Back to Biphasic - Day 2

Last night I decided to give myself a sleep in. To do that I ended up falling asleep at 11:00pm for my nap, and falling asleep at 4:15am for my core sleep. It took me about 20 minutes to fall asleep on my core as only 3.75 hours had passed since I had taken my nap and I was still quite awake. I had to take my core earlier because unfortunately my mum won't let me sleep past 9:00am. It wasn't a major problem though, I just did a low key activity all morning, namely watching Supernatural, so that my mind didn't end up so stimulated that I couldn't fall asleep at all.

Here's the chart for my first nap:



As can be seen, it was pretty restless, and in actual fact I remember waking half way through. Once thing that is interesting is that half way through I seem to be having dreams from a period of anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes, and then again at the end for 5 minutes. I can never remember full dreams however, I only ever have fleeting images upon waking. As soon as I try to put words to these images, they get lost and I can no longer recall what they were. I don't actually know why this happens.

My core sleep was about 4.5 hours altogether, giving me a total of 6 hours sleep. I have to say it felt like an eternity seeing as I haven't slept more than 5.5 hours in over a month. I just want to say how bad my back ached when I woke up. Everything felt severly stiff, and I was feeling sleepy all morning, although not tired. Here's the graph:



Key:
4 = Awake
3 = REM (dreaming)
2 = Stage 2 Sleep (Light sleep)
1 = Deep sleep

There was virtually no deep sleep in here, although it seemed to be interspered in small 5 to 10 minute increments, which is too fine to graph here. In fact overall I barely had any deep sleep, I don't know why that is. Note though how similar it is to yesterdays core sleep chart, bearing in mind that today I slept half an hour longer:



I am starting to see a pattern here. Based on this information, I'm going to put my alarm on for 3.5 hours tonight, giving me a period of 15 minutes to fall asleep and my smart alarm a period of 15 minutes to wake me up. I seem to be having about half an hour of deep sleep and an hour of REM, but I'm slightly concerned about all that stage 2 sleep in the middle. It makes up for nearly an hour. I suppose it is important though. It'll be interesting to see what my graphs will look like after a week.

Back to Biphasic - Day 1

Last night was the first night of my new biphasic schedule. I went to bed at 10:00pm and was woken up by my smart alarm at 11:40pm. I had a little sleep inertia, and I had a few micronaps before deciding to get up and doing a little exercise to shake it off. It wasn't bad, unlike being awoken after two hours, I think I must have been in stage 3 sleep heading back down for stage 4 when I was woken. Instead of posting my usual graph, I've decided to take the information and make a more easily readable chart, as it can be very difficult to distinguish between deep sleep and stage 2 sleep on my Sleep as Android app. I have learned to distinguish the two however, so here's a line graph of my first nap:

The key for the y-axis is:
4 = Awake
3 = REM sleep (Dreaming)
2 = Stage 2 sleep
1 = Deep sleep

It wasn't that great in terms of quality, but I still got a good amount of deep sleep. I found myself awake and alert though all the way through to my core sleep, par a tired period a around 2:30am. I didn't know whether I'd manage to fall asleep for my core seeing as it had only been about 5hrs since my last nap and I was still feeling pretty much awake. I surprised myself though by falling asleep almost instantly. Here's the graph:

A lot of my morning sleeps so far have been pretty erratic as my sleep is still rearranging itself. Here I fell asleep at about 4:40am and my smart alarm woke me at 8:20am, giving me about 3hrs and 40mins of sleep. It is a little more than I meant it to be, as initially I wanted to start off at 3hrs and 30mins and reduce down to 3hrs, but I only slept 3.5 hours the day before and I was pretty tired. My morning sleeps themselves actually feel really restful, but the cycles are more than a little messed up.

I've decided that over the weekend, starting tomorrow, I'm going to sleep-in with my core and let my cycles sort themselves out enough for me to know when I should cut it off, because at the moment, after looking over all the data from my morning sleeps over the last few days, there seems to be no easily distiguishable pattern.

Otherwise, I feel like I'm dreaming a lot more, but I can never rememeber full dreams, just bits and pieces. I'm hoping that after about a week my REM will start to re-adjust itself, and hopefully my deep sleep by the second week, if not by the end of the next week. One thing I'm concerned about is how about half of my core sleep at the moment seems to be stage 2 sleep, but again, I'm hoping that'll be replaced soon enough with either more REM or deep sleep.

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Triphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 4

With regret I have to say that I've changed to a different sleep pattern as I missed my nap, and on a schedule such as rigid as this, missing a nap is not an option. The problem is if I miss a nap, it takes me a few days to fall asleep at that time again. At this point in my life it's much too rigid. However it's one of the best sleep schedules I've tried as of yet, and as long as I woke up at the right time, I experienced no sleep deprivation. It's a shame really, but I may go back to this at some later point. It was really awesome, like having three days in one. I cannot stress enough how good this made me feel, and in fact this schedule came as natural as breathing to me. When I go to university though this is the schedule I'll definitely be trying first, providing I have the same times in each day to get in my afternoon nap.

Today though, I've decided to go back to a biphasic schedule. However, I'm not going to go back to the 5.5hrs+ 30mins again like I said I would. The problem is here that I can't always get my afternoon nap, and I'd rather not be reliant on that. Also, napping solely in 1.5hr increments has changed me, I agree that they're definitely much more restful than both a 20-30 nap and a 5 hour core when placed correctly. How anyone could call a 20 minute nap a compressed cycle beats me. I guess I shouldn't judge till I've tried a more extreme equidistant one such as Uberman. However, although I would try Uberman out of curiosity, I doubt I'd ever actually find time to do it. I also doubt I'd do it long term. For one I would find it a nuisance to have to sleep six times per day.

So the schedule I'm on at the moment is biphasic with a 3.5 hour core and a 1.5 hour nap. I've made the core quite short because I noticed that despite only having 2.15 hours of sleep this morning it didn't actually leave me feeling that tired throughout the day even though I missed my nap. I think my sister, who slept ten hours last night, was yawning more than me. In fact I wasn't even yawning at all. I think the important thing is that the right amount of sleep is gotten at about the right time, like a way of tricking the body into thinking it's had a cycle longer than it actually has had . So with no further adieu, here are the new plans I've drudged up so far:

10:00pm-11:30pm
4:30am-8:00am

That still gives me about five hours between each sleep, and I have the added advantage of falling asleep for my core when it's still dark. The way it would work is that my first nap would consist entirely of deep sleep, which would be ever the more efficient by being put an hour back. Then the first half of my 3hr core would be mostly stage two sleep, whilst the second half would be mostly REM sleep. Proportionally speaking, no more sleep than this is actually needed to be fit and healthy. And in actual fact if I couldn't take my night nap till later then I could always go triphasic again for a day or two, providing of course that there'll be chance for me to nap throughout the next day, but we can't always know that, we'll just see what happens. Otherwise, for real disasters such as partying late into the night, I'll probably just have to go monophasic, maybe with a nap squeezed in the next afternoon.

I guess really, all in all, I'm just sleeping a plethora of different schedules in the week. I don't mind though as they seem to compliment each other. Biphasic is probably the best though for everyday living. Either way, I think that after 6 weeks I've finally managed to trim off as much as 5 hours off my sleep and be as twice as functional on it.

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Triphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 3

I wasn't able to post this morning as I had a Doctor's appointment and, well, decided to leave it until after my afternoon nap. So yesterday's afternoon was pretty disappointing, I probably slept more than the day before but it was still pretty poor in terms of sleep quality. I was left feeling exhausted by the night and almost fell asleep early again. I managed to wait though.

I fell asleep at about 11:05pm and once again my alarm didn't wake me till 1am, consequently giving me 2 hours of sleep. I woke up with the most awful sleep inertia. I was fighting against the most primal urge to sleep for at least two hours. I was incapable of doing anything, I couldn't even find the willpower to exercise it off, I just ended up staring at the wall standing up for about 15 minutes before giving up. I can't actually remember what I did during those two hours, but I remember beginning to wake up at about 3:00am. I was ok from there on and watched Supernatural all morning and talked to a few Mexican friends for a while before my morning nap. That is one of the most awesome benefits so far, being able to talk to friends and family on the other side of the world who I haven't properly talked to in months due to the timing differences.

