Some links I came across with a thorough, well researched view of sleep. Two articles, with key excerpts:

Good Sleep, Good Learning, Good Life

“…Myth: Since we feel rested after sleep, sleep must be for resting. Ask anyone, even a student of medicine: What is the role of sleep? Nearly everyone will tell you: Sleep is for rest. Fact: Sleep is for optimizing the structure of memories. If it was for rest or energy saving, we would cover the saving by consuming just one apple per night. To effectively encode memories, mammals, birds and even reptiles need to turn off the thinking and do some housekeeping in their brains. This is vital for survival. This is why the evolution produced a defense mechanisms against skipping sleep. If we do not get sleep, we feel miserable. We are not actually as wasted as we feel, the damage can be quickly repaired by getting a good night sleep. It is our brain dishing punishment for not sticking to the rules of intelligent life-form: let the memory do restructuring in its programmed time.”

Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths

“It appears that polyphasic sleep encounters the precisely same problems as seen in jet lag or shift-work. Human body clock is not adapted to sleeping in patterns other than monophasic or biphasic sleep. In other words, the only known healthy alternatives are: (1) a single 6-8 hours sleep block in the night, or (2) a night sleep of 5-7 hours combined with a 15-90 min. siesta nap. Those numbers differ substantially across the population and there is no single recommended dose of sleep for everyone.”

The site these articles came from, www.supermemo.com, is called “Super Memory: Forget About Forgetting”. I’ll be looking more into it soon.

Polyphasic Sleep III has fallen to the forces of normal life. More specifically, a steadily progressing family health situation demands more of my time during the day, to the point where I pretty much can’t take naps at home during until everyone’s asleep, and I’ve had to trim my time at work so tight that I can’t get even get one nap, let alone one, during the day. The work thing was a problem even before. I felt okay going out to my car for a half hour during lunch but I never quite found a time in the afternoon when I could sneak away. This wasn’t a problem with my first experiment because I had a 40 minute commuter train ride each way where I could sleep. But now that I have a driving commute, I can’t exactly sleep on the way to and fro.

That’s an important consideration for anyone considering polyphasic sleep. For a normal weekday, you pretty much need a nap before, during, and after work, or if you get up and go straight to work, two naps during work. I can’t do the first one because I have to drive, and I can’t do the second because I don’t feel comfortable stepping out twice.

For anyone interested in following my polyphasic sleep experiment (Aaron and others), sorry to disappoint. However, I’ve got a mandatory polyphasic sleep period coming up sometime in the next month when my second daughter is born. My wife is excited for me to go back to polyphasic then so I can take care of nighttime care and feeding. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s easier to do when you’re already awake then if you have to wake up for it!

Until next time …zzzzzz…zzzz……zzzzzzzz. (Me hibernating for 7 straight hours)

YOU GET SO GROGGY IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FUNCTION!!!

Three times this week, my daytime circustances have prevented me from taking enough naps (just 1 or 2 each of those days) between my core daytime hours of 7am to 10pm. Not having napped during the day, I didn’t wake up from my nighttime 30 minutes naps and basically ended up sleeping a normal night’s sleep, say 11pm-7am. That must have been refreshing, right?

WRONG!

This is the third of those three days following a full night sleep. It is also on pace to be one of the worst days I’ve had at work since I started doing polyphasic sleep again. Its only competitors are the 4 or 5 other days where I slept through the night and then sleepwalked through the next day.

Perhaps I was just too tired from the days I did get by on only naps, and this is just a carryover from that sleep deprivation? Good idea, but I doubt it’s true. The reason I decided to bite the bullet and go back to polyphasic sleep despite the challenges was that I wasn’t feeling rested despite getting a full night’s sleep! Normal sleep wasn’t cutting it for me, plus I didn’t have nearly enough time to do all the things I wanted, so I decided to try polyphasic sleep again. And not only did I get more time to pursue my interests, I was more alert and better rested during the day than before I started! So when people ask me “How alert can you be if you only sleep a couple hours a day?”, I tell them I’m a heck of a lot more alert than when I was sleeping 7-8 hours a day.

Polyphasic sleep has made my job, my hobbies, my startup, and (sort of) my family better, but everyone thinks it’s so crazy that I feel like I have to sneak around doing it. I mean honestly, the space under my desk is huge and would be a great place to sleep, but I bundle up and go sleep in my car so I don’t get in trouble or get funny looks.

More sleep is not better. Better sleep is better!

EDIT: OK, I’ve been up for a few hours, then took a nap, and now I’m a lot less grumpy.

