If the difference between yesterday and today is any indication, then I think I\’m over the hump. There were only two times today when I felt like I couldn\’t stay awake. One was during a two hour meeting at church where I couldn\’t move around, speak, or interact – hardly the ideal conditions for someone who\’s going through voluntary self-imposed sleep deprivation! I blanked out twice for about twenty minutes each time but nevertheless was awake for more two-thirds of the meeting. The second time was just me making a terrible choice of activity. When I woke up from my 1:00am nap, I got up and immediately started watching videos on my computer. I got nice and comfy, laid on my side, and listened to some guy from Microsoft drone on about the new Robotics Studio. It is stuff I\’m fascinated by, and I\’ve been waiting for a chance to watch this movie for weeks, but it was hardly stimulating enough to keep me awake. I quickly fell asleep and switched to something more active once I jerked awake in my seat.

 

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Well, Steve was right about day 2. It was much harder than yesterday. The whole principle of the adjustment period is that by deliberately depriving yourself of sleep, your boy has to quickly adapt in order to keep up. I think that sleep-deprivation is kicking in and making it much harder for me to function. It varied throughout the day, but the worst parts were when I got up at 1:30pm and now, my 4:00am wakeup. Right now I\’m typing while I watch “24” and I\’m absolutely struggling to stay awake. I\’m sitting straight up, typing, holding a laptop, and watching TV, and I\’m not doing a good job of any of it. My spelling is atrocious (misspelling words so badly that Word can\’t even make suggestions. The TV show is fading in and out and I\’m not sure what\’s been going on for the last twenty minutes. The problem is that even though I\’m up and out of bed, I can\’t maintain that energy level (the energy level of consciousness) for a long time. That last sentence is specifically referring to right now, as well as around 1:30pm. I have been better for most of the day and did things like go to the mall, play with my daughter at the playground, family swim at the YMCA, and more.

 

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I\’m not a superstitious person, but I thought it was a little odd to start something as unusual as polyphasic sleep on Friday the 13^th. I considered renting a bunch of horror movies to watch while I was trying to stay up through the night, but I decided to get DVDs of the TV show “24”. Jack Bauer had previously been banned from our house because we would get sucked in by the cliffhangers at the end of each episode and stay up one hour, two hours, sometimes three or four hours later than we intended. That\’s late considering that I have a job and my wife takes care of our daughter. Anyway, those cliffhangers came in very handy tonight. More on that later.

 

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A few weeks ago, I read about Steve Pavlina\’s experiment with polyphasic sleep. Polyphasic sleep means taking short naps every few hours, as opposed to monophasic sleep, which is sleeping for one long period a day (this is what most people do). In Steve\’s experiment, he slept took a 30 minute nap every four hours, for a total of three hours of sleep a day. After a rough adjustment period during the first few days, he was completely adjusted. Not only was he not tired, he said he felt a greater mental clarity and sharpness. He also described a different sensation of time, like a “river of time” as opposed to the constant cycling of day and night. He kept this sleeping pattern for six months before switching back because he was tired of being out of sync with the rest of the world.

I was absolutely fascinated by his experience. I have a full-time job, an hour commute each way, and an energetic 18-month old girl, so I certainly have enough to fill my life. I enjoy everything I do, but there\’s so much more I wish I had time for. Just to name a few: learn foreign languages, learn to play the piano, build robots, exercise, program computers, start an online business, read books, cook new dishes, and more (hey, almost forgot writing blogs!). I drooled at the thought of having four to five extra hours of quiet, alone time every day to hack away at my personal wishlist. I spent a couple weeks planning and scheming to figure out if it was possible to fit polyphasic sleep into my life. Here\’s what I came up with.

 

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