From now on for my night nap I'm going to try and sleep 1.5 hours instead of 2 to see if that prevents the sleep inertia. Otherwise, come morning I decided to go to sleep at 5:45am, but it was pretty restless, and although I was in bed for 2.5 hours I probably only slept about 1.5 hours of that. I was okay upon waking though. Again, I remember plenty of dreams and am really appreciating my morning nap the most. After having my deep sleep in the night it feels extremely complementing and restful.

Now, today I had my best afternoon nap of all time. I went to bed at 3:15pm and fell asleep within 10 minutes, waking up naturally about 40 minutes later wondering where on earth I was, completely devoid of any notion of perception. Once I completely came to and realized where I was I felt like I'd been asleep for hours.From the get go I had been completely unconscious. Here's the graph:

As can be seen it was extremely restful. I have yet to figure out the sleep stages ratio, but if I had to guess I would say that I cycled through about 15 minutes of stage 2 sleep either side with about 10 minutes of deep sleep somewhere in the middle there. I don't remember dreaming. I woke up about half an hour before my alarm feeling completely awake. No sleep inertia whatsoever. I feel absolutely amazing. My sister says she came in whilst I was sleeping and she said I was breathing so heavy it sounded like I was dying. My guess is that I had mostly four hours worth of stage 2 sleep compressed into those 40 minutes.

I have noticed somewhat of a pattern here though. I've noticed that my naps are ten times better if I involve myself in any type of exercise about half way through my wake cycle. So from now on I think that's what I'll do.

So far I absolutely love this. Best schedule ever. I feel completely rested, and it's true what they say about there being virtually no adaption time.

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Triphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 2

Yesterday I had no ill effects during the day from only sleeping 3.5 hours during the night, par from a tired period around about 11am, but that passed after about 15 minutes.

I went to have my nap at 3:00pm and set my alarm for 4:00pm. I won't post my graph though because it was pretty restless, I think it took me 20 minutes to fall asleep, and then I was waking up every 5 to 10 minutes till I gave up just before my alarm was due to go off. I think I still got about 20 segmented minutes of sleep altogether though.

Anyhow, it was enough to perk me up for a while, but come 10pm I was super tired. It was a little weird since I never get tired at 10pm, and as much I would prefer to move my first nap to that time, my sister doesn't sleep till 11pm, and I remember when I tried to nap at that time before she would often disturb me. Also, it's not very practical for other more social nights when I need to stay up just that hour extra. I'm sure once I sleep better in the afternoon though I should get tired closer to 11pm.

I had my first nap, which actually psychologically feels like my third and last nap, at 11:00pm and my smart alarm didn't wake me up till 1:00am, which gave me two hours of sleep. Here's the graph:

It woke me up at a lighter period, but I was still having a lot of low frequency theta waves at the time and ended up having sleep inertia for about an hour or so after waking. An hour of exercise cured that though.

My second nap of the day, or now I'm gonna call it my first, because it feels that way, was from 5:45am to 8:00am. My alarm didn't wake me until the 2.15 hour mark though, which sounds about the average length of one of the longer sleep cycles. So altogether during the night I slept 45 minutes longer than I meant to. Here's the graph:

As can be seen this nap is so much more restful than yesterday's morning nap. I had a lot of deep sleep and stage 2 sleep in it, but I still didn't feel that build up of sleep pressure like you usually do after not sleeping all night. It was deep and restful but not a horribly bottomless oblivion, and that feels super nice upon waking. I haven't had that feeling since I started polyphasic sleeping. It's lush.

Also, despite my graph saying other wise, during the morning nap it felt like I was dreaming forever. For once since starting this experiment I not only remember a dream, I remember three, and on top of that they were the super crazy ones, which I haven't had since being monophasic. It's a really nice feeling.

I'm thinking that I prefer my morning nap to be the longest, and would like to wean my two 1 hour deep sleep cycles at night so that they last 1.5 hours instead of 2 hours. 2 hours for that time seems a little excessive, and of course if I'm having about 2 hours in the morning as well, my total sleep time will be closer to 5 hours instead of 4.5 hours. Granted that still earns me about 1 hour extra over all, but again, it just feels excessive. After two hours my body seems to think it can sleep for however long seeing as it wouldn't feel very nap-like, and ultimately I find waking up after three hours to be a lot more difficult.

One other thing I want to mention is that the naps themselves don't feel like only 2 hours. I think maybe because I've positioned them well, each one feels like I've slept a whole night. Time dilation is very blatant on this schedule. It's very weird but also feels really nice. It's like having a full night of monophasic sleep three times a day, if that were possible, just without any of the ill side effects. Of course my afternoon nap still needs to be optimized but another week and I'm sure it'll get there. Also, the bags under my eyes haven't worsened much, like they did when I was on Everyman 4.5, which is a good thing.

All in all this schedule is impressing me twice as much as the biphasic one did, and seeing as the biphasic one impressed me twice as much as being on monophasic did, that's saying quite something. I haven't experienced any sleep deprivation yet either. Both my body and mind feel amazing. The long afternoon naps make this a little impractical to do every day of the week, but I know I won't be stopping anytime soon, it just feels so damn good. Maybe I'm saying this a little premature but this is the best schedule I've been on as of yet.

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Triphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 1

Today was the first true day of my new triphasic sleep schedule. I almost scrapped it at the last moment but my curiosity got the better of me and I figured that if it didn't work I could always go back to biphasic.

I started with a nap in the afternoon the day before, but as it was the weekend I'd slept an hour too much the previous night and for the first time in weeks I couldn't fall asleep during the day. I like to think my body is adjusting better to the less sleep seeing as I still only had about 6 hours of sleep, but still, for beginning my triphasic schedule it was a little detrimental.

Come night, I slept from 11:20pm to 12:50am easily, giving me 1.5hours sleep exactly. I was surprised that my smart alarm woke me after 1.5 hours, expecting to be woken up at the two hour mark as my first two cycles seem to be both only an hour long. It was weird because I woke up thinking I'd over slept and that my alarm didn't wake me up (which has by the way never happened with this "Sleep as Android" app) and I went to check the clock and saw it at about 12:15. I couldn't believe it. Before I checked the clock I swear I'd slept about 4 hours.

I almost decided to get up there and then but I figured that if I wanted this to work I needed to start as rested as possible and then work my way down. I remember the alarm going off at 12:50am with me thinking I was still awake, not initially realizing that I'd slept an extra half an hour. That was probably because I must've fallen back to sleep too fast to register it and then woken up in light sleep.

Here's my graph:

As can be seen the first hour was quite deep, then I get practically blown away by super deep sleep during the last half an hour. I'm guessing during that stage my brainwaves were at a frequency of 0.5hz at least.

The morning was surprisingly easy to pass. Too easy in fact. I've never felt so awake as such a wrong time. It did initially take about an hour for my body to completely wake up though, despite my mind being super awake. I had no trouble reading. In fact my sister had a bit of insomnia last night and annoyingly, because I hadn't told her about my experiment, and consequently hadn't told her not to tell my mum, I had to pretend I was asleep for about half an hour at around 3:00am and then another hour at 4:00am. The point is, I was lying down pretending to be asleep for about an hour and a half altogether and I didn't even feel a hint of sleepiness. I just spent the time thinking. I have told my sister now though so hopefully no more hours wasted there.

