Recently I’ve come across an idea that I’d like to implement, but it will take a lot of time and it has some built-in deadlines. You know what that means? More polyphasic sleep! I’m thinking of trying it again to give myself some extra free time. The difference now will be that rather than trying to find things to fill the extra hours, I’ve already got about 20 pages of notes full of stuff to keep me busy for a long time. I’ll post later if I decide to follow through.

When I originally decided to do polyphasic sleep, it was because there were too many things I wanted to do and not enough time to do them. Polyphasic sleep was something I could add to my life that would accommodate everything and make room for more. But I ran into something else that conflicted with it and can\’t coexist. No, smart aleck, it\’s not being tired, because that wasn\’t the problem everyone made it out to be. No, I have to give up polyphasic sleep because I\’ve started exercising. I started swimming a couple days ago on Saturday, and again this morning. For the record, I\’m not in good shape, I\’m very overweight, and not an athlete by any means, so this was a big physical challenge for me. I had good workouts both days but recovery took too much out of me to stay awake, even on the best nap schedule.

It was a hard decision, but I decided that my health is more important than my hobbies. I\’m going to continue swimming and doing other exercises, and hopefully when I\’m in better shape (not perfect, but able to workout without being put out of commission for an entire day), I can go back to polyphasic sleep. My goal to restart is about three months from now, after we\’ve moved into our new house. That\’s going to be a big enough disruption to my routine that I wouldn\’t want to deal with while trying to adjust to polyphasic sleep. Of all the advantages Steve Pavlina had over me, this is one I can actually do something about, much easier than changing jobs or working for myself. So for now, polyphasic sleep is on hiatus while I work on improving my conditioning.

I can certainly see why Steve Pavlina set aside so much time to dedicate to adjusting to polyphasic sleep, and how his job and life flexibility helped him so much. I was going to try and start full fledged polyphasic sleep Monday, but my mother-in-law got sick and needed to go to the doctor, and it was a stressful couple of days and I didn\’t get to space out my naps. Then because of the day I missed at work, I had to work extra hours, which threw off my schedule even more. I decided to try and preserve my ability to nap even if I couldn\’t afford to go through the adjustment, so I kept taking most of my naps (two on the train, one during lunch, and one at around 9:30pm) and then slept from 1am to 6:30am and got ready for work. I\’ve done this for the last few days and its working ok. I get a few extra hours of sleep and hopefully I\’ll be able to make the adjustment this weekend to full blown polyphasic sleep. I\’m going to try it tonight so I can go swim laps at the YMCA at 5am tomorrow. I\’m going to try taking the 1am nap on the couch, so it\’ll be easier to get up instead of just turning off the alarm for a few more hours 🙂.