tonight my nap time was 1am. I didn’t go to nap until 1.20am. (I think this lack of discipline or mere distractedness with sticking to accurate nap times is a big part of the problem for me to adapt).

I set the alarm for 23 minutes later, so 1.43.

I didn’t reach for the alarm to switch it off and check the time until 1.48.

That’s a full 5 minutes of loud music playing in my earphones — and it was loud.

Surprising how the brain can simply cut off auditory input until it’s ready to let me wake up. Which suggests that sometimes the alarm goes (2 music tracks playing back to back totally about 6 minutes) and I literally don’t hear it (even though I’m wearing earphones and volume is cranked to the max on the iPad)…

So what I’m going to do is create a longer track, a 20 minute track, with varying volume, and progressively louder over the first 5 minutes… so that I can more gently ease my brain into wakefulness closer to when it’s finished with the somnambulistic-catatonic-paralytic-zombie-REM-state.

Surreal Time Perspective

Besides the adaptation saga… the perspective shift in my conscious awareness is very cool. I experience time differently. 20 minute naps feel like they’re 3 hours. So every 24 hours I’m awake for about 21 hours and also have 8 naps of 20 minutes which each feel like 3 hours, which means I have the mindful experience of some 45 hours each day.

I also have very frequent very vivid dream snippets during naps. Sometimes I think I’m awake and then realize I’m not. A gateway to lucid dreaming? (which is when you can control your dreams 🙂 So imagine. If I can fully adapt and learn to activate lucid dreaming during naps. I could end up with the cognitive experience of 45 hours wake time every day…

What’s more, in lucid dreaming the experience of the passage of time can supposedly be slowed down… so maybe I can extend the experience of 3 hours of dream time into 6 hours or 9 hours.

This boggles the imagination — what a paradigm shift in time perspective. Move over Einstein… …oops… writing this update has distracted me from nap time again! It’s 7.14am Should have been napping from 7.08.

Toodles.

PS. Here’s a 300 day polyphasic sleep journal entry – fascinating details (at least, fascinating to me as I can now very much relate to the nuances) and here's a long reddit on polyphasic sleep</a> with the same person (a girl!).

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NOTE: Polyphasic sleep is impossible without a very good plan. Get the Atomic Planner and use it to build your own polyphasic sleep experiment.