It got to about 5:20am and I found myself bored as my next nap was coming up and it was too late to start something mentally strenuous, yet my sister's insomnia had put my plans behind schedule. I basically found myself with nothing to do for about 40 minutes. I decided to go to sleep at that time anyway. I was so awake that I figured it would probably take me that long to fall asleep anyway. In fact because that's round about the time I've been waking up on biphasic for the last 3 weeks I wondered whether I would manage to sleep at all. I did though. Here's my sleep graph:

I fell asleep after about the twenty minute mark, and woke up at 6:30am, probably because I'll often wake up at that time on biphasic too on the weekdays, and then again at 7:30am because that's the time I tend to wake up on biphasic during the weekends. I couldn't fall back to sleep for probably another 20 minutes at 6:30am but I did. Again it was all very strange. I didn't feel that need to catch up on built up sleep pressure. That nap felt like it was pretty much all stage 2 sleep, and of course according to my graph I only had about five minutes REM time.

I woke up at 7:30 pretty much unable to believe that it had only been two hours. Granted, it wasn't the most restful sleep due to my biphasic cycle having to reset, but it certainly felt good. It had actually felt like I'd had a long good night of 8 hours monophasic sleep, except I have 5 hours free time in the middle and I feel better upon waking up. I have to emphasize again how incredibly weird it felt. I've never experienced anything like it. I slept 3.5 hours altogether and yet split up like that it feels two times better than when I was trying to do Everyman 4.5, with 4.5 hours core sleep towards the end of the morning.

I wouldn't say that my morning energy levels are as good as they were on biphasic, but they feel more even around the whole spectrum. I do feel slightly drunk, and my eyes are a little puffy underneath but I wouldn't say I'm tired. I still feel two times better than when I did on monophasic. I also have a feeling that I'll sleep a treat at my 3:00pm nap, in five hours. I do find it difficult to sleep more than 30 minutes during the day though, so if that happens I'll just add an extra 30 minutes after dinner, when I have my next sleep-able deep.

I keep thinking this is too easy though. I know some people say that they had virtually no adaption time and maybe that's the case here, but either way I keep waiting for the punch line. I wouldn't really say I'm dedicated to this as such, I'm only doing it for curiosity, yet with my smart alarm and the way things are going at the moment I seem to be having a really easy time. I definitely recommend the smart alarm. It hasn't failed to wake me up ever, no matter how long or short I've had my core sleep in the past. It's absolutely perfect.

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Polyphasic Sleep Week 6 - Triphasic Overview

I've had a great three weeks of being biphasic, learning about my sleep and how best to optimize it. I came across an interesting chart showing the times of our natural dips in our circadian rhythms throughout the day. Here's the picture:

It got me thinking. Over the last few weeks and looking back over my life I've noticed dips at:
-6:30am
-9:00am
-11;00am
-1:00pm
-3:30pm
-5:00pm
-6:30pm
-8:00pm
-11:30pm
-01:00am
-2:30am
-05:00am

Obviously the early morning ones i'm not so sure about at the moment, but I've noticed I've become tired at those times in the past when I've done all-nighters. As for the dips themselves, these are the normal amount of dips an average person has in a day, but most of them aren't noticeable, they're brief and shallow, I've also noticed that when we're not sleeping we tend to unconsciously fill some of those other dips with either food or exercise, probably to replenish ourselves.

Personally my two biggest dips occur at 3:00pm and 11:30pm, and I wondered if there was a way to sleep even less by utilizing those, considering the fact that at the moment I've been going to sleep at 12:30am instead, not too difficult but definitely full of tiredness. After some consideration I've decided to go triphasic.

I don't think I've mentioned triphasic sleep before, and that's probably because for some reason it's not very often experimented with. I still think it's quite a young schedule in comparison to the other schedules though so that could be why. Simply put, it involves sleeping 1.5 hours evenly separated over a period of three times per day. This basically gives you about 4.5 hours sleep average.

The way it works is that your body is designed to have certain sleep stages better at certain times of the day. Ever wondered why you always have crazy-assed dreams in the morning yet you can't remember the first couple of hours of deep sleep? Although I don't remember the exact scientific reason it's like that due to the way our body's are designed. Stage 2 sleep is also more effective during the late afternoon/early morning, depending on your body clock, and despite what anyone says, logic dictates that we have stage 2 sleep for a reason, and need it.

By sleeping 1.5hrs in the morning you get mostly REM sleep. By sleeping 1.5hrs in the afternoon you get mostly stage 2 sleep, and by sleeping 1.5hrs at night you get mostly deep sleep. Although it's not the minimum of 4 cycles, and only 3 cycles instead, it's supposed to work by compressing the time ever the more efficiently. On this schedule it's also supposed to be the easiest to switch back to monophasic if you can't get an afternoon nap, although for me if that happened I'd probably just go biphasic and have an evening nap after dinner instead.

Here's a graph I found depicting the cycles of triphasic sleep against those of monophasic sleep:.

As you can see it looks to be very promising.

This is a nap based schedule, and is also one of those schedules where every nap needs to be as equidistant as possible otherwise it won't work. After a few calculations, I've come to the conclusion that a wake-gap should be around 6.5 hours long, although at most it can be extended up to 8 hours. Any longer and it won't work. This would be almost perfect for me. I actually have two cycles in the first two hours of my sleep so I've decided to have my first nap as a 2 hour core and my third mid afternoon one as a 1 hour nap to make it more even. For now my times will be as thus:
~11:30pm - 1:30am
~06:30am - 08:00am
-3:15pm - 4:15pm

Obviously for now this is a guestimate and may shift over the next week or so, but I've done it so that my longest wake/gap doesn't precede 7.5 hours. I'm thinking that maybe my 11:30pm sleep may go back another half an hour or so but I'm not sure yet. I realize that 11:30pm is my strongest urge to sleep and that there's a strong chance I'll sleep through even ten alarms, so I've decided to take that one half-sitting up, to get my body to realize it's just a nap.

I've also *cough* reactivated *cough* the sleep as android app that measures my sleep cycles and wakes me up at my lightest sleep. It's one of the best apps I've ever come across and unfortunately it only has a 14 day trial before it needs to be bought. Fortunately for me I've figured out how to continue using it for free. For anyone else who has this problem, all I did was uninstall it and reinstall it again. I didn't think it would work, but lo and behold it restarted the 14 day trial. I hope that helps anyone else out there who has this same problem. Obviously, and fortunately, Android aren't as up tight as Apple, as I doubt for one second that would work on my iPod. I'm inspired to try it now.

Anyway, I digress. I really hope this will work. It'll give me an extra 1.5hrs average on top of what I already have, giving me an extra 4 hours as compared to monophasic sleep, effecting cutting my needed time asleep by half. I've heard that the adjustment period is practically non-existent, especially if you start well rested with the afternoon nap, but either way I'm not gonna go cold turkey again this time. When I first switched to biphasic I found I would accidentally sleep extra, and have a more SPAMAYL type approach for when I had tired periods. I also found that those tired periods naturally disappeared by themselves once I was adjusted, and it cancelled out virtually any adaption period, so that's what I'll be doing again.

The last thing is, that doing this schedule would mean that I would no longer have to suffer from jet lag. I have family in Mexico, which is a six hour difference backwards, and I found the jetlag a bitch. It's difficult to enjoy a holiday suffering from sleep deprivation. I figured this schedule would cancel that out as I would just sleep at the same times in my time zone, maybe shifting it by a couple of hours for practicawl reasons, virtually eliminating any jetlag.
-11:30pm would become 5:30pm
-6:30am would become 12:30am
-3:15pm would become 9:15am.

These are all practical times for me, maybe shifted an hour or two, especially as in the morning I tend to be alone and in the afternoon Mexicans tend to have a siesta (nap) anyway.

So that concludes my ginormous essay on triphasic sleeping and I hope it'll be useful for anyone else looking to start it. I'll be yet again keeping a daily log and hope that my first post will be around 5:30am. I really hope I survive.

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Polyphasic Sleep Week 5

Today marks the end of my fifth week conducting this polyphasic sleep experiment and the third week of sleeping biphasically. It's been a good week. Very stabilized and normal. I'm still feeling twice as good than I was on monophasic. I no longer have high levels of background anxiety, something I wasn't expecting, the dark circles under my eyes are now virtually non-existent, and my health is twice as good. My muscles and bones don't ache half as much as they did before, and of course my mind is more alert throughout the day. I rarely feel sleepy. You'd think it'd be the opposite but it's not weirdly enough.