Last year, I tried a drastic lifestyle experiment: polyphasic sleep. It was a successful proof of concept, but it was a little too drastic for the time. A couple months ago, I announced I was thinking about giving it another shot. Well, I’m giving it another shot. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been experimenting to find the best possible combination of tips and techniques to give myself a better chance at succeeding long term. I’ve got big dreams and plans that have a hard time fitting around the time I already spend at work and with family. So here’s a summary of what I’ve discovered:

Falling Asleep – This is something that I didn’t really have a problem with either time but a lot of people wonder how you can fall asleep in 30 minutes, let alone fall asleep and take a meaningful nap.

First, it helps to be tired but not too tired. If you’re too tired, you’ll fall asleep but you sure aren’t waking up after 30 minutes!

Second, consistent time of day helps a lot. For instance, I usually nap around 11am as part of my lunch break. If I have to work through that time, I get really sleepy around 11:30. It goes away after 15 minutes or so but my body was definitely planning on sleeping at that time. On the other hand, I have found it much more difficult to have consistent times at home, because even though my wife is much more supportive and understanding this time, there are still family duties, dates with my wife, errands, etc that need to be done, and I can only infringe on those so much.

Third, a blanket always helps me – I keep a small one in my car too. If it’s very cold (like it has been the last week here), I roll the blanket up a couple times over my hands and then let the rest hang down over my body and legs. Keeping the hands warm is generally enough to make me comfortable, and the blanket roll works better than gloves.

Fourth, taking several big, deep yawns (like ridiculously, cartoony big yawns) quickly gets me on the path to sleep. Doing this usually makes my eyes tear up, and since I’m laying down, those tears tend to drip down my face and into my ears. Kind of a pain, but moving my hands to wipe them away disturbs me and I have to start falling asleep all over.

Fifth, for each place that you plan to nap, find a position that works and stick with it! With me, I sleep on my stomach when I’m in my bed, on my side when I’m on my couch, and on my back when I’m in my car. If I try another position, I just can’t fall asleep (there have been tons of times I wanted to sleep on my side in bed – no dice).

Waking Up – Little surprise, this has been more difficult for me to get right consistently.

Sixth – find one alarm clock that works for you and use it everywhere. I use a timer program on my cell phone – that way it’s with me at all times.

Seventh – don’t even think about snoozing. The longer you’re asleep, the deeper you fall into sleep and the harder it is to wake up. Probably two out of I’d prefer not to disclose how many times have I actually gotten up after I tried to snooze. Usually I’ll have up several hours later and just go to bed.

Eighth – along the same lines as seven, don’t put the alarm within reach of your bed. I try to put it across the room so I have to stand up and walk, hoping that will jerk me out of sleep and give my rational mind a chance against my sleepy mind. Or you could just train yourself to respond correctly.

Ninth – don’t stretch your time between naps. I’ve found that if I ever have to go 7 hours awake in a row, I’m not going to get up when I take a nap at night. Ditto if I have to go 6 hours twice. Although it’s frustrating that situations like this happen, at least I understand how my body will react to it so I can plan accordingly. I go a little longer between naps during the day (4-5 hours) and then naps more frequently at night (3 hrs). I’m not sure if this is ideal, but I don’t have the flexibility that Steve Pavlina did.

Tenth – if you want it to happen, embrace the weirdness. Yes, I do take naps in my car while it’s snowing. It turns out that the driver’s seat on a Jeep Liberty reclines very close to flat. It also helps to point east, because then the sun is on the passenger side of the car and not in my eyes. If reading this, let alone imagining yourself saying something similar, creeps you out, then just do your daily hibernation and leave the last 30% of life to us!

About six months ago, I had a semi-successful experiment with polyphasic sleep. (See Polyphasic Sleep Experiment Background) It wasn’t a permanent change but it ended up being a good proof-of-concept test. I’m thinking about trying it again, but I need to be a little better prepared. The biggest obstacles to anyone with a normal, day job/family life trying polyphasic sleep are:

1. A place to take naps during the workday
2. Buy-in/accommodation from spouse
3. Predictability: No big physical or temporal changes

Let’s dive in a little.

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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 🙂.

Well, as you can tell from the title, this post doesn\’t contain good news. Well, mostly not good news. On Sunday night I kept the polyphasic sleep schedule for most of the night, but when I woke up from my 4:00am nap, I went to the couch and watched the first half of “Return of the King”. I watched a few minutes of it and slept all the way until the intermission. I still had plenty of time to get ready for work, but I slept through the time when I usually write my log.

 

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