I now have an application to compile graphs for me and measure how much sleep I'm getting average. Over the last week it reports that I've had an average of 6.2 hours of sleep. This average obviously went up on the weekend, which by the way, I regret. Friday night I slept-in, waking up naturally after 7 hours, almost 2 hours more than usual and although it was the best sleep of my life I felt super ill all day. I really should stop doing that.

Earlier on in the week I was having trouble with the correct times to wake up as I'd become pretty reliant on my smart alarm to wake me up at the right stage and because I was falling asleep too fast, under 5 minutes, I found myself waking up in deep sleep. I had to shorten my core sleep from 5.5 hours to 5.1 hours. That fixed the problem and I felt ok again.

As for my mid afternoon naps, they are a force to be reckoned with. I love them. They no longer feel like an inconvenience, I absolutely love them. Now that my body's adjusted I have an average of 15mins sleep, although occasionally I'll still sleep up to an hour, just because it feels so good. I've also started dreaming at the beginning of my mid afternoon naps, which is an odd experience to say the least. It feels like I slip straight from wakefulness into dreaming, and although I don't actually realize that at the time, it's made the beginning of about half my naps this week pre-lucid. I'll often question whether I'm awake or asleep, often to wake myself up twitching realizing that I was actually asleep and dreaming. I call them micro-dreams, brief periods of REM unlike hypnogogia.

Wrapping up, this schedule is the best I've ever slept, and I highly recommend it, but now my curiosity is getting the best of me and I've decided that from today I'll be going triphasic, which I'll go into in my next post.

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Polyphasic Sleep Month 2!

Today marks the end of my first month polyphasically sleeping and the beginning of the second month. I'm extremely pleased, with myself, truth be told I didn't think I would last a week let alone a month. It's been an incredible journey.

Looking back I've taken a rough estimate of the average amount of time I've slept each week:

Week1 - 4.5 hours
Week2 - 4.5 hours
Week3 - 5.5 hours
Week4 - 6 hours.

Average = 5.125 hours per day.

Overall I've gained an extra 3.5 hours per day, making it 105 hours in the last 30 days. That's given me an extra 4.3 days wake time during the last month. That's incredible. I really can't believe it myself. I do realize that I've slept more in the last two weeks than I did in the first two weeks, so my average amount of time saved may be a little less this next month coming up but still it's amazing how I can sleep so much less and yet feel so much better for it.

I seriously recommend polyphasic sleeping. It was difficult at first, yes, and it took a lot of experimenting around with the times, yes, but that does go away and you begin to feel ten times better than the way you were sleeping previously. Pretty much all my initial sleep deprivation has gone now and I feel really good over all.

I've learned so much about myself during this whole process. Now I roughly know the length of each of my sleep cycles, and the length of each stage of sleep per cycle. I know the times I naturally feel lowest at during the day and I know how to optimize my sleep in a shorter amount of time. I've learned to fall asleep in under five minutes and for all of that I feel great.

I still think that I have tons of experimenting left to do though, seeing as I want to reduce my time asleep again even further, but it's all a matter of choice now, 5.5 hours with a 20 to 30 minute nap is now perfect for me to live on, and I have a feeling that's what I'll be falling back on should I experiment further in the future.

Now that I've hit the 1 month mark I'll be writing down the amount of sleep I've had per day in my notes and then update at the end of every week for the next month, for both mine and your benefits. I don't plan to stop anytime soon, or ever to be honest, so I'll keep this log going as long as possible, if not very regularly. I hope this log is a help for anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

Ciao.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Days 28 to 30

Day 28:

End of day 28, when I last wrote my schedule, was the beginning of the weekend and it was a little erratic to say the least. I got extremely tired around 5pm and ended up taking a nap for an hour. I don't tend to put on the alarm for naps during the weekends seeing as it is the weekend and all, I try to give my body as much time as it needs to replenish itself over any sleep deprivation. Not just that but despite the fact I sleep more in the nights I tend to find myself about ten times as tired in the days during the weekends. Maybe I'm more tired because I sleep more those nights, it's difficult to tell at this stage.

Day 29:

After taking an hour nap I couldn't fall to sleep till about 3am, and even then I had to force myself asleep. I figured I'd sleep-in till about 10am at most. Well I couldn't sleep in at all. For some reason I had a really restless sleep and woke up at the 5.5 hour mark without need for the alarm. I tried falling back to sleep but I was just too restless. I was a little disappointed seeing as I barely had a sleep-in the night before either, but it didn't bother me so much. What did bother me was the fact we had family visiting for Father's Day and I couldn't find time to take a nap. It was much too noisy even if I had found time. I was super tired and grumpy, probably from having less quality sleep than normal. Also I'm hormonal so it's kind of expected.

Day 30:

I couldn't wait to get to sleep last night, I was so tired. I watched X-Men Origins Wolverine before heading off to sleep at 12:30am. I did originally intend to sleep 5.5 hours but for some reason it was taking me a while to fall asleep and so I reset my alarm for six hours, also hoping to make up for any sleep I lost on the weekend. It's kind of ironic really how I'm sleeping better during the weekdays.

It's now 4:15pm in the evening and I just had a 20 minute nap. It was a little noisy and I was woken a couple of times but I still think I got around 10 minutes sleep. It's amazing how fast I can fall to sleep now during the day, sometimes even under a minute in the right conditions. Otherwise I've been feeling okay all day, no sign of yesterday's tiredness or the day before.

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Week 4 Overview of Adjusted Sleep Schedule

This is a simple overview of the amount of sleep I've gotten this last week with my newly adjusted biphasic schedule.

5h45m + 35m = 6h20m
5h45m
5h45m
5h20m + 20m = 5h40m
5h30m
5h30m + 30m = 6h
6h30m + 10m = 6h40m

Average = 6h.

I calculated my average amount of time asleep this week to be just under 6 hours per day. I know a lot of people my age sleep this anyway due to university and that but for me I've knocked 2.5 hours off my average sleep time, which is a lot considering I used to sleep 8.5 hours per day average. Also, I never used to take naps before so I figured I'd never be able to fall asleep in the day but I was wrong. Now I've learned to fall asleep in under 5 to 10 minutes, even less so if I do it at the time of my body's natural dips of around 3:00pm and 7:30pm. I view all this as quite a feat.

I feel good on this amount of sleep. In fact my parents have even noticed a change in my mood. I wasn't particularly depressed before or anything but now it feels like I have two to three times as much energy, weirdly enough. My libido has gone through the roof. If done properly for the individual, biphasic and polyphasic sleep can really work. I completely support it.

I would like to compress my sleep time further because I like both going to bed at 2:00am and waking up at 6:00am but this schedule feels perfect and as the saying goes, "don't fix it if it ain't broken." Also if I did that I'd have to have two naps most days and sometimes even having one nap is difficult to find undisturbed time for. Plus I figured I'd have plenty of time to go fully polyphasic once I myself eventually go to university and have to study a lot. I'm sure it'll come in really handy then, being able to sleep as little as 4.5 hours and feel ok for it, but right now, practically speaking, I don't actually need that extra time.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 28

Day 28:

So yesterday I forgot to take my nap because I was busy with something on the computer. That means I didn't do any exercise either and therefor I was really tired by the time dinner came around. I didn't want to take a nap then though because I knew it would keep me awake all morning. In the end I decided to take a 15 minute nap and keep it short. I feel asleep within 5 minutes and woke up just before the alarm, giving me a good 10 minutes of sleep.

That seriously perked me up and I didn't start to feel sleepy again till about 2:00am. I decided to go to sleep and not set any alarm and just wake up at whatever time: The thing is I'd stupidly forgotten to deactivate my weekday alarm and I ended up having my sister waking me up at 7:15am by dumping my phone on my bed. It had been vibrating since 6:00am! I switched it off but I didn't know whether to go back to sleep or not.

I'd had about 5.25 hours sleep at that point and considering this is around the period of my fourth sleep cycle that I usually wake up in I was all perky and awake. I considered staying awake and just having an extended nap in the day, but I find it difficult enough to find napping time in the day as it is.

I decided to stay in bed and try to fall back to sleep. It took me about half an hour to fall back to sleep, that's how alert my mind was. I don't think I've ever found it so difficult to go to sleep. I almost gave up but couldn't be bothered to move and eventually slipped into a light sleep. I remember waking up a couple of times before I fell into deeper sleep and was woken from a dream at 9:30am by my mum.

I was in bed about 7.5 hours but I reckon I slept around 6.5 hours altogether. It's a little weird. If someone had woken me up at the 7 hour mark before this experiment I would've been extremely pissed off at the disturbance. Now though I don't feel grumpy at all from the disturbances and I still feel like I've had a good sleep.

I do feel a little weird from the feeling of being in bed all day but seeing as I was disturbed twice it's not that pronounced. It actually feels like I woke up, had a brief waking period, and then had a 1.25 hour nap. I don't think I should be needing a nap in the day lest I feel like being awake all morning again. I think I'll do lots of exercise to tire me out and make all that extra sleeping time worth while. Maybe this sounds weird but I'm not sure I like sleeping anymore than 6 hours anymore, maybe 6.5 at it's max. I do feel absolutely fine on 5.5 hours of sleep.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 27

Day 27:

Yesterday I got tired round about 3:00pm and found myself involuntary lying down in bed to take a rest. I didn't realize how tired I actually was until I started falling asleep but couldn't completely get there because it wasn't planned and I had no earphones in to block out sounds from around the house. I decided to put them in and just go along with it, setting my alarm for half an hour.

I think I fell asleep around the twenty minute mark, giving me about ten minutes sleep. I don't know for sure though because my trial for the sleep graph has ended. You wouldn't believe it but ten minutes perked me up for the whole day and again I didn't suffer from tiredness all day, or night. I decided to go to sleep at 12:30am though because I was bored.

I set my alarm for 6:00am, giving me 5.5 hours of sleep. It doesn't feel early, I actually find that the earlier I wake up the better I feel. I woke up half an hour earlier so I could get half an hour exercise in with the hour and a half of watching Supernatural. Tomorrow's Saturday which technically means up to a 7 hour sleep-in for me, but I really don't feel like I need it. I feel perfectly fine. I might just go to bed whenever and put my alarm on for seven hours anyway just to see after how long I naturally wake up.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 26

Day 26:

Yesterday I had no problems. I wasn't even tired in the day so I decided to forfeit my nap again and do some exercise instead. I got tired a bit earlier in the night though. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open till 1:00am. I did though.

I woke up at 6:30am in the morning, giving me 5.5 hours of sleep. Being awake so early in the morning to me still doesn't actually feel that early and actually I'm thinking I prefer being awake in the early mornings compared to the late nights. It's very peaceful and calm, and of course my tranquil isn't being disturbed by tiredness. as it would do later in the night. My mind's a lot more active and creative early morning. Due to this I still think I could wake up an hour or two earlier in the morning. I don't know why exactly but it feels like time goes super fast first thing in the morning.

I know initially I wrote that I was going to move my bed time back a couple of hours and then I decided that I hated it, but my body's already adjusting to being awake earlier in the morning, meaning that although I still don't really want to to go bed too early, I'm too tired to argue with my brain. In future I'll just fall asleep when I get tired, after all, I do have a time frame of about 4.5 hours to choose from. And if I fall asleep at 11:00pm and wake up at 4:30am then all the better. It will be at least a very interesting experience.

A note for reference, I've been very probe to being emotionally unstable since I changed my hours asleep from 4.5 to 5.5. I don't know why this is exactly. I did read somewhere that too much REM sleep can cause depression, but that sounds pretty much impossible in relation to my situation. Sure, I've been getting twice as much REM sleep with just an hour extra sleep a day, but that's still at least half the amount compared to the amount people sleeping a normal 7 to 8 hour night have. Only thing I can think of is how my body got adapted to hardly having any the first couple of weeks and decided it didn't like it being doubled a while later. But that still doesn't make sense because when I was on 4.5 hours of sleep a day I wasn't getting nearly enough and should've had an REM rebound.

Otherwise, I'm thinking this experiment should be called something more along the lines of "super short monophasic sleep with a biphasic option to nap during the day depending on how I'm feeling." I've noticed that 5.75 hours is enough to ride me out the whole day perfectly yet 15 minutes less and I get super tired during the mid-aftertoon. Weird.

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Polyphasic sleep Schedule - Day 25

Day 25:

I know yesterday I had planned to write a lot but now I can't remember what I was gonna write so this'll probably be really short.

Yesterday it got to about 3:30pm and I realized that I'd forgotten to take my nap. I only realized that though because all of a sudden I was super tired and couldn't stop yawning. I decided to go for a nap then and there. and surprisingly I fell asleep within five minutes. I woke up five minutes later though before falling straight back to sleep. This happened about three or four times. I remember waking up for the last time with the phrase "remember I had a dream," running round and round in my head. I can't for the life of me remember what the dream was, although I have a nagging feeling that it was Doctor Who related. On top of that I couldn't get back to sleep after 20 minutes exactly, but I didn't really mind. I think I'm gonna shorten my naps to 30 minutes in future rather than 45.

I went to sleep last night at 1:10am and woke up at 6:50am. I slept a total of about 5 hours and 20 minutes considering it probably took me about twenty minutes to get comfortable enough to fall asleep. Last night though I actually got tired enough,, no more strange hyper-ness. Today though I've been feeling super lazy all day. I got through two episodes of Supernatural before 8:30am instead of writing this journal and exercising. I didn't exercise yesterday either. I might do some later. Otherwise, I don't particularly like going to bed at 1:00am, I've got used to falling asleep at 2:30-3:00am, which I prefer. If I go to bed that late though then I can't wake up earlier. So in a way it does feel like my day has been shortened, although this is only psychological and it doesn't feel bad as such.

Another weird thing I've noticed is that towards the evenings it feels like my brain is expanding, like a constant pressure coming from inside, from dilated blood vessels or something. This may be down to higher blood pressure levels due to increased Cortisol from sleep deprivation. As for my eyes, the weird swelling on my bottom eyelid disappeared but for some reason it moved to the top eyelid. I have no idea what that's all about. Also, my eyes do have slightly dark shadows underneath, but they're pretty much invisible in comparison to when I was sleeping 4.5 hours a day. I really want to go back to 4.5 hours a day with one long 45 minute nap actually, maybe even 3 to 3.5 hours with a one 1.5 hour nap, but I really can't fit all those naps into my day around my family. And of course I don't want anyone to see the black circles under my eyes that would ensue if I changed to such schedules.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 24

Day 24:

Yesterday I'd actually forgotten that I had an orthodontics appointment in the mid afternoon so I never actually ended up getting my nap anyway. This is my first skipped nap, well, if you discount the night where I tried to sleep a long period of time monophasically again. Honestly, it didn't really affect me, I had a tired period around dinner but I would've have that either way seeing as social calls aren't my best of traits. The rest of the day I was perfectly fine.

Last night when 1:00am came around I was actually tired, but it felt really early, not something I'm too used to anymore. I did wake up at 6:45 again, just now actually, to counteract that, but it was during the middle of NREM sleep so I feel a little groggy. Only disadvantage I would say is the fact me waking so early is also waking my sister, who's also a light sleeper during her long periods of REM sleep, and I can't get much done in the mornings anyway for worry of waking her. Finding a balance is proving to be difficult.

Today I'll try to have my nap, although again I'm intrigued to see what happens if I don't. If I'm not tired I can't exactly fall to sleep anyway. I realize that the rest is beneficial though, and the fact that I am supposed to be doing a polyphasic schedule, not a seriously shortened monophasic one. Either way, we'll see.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 23

Day 23:

Yesterday I tried taking at nap at about 2:30pm, but I wasn't tired and couldn't sleep. If this continues then I may just start forfeiting the naps all together. Last 'night' it got to about 1:00am and although I wasn't tired and although it felt really early I decided to force myself to sleep. One thing I've noticed recently though is that I'll fall asleep for about ten minutes before waking up again. It's not difficult to fall back to sleep, but it'a just a little weird. I'm thinking that maybe it's nap related.

This morning I woke up at 6:45am, and funnily enough it doesn't feel early. It just feels like I moved my bed time back a couple of hours, no big deal. On monophasic if I'd've done that I still probably would've slept in, and unlike monophasic, I feel awake, alive, and ready to face the day.

This is also probably like the shortest post ever.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 22

Day 22:

So yesterday I was hyper again, not to mention today too. I'm starting to think that this isn't due to my body adjusting to this sleep schedule but due to something else. My mum's started giving me these herbal Rhodiola tablets to help combat my summer depression. The tablets aren't supposed to work for about a month, but those days where I was feeling down and depressed and slept 8.5 hours I'm pretty sure that's because I'd forgotten to take the tablets. Either way though, I'm not complaining, I genuinely feel good, although slightly more insane than normal.

Yesterday it got to mid afternoon and although I felt my body's natural down peak I I wasn't tired, and seeing as I'd woken up late in the morning I decided to pass the afternoon with some exercise and take my nap later after dinner. When evening came I still wasn't tired and ended up meditating in bed for 35 minutes before being disturbed. Again, me not being tired during the day may be a side effect of the tablets, or 5.5 hours really is sufficient now to pull me through the day, or maybe it's the two combined.

I didn't even get tired till about 2:00am, so I'm really starting to think it's the tablets. I went to bed at 2:30am, giving myself 30 minutes to get to sleep. That was a mistake. I fell asleep pretty much instantly and ended up sleeping for 5.75 hours, waking up at 8:30am, which frankly felt like an eternity. It also woke me in the middle of my fifth dreaming stage. I should've really woken up before that. Next time I'll give myself 15 minutes to fall asleep and 5.25 hours to actually sleep. That's more of natural time.

I didn't use the sleep monitoring app last night, and unfortunately there's only three days trial left on it, two of which my mum and sister want to try. Today I'm not sure I'm gonna take a nap because I want to fall asleep earlier, around about 1:00am. Either that or I'll try and nap in the mid-afternoon. I want to wake up early in the weekdays, 7:00am latest, to do some exercise, and also to get other interesting things done like writing, studying, reading, watching TV whilst it's light and I'm more awake. I realize that in the winter this'll change but I'll figure that out when it comes.

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Polyphasic sleep Schedule - Day 21

I almost can't believe it. Today I've been polyphasic/biphasic for three weeks. This way of sleeping has become a way of life for me, it feels entirely natural. For some reason I've started writing my logs in the morning though instead of the afternoon. I'm not sure why that is exactly but it is currently the holidays so maybe I'm making up for the lack of studying in the morning. Either way.

Yesterday I remember writing that I wasn't going to take a nap because I'd slept 8.5 hours monophasic the night before and I wasn't tired. Well that notion fell through the floor. At about 5:00pm I developed an awful headache. In fact it was a cluster headache, the beginnings of a migraine. I've never had that before, it was absolutely freakin awful. I took a handful of anti-inflammatories and painkillers and it died down for the most part, but I was just super tired. After dinner at about 6:00pm I got into bed and fell asleep for about an hour and a half.

The cluster headache, as it turns out, happens usually right after or before sleep, and is caused by having either too little sleep or too much sleep. I know it would be obvious to blame me having too little sleep as the cause here, but the fact is I got the headache about an hour or two after my normal nap time, after already sleeping about 4 hours more at night than what I have done in the entire last three weeks. My body was apparently rejecting my old monophasic system of sleeping, which is incredibly interesting.

As for the nap itself, taking such a long one at such a late time was a really bad idea. I was still tired when I woke up and wanted to go back to sleep but I forced myself awake. An hour later and I was jumping around like a lunatic, super hyper. That lasted all night, and it got to about 2:30am before I ended up forcing myself to sleep. It took me about half an hour to get to sleep, and according to my sleep graph it wasn't at all that restful either:

Still, I woke up at 8:30am naturally, after 5.5 hours, possibly about to go back into REM sleep. I've felt great all morning. I feel awake, alert, happy, and not to mention hungry (it's almost lunch time). I didn't feel any of those things yesterday. Next weekend when I have a monophasic sleep-in maybe it'll be more productive to keep the time around 7 hours instead of 8 hours, for fear of my body rejecting it again.

Other than that I've noticed another peculiar change. I'm surprised it's taken this long for this to happen but maybe it is more proof that my body's almost adapted. Basically, for the last few days throughout the day, especially towards the evening, I've noticed that I've been freezing cold. I'll be wrapped in bed under a duvet with tons of clothes and a thick woolen jumper on, slippers and all, and I'll still be shivering. This is in the middle of summer. Then all of a sudden I'll have a sporadic hot flush, feeling like I've caught a fever, before turning back to normal.

Apparently sleeping less causes your body temperature to go up, ultimately making you a lot more sensitive to the cold. The hot flushes themselves are caused by the body's self regulated rise in temperature. It's an odd feeling, and not too nice, but apparently it's healthy. Healthier than sleeping 8 hours monphasically. This is because when you sleep your body temperature drops, although it's at it's highest between 5 to 6.5 hours. This means that for some scientific reason, waking up between those hours is both healthier and easier, unlike waking up after 8 hours where your body temperature has drastically dropped again. Consequently your body temperature is somehow higher throughout the day. Apparently though I'll eventually adjust to these changes too, so no problems there.

Otherwise everything is pretty good. My under eye bags are virtually non existent now and my left bottom eyelid has stopped swelling up, whatever that was.

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Days 18 & 19:

I had 6 hours sleep on day 18 and 5 hours sleep on day 19. I felt a lot better on this amount of sleep rather than on 4.5 hours sleep. Problem was I found I wasn't tired enough to fall asleep in the day for my nap. I only managed 10 minutes sleep both days, and I woke up feeling super refreshed, but it wasn't enough to help me ride out the whole day, meaning I got incredibly tired at night. It was a struggle just to stay awake.

The dark circles under my eyes have started to retract, but for some reason my bottom left eyelid had swollen up, like the beginnings of sty or something. I've never had anything like this before, so I'm thinking it may very well be related to the lesser amount of sleep I'm getting, and me being the hypochondriac I am means I'm quite worried.

Today I had my first purposely taken oversleep. Last night, day 19, it got to about 11:00pm and I was quite tired due to not having much sleep in the afternoon. I was also really bored because I'd finished watching Heroes, and didn't have the motivation to start watching or do anything else. I was also feeling quite ill and was emotionally compromised. For some unexplainable reason I'd broken down in tears three times during the day. So I returned to the true and tried method of sleeping it off.

Day 20:

I fell asleep straight away. I think I slept like 8.5 hours. Apparently according to my sister I was so heavy asleep that I was snoring. I never snore. I woke up a couple of times in the night, something that rarely happened when I slept less, and I remember thinking each time, "Am I still supposed to be asleep?!" To be totally honest it felt like an eternity times two, and not to mention that for some unfathomable reason I found it unbelievably difficult to get out of bed in the morning. Again let me stress, it felt like i was in bed FOREVER. It's now mid afternoon, I would usually be taking a nap at this time.

The main advantage is that after 8.5 hours sleep I don't feel tired at all during the time that I would usually be taking my nap, meaning I won't be taking it. The main disadvantage though is that I feel like I've thrown half my day away in the bin. I can't believe how short this day feels. I hate it. It's absolutely revolting.

Although I'm feeling a lot better, I'm going to go back to polyphasic. I still think my hours need to be shifted around though. According to some articles I read, deep sleep is more effective in the hours from 10am to 3am due to the way our circadian clocks are naturally written. Based on that, I've decided to go asleep at my natural time of anywhere around 11pm to 1am depending on the day, and wake up earlier. I'll have anywhere from around 5 hours to 6.5 hours sleep on the weekdays depending on how I'm feeling. I've decided I'm going to go based on how I'm feeling and not keep a certain time because every day is different.

If I have 6.5 hours sleep then I won't necessarily need a nap during the day, unless I'm feeling tired of course, but anything less than that and I'll need at least 20 minutes of nap time in the mid afternoon. Going to sleep earlier will also mean that the tine between my nap and core sleep will be more equal either side.

On weekends though I think I'll sleep anywhere from around 6.5 hours to 9 hours. I think I may need the extra sleep to make up for anything I may have lost during the weekdays. Like I said, despite the horrible feeling of wasting my whole day away, I feel amazing and definitely needed the full sleep. I think balance is important.

I need to keep reminding myself that I haven't failed, I've merely just learned more about my personal sleeping patterns. I'm working towards understanding my optimal times awake and asleep. I'll keep a daily log again starting from tomorrow because I want to look back in seven days time and figure out how many hours I've gained by adhering very loosely to a schedule based on how my body clock is feeling instead of sticking to it like glue. After all, a biphasic schedule is pretty flexible, unlike an Uberman schedule.

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I wanted to write a bit about the pros and cons of polyphasic sleep, based on my experience as a whole. This list should try and help other readers make up their mind as to whether they want to try it or not, but to be totally honest I'm not sure what I prefer myself. I guess this is just another type of log.

-Pros:

1) You gain more waking hours in the day. This one is pretty obvious. Depending on what schedule you try, you can gain as little as one hour or as much as six hours per day.

2) You spend more time awake in the night and the early hours of the morning. This basically means that if you have an elaborate project you need to work on, you can do it and be rest assured that you won't be disturbed by friends or family members ect.

3) You tend to fill some of the spare time with exercise. This is because you may get sleepy initially, or bored later on, or just because you never had time to do it monophasically. Obviously this means that you end up fitter and a lot healthier.

4) The general feeling of wellbeing increases substantially. Because of the way the schedules are timed, you can be a late sleeper and an early riser and feel better for it. At first it's a very euphoric feeling, but once that stabilizes you feel twice as good than you did on monophasic.

-Cons:

1) The adjustment period feels like death. You have chronic sleepiness, intense hunger, inertia, mood swings, extremely sore eyes, lack of coordination, slurred speech, muscle aches, nausea, hallucinations ect. Most of these symptoms pass after about a week at most, but if you have no will power then you won't last two days.

2) Intense sleepiness at first, followed by periods of intense boredom. The thing is, you only have creative periods at certain times of day, meaning brain racking at night may be extremely difficult and you'll find yourself in deep contemplation not knowing what else to do. You find yourself counting down the remaining time until your nap.

3) Highly inflexible. Sleeping more than two periods in a 24 hour period can be extremely inconvenient, not to mention impractical. What if you're not feeling sleepy? You have to stick to nap times quite rigidly, if not then you end up grumpy and suicidal for the rest of the day, or until you can get your next nap. Often times you'll be disturbed, or you can't carry the naps out for social reasons.

4) Your chances of becoming majorly sick increase by double. You have to make changes in your diet and the way you manage your time. If you're sat around doing nothing for an extra five hours instead of using some of that time to exercise, there's a large chance that you'll end up severely ill.

These are probably just a few reasons of many that I have observed myself. Whether or not it's worth it is up to the individual.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Days 15-17

These last days have been good, so to speak. I've been falling asleep straight away at 2:30am, waking up at 7:00am to do some exercise and then having a 45 minute nap in the afternoon. According to my sleep graphs I've been sleeping like a brick for the most part, gaining at least 70% of deep sleep per core. But now I've hit a fork in the road.

I've now been functioning perfectly on only a maximum 5 hours sleep for two and a half weeks, but every time I look in the mirror all I see are these terrible black circles, black holes, under my eyes. It is a bit odd seeing as I would say that I actually feel more awake throughout the day on 5 hours sleep than I do on 8 to 9 hours sleep, but I can't keep on ignoring this.

The circles under my eyes are now so bad that even concealer won't cover them up and I'm worrying constantly that they'll be fixed there permanently. For reference, if I was a hermit and living on my own then I wouldn't mind so much, but now I think my mum is starting to worry. And it just looks plain ugly for everyone to see. I need to get more sleep, but the problem is I don't really want to.

I love this sleeping schedule and function amazingly on it. I really don't want to stop, especially so soon in, but the truth is these black circles under my eyes are a sure sign that I do need more sleep. I won't be going back to my old 8 to 9 hours of sleeping but I will be sleeping more. I'll still be doing the biphasic thing too, because I really enjoy that, but I'll be sleeping enough so that I could miss a nap and not suffer from it.

Grudgingly, here is my new schedule for the week, with length and nap length shown in brackets:

Mon- 2:00am to 7:30am (5.5h + .5h) = 6h
Tue- 2:00am to 7:30am (5.5h + .5h) = 6h
Wed- 2:00am to 8:15am (6.25h+.5h) = 6.75h
Thur- 2:00am to 7:30am (5.5h + .5h) = 6h
Fri- 2:00am to 8:15am (6.25h+.5h) = 6.75h
Sat- 2:00am to 9:30am (7.5h + .5h) = 8h
Sun- 2:00am to 9:00am (7h + .5h) = 7.5h

To those who aren't polyphasically sleeping it probably still seems like not nearly enough to survive on, but for me it seems like too much. Either way, it's something I have to do for the sake of my aesthetic health. My average amount of sleep over this last fortnight has been about 4.75 hours of sleep. This new schedule will raise my amount of time sleeping to about 6.75 hours. That does mean I'll be losing about 2 hours of waking time per day, which grieves me to no end, but it's still gives me about 2 hours more per day than before I started sleeping polyphasically. 6.5 hours is seen by experts to be the optimal amount of time sleeping for women, so I'm hoping a week or two of this new schedule will begin to fix those dark circles under my eyes.

I'll still update every so often, especially with experimenting with my new schedule. All I'm trying to find is my optimal amount of time asleep.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 14

Day 14:

I feel like I've been in bed all day. Seriously.

Last night I went to sleep at 2:30am and decided not to set an alarm for the morning. I wanted to see how long my body would let me sleep-in after being poly/biphasic after two weeks. It probably wasn't the most reliable of experiments though seeing as I'd drunk loads of alcohol. I woke up at 8:30am mentally trying to force my body back to sleep to make up for any sleep deprivation I may have built up over the last fortnight, but no such luck.

I woke up bright and dandy after 6 hours sleep, which is incredible compared to sleeping monophasically. To be honest though, sleeping that long after being so used to sleeping 4.5 hours after the last couple of weeks felt like an absolute eternity. It felt like I'd temporarily died or something, it felt that long. Problem was though, I got really tired about two hours after waking. I felt like absolute shit until I had my nap, which is weird considering I slept more, but then again I'd drunk alcohol the night before and the sleep I did have was actually really restless. Here's the graph:

As can be seen, my sleep was quite erratic and not very restful at all. Interesting to note that after the 4.5 hour mark everything starts to go crazy, and actually I do remember waking up after 4.5 hours naturally. Overall though I really was restless. According the statistics I only spent about the half the actual time sleeping in slow-wave-sleep, which I suppose is still a good 3 hours, but it didn't really feel that long.

Surprisingly, today I could barely keep my eyes open leading up to my nap. I started my nap at about 3:15pm and for the first time ever I actually got to sleep under about ten minutes, but then annoyingly I got disturbed by family stuff. I tried getting back to sleep for another half an hour invaded by more distractions before deciding to give up and sort out some stuff.

I returned to bed about half an hour later at about 4:00pm and decided to try again because I was still tired, despite the fact I'd already spent half an hour in bed previously, and the fact that I didn't think I'd fall to sleep again. I decided to try though and put in some earphones and listened to some brainwave entertainment to block out all external noises. Next thing I know I'm waking up at 5:00pm feeling absolutely incredible. According to my sleep graph it'd taken me about 15 minutes to fall asleep, meaning I'd slept for a grand total of about 45 minutes. It actually had felt like I'd slept for about an hour as well.

I won't be posting the nap graphs up though seeing as the first one was all quite erratic due to the distractions, and the second one barely showed any data thanks to me resting my phone too far away from my body whilst I was sleeping.

I've often heard that the optimal nap time is 20 minutes, although it can be as long as 45. For me 20 minutes doesn't cut it, I feel as if I haven't slept at all. After 45 minutes though I feel incredibly rested, if a little groggy, but the grogginess doesn't last long. After about 25 minutes of light sleep a person will fall into the first stage of deep sleep, which lasts about another 20 minutes. Waking up any longer than the combined time of 45 minutes maximum is near impossible and can leave a person feeling awful for hours on end due to it being the deepest stage of sleep. Thankfully I woke up naturally before this deep stage hit, and I've been feeling amazing for the remainder of the day, much unlike the first half of the day.

Like I said at the start though, I feel like I've been in bed sleeping or trying to sleep all day. Technically all together it was only like 7.5 hours, still less than when I was sleeping monophasically, but being in bed for that long really does feel like an eternity now. I feel like I've thrown away most of my day. Sleeping in probably wasn't worth it, although then again the results may have been different had I not have drunken any alcohol, and considering the fact it is sunday I guess it's ok to feel like that. Otherwise, I think I'll do the same experiment next sunday but sober.

Other than that, the only other thing I can report is how I woke up this morning and almost died when I looked in the mirror. The dark circles under one eye had advanced to being a full on bag. I'm pretty sure this was mostly down to the alcohol induced dehydration the night before. After half an hour of the ice treatment though it was ok. Actually the ice helped take away the bruising on both sides too, so until I completely adapt I may use that more often.

I know many people say you shouldn't start messing around with the schedule until about a month or so in until your body is completely adjusted, but a week is actually enough for most people to begin to understand their circadian rhythm and optimize their time around that. For me personally, I now believe that anywhere from 4.5 hours to 5.2 hours of core sleep followed by a 45 minute midday nap is perfect for me, maybe 6 hours when I've had an unusually stimulating day, or on weekends. If I ever had the flexibility I also believe that having 3.5 hours of core sleep followed by either a 1.5 hour midday nap or two 45 minute equidistant naps would work really well for me. For now though, I really enjoy this schedule. Who would've ever have thought that being asleep for six hours would feel like a lifetime.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 13

Day 13:

I'm really enjoying my personally biphasic adjusted version of the Everyman 2 Schedule. It's simple, not inflexible nor demanding, and I genuinely feel good on it.

Last night before my core sleep was a breeze, I basically watched Heroes most the time. Waiting till 2:30am to fall to asleep rather than till 3:30pm is a real blessing, it's no way near as hard. It took me a while to fall asleep though, probably down to the fact that for the last week and a half or so my body seems to have adapted to falling to sleep at 3:00pm.

My 4.75 hour sleep itself was good, here's the sleep graph for it:

As can be seen, last night's sleep was a lot more restful. According to the statistics, out of the 4.75 hours I was actually asleep, I spent about 4 hours of it alone in deep sleep. Unfortunately though I only spent about twenty minutes of my sleep in REM, which isn't nearly enough. The other twenty-five minutes or so left of the sleep was spent in transitional phases. Overall though I slept extremely well, the amount of deep sleep I was calculated to have have incredible.

I did some exercise immediately upon waking in the morning after my core sleep, but all that extra physical pressure left me feeling a bit sleepy during midday, so I decided to take my 45 minute nap. Here's what the sleep graph shows on my nap:

I still don't exactly understand how this awesome app works, especially with such an incredible sensitivity, but it does work. Today I was pretty much in the house on my own so I decided to forfeit the usual earphones/eyepatch that I use to energetically isolate myself from the world at such an active time of the day. I didn't think I'd fall asleep, especially with my failure yesterday and the consideration that I'm such a light sleeper. Anyway, last thing I remember was shifting into a more comfortable position, which can be seen as the two large spikes almost halfway through. Next thing I know I'm suddenly conscious and wondering how the time went so fast. I knew I'd fallen asleep but it was just so unexpected.

Also, I thought it'd be worth mentioning that with this nap I actually fell asleep before my previous nap time of 20 minutes and woke up about 20 minutes naturally before I was about to fall into deep sleep. I woke up after this.

Unfortunately I made the stupid mistake of drinking alcohol tonight, and too much of it too. I got severely intoxicated, and since it coming to pass I've felt super tired and nauseous. Right now as I'm writing this I'm having auditory hallucinations and my eyes can barely focus. That's definitely the alcohol combined with what's probably counts as a favorable amount of sleep deprivation.

Due to the tiredness from the alcohol, and the need to recover from my fortnight of accumulated amount of sleep deprivation, I've decided to truly try and sleep at least seven hours, just this one week a day a week. I am slightly concerned as to how I would go back to adjusting on monday, mind, but I'll leap that hurdle when I get there. What'll also be interesting to see is what my graph will look like.

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 12

Day 12:

Yesterday I found it incredibly easy to stay awake in the early hours of the morning before my core sleep. I think this is both down to the fact that I had mu first proper twenty minute nap earlier in the day and also the fact that despite the tiredness my body has actually got used to sleeping at 3:30am. I initially planned to go to sleep at 2:00am, but I was too energetic and it took me half an hour of conscious effort to help me become tired.

When I did eventually fall to sleep I remember it being incredibly restless, waking at least a couple of times during the night. All my core sleeps so far have been quality, yet this one wasn't. The only thing I can think of to put this down to is the fact that my body had already acclimatized to being awake until 3:30am. A couple of nights should fix the time difference though.

Here's a picture of my sleep cycles for the night:

According to the information not shown on the picture, I slept an average of 4 hours and 45 minutes. The reason for it being 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes is because I set the smart alarm to wake me up at my lightest stage of predicted sleep within half an hour either way of my designated alarm time. I woke up instantly, and so far this app has seriously impressed me.

According to the statistics, out of the 4.75 hours I was asleep, I spent about 2 hours of it in deep wave sleep and about 1.5 hours of it in REM, meaning the other 1.75 hours were spent on transitions stages. Personally I'm not completely sold on the idea of totally eliminating these supposedly less useful stages of sleep, the last thing I want is to die an early death due to thus far inconsequential data. The interesting this is though, when you look at my graph and consider the amount of REM I actually got.

According to this graph and the detailed statistics, I went through all five stages of sleep in 4.5 hours, as can be seen by the fact that apparently I slept the scientifically recommended amount of REM stage sleep in that short amount of time. Now I'm starting to see why I was finding it hard to nap during the day; for some inexplicable reason my sleep stages have actually repartitioned and compressed themselves during my core sleep. That's not normal. I've seen many sleep graphs posted on the internet of long experienced polyphasic sleepers and they still only go through about the average of two to three cycles with no more than 45 minutes of REM in that same period of 4.5 hours. Maybe I'm actually just naturally resilient to sleep deprivation or something and only now I've had the chance to find out. I'll be keeping an eye on this for sure, maybe last night was just a fluke.

As for my nap, that didn't go too great today. I got to about twenty minutes before I was, unknowingly to her, disturbed by my mum. I decided to try again twenty minutes later and managed to fall into a light dream for about five minutes before being disturbed yet again! I gave up after that, there was just too much going on and there was no way I was gonna get much more sleep done my laying down. It left me feeling irritated and grumpy though for about an hour afterwards.

Other than that, and the still horrendous black circles under my eyes, I've been feeling fine. I haven't been feeling sleepy or tired or anything. Apparently week two is supposed to be the hardest yet I seem to be breezing through it, and that's without barely any day time sleep. I have literally been living on 4.5 hours monophasic for the most part of the last two weeks, if you consider the fact I just can't nap during the day. I would be concerned about the REM rebound but that should've happened by now, and technically if my body is somehow actually squashing all five cycles together in such a short core sleep, then supposedly I wouldn't need the day time nap. I have to admit though, even if I don't sleep during the day it's nice just to switch my brain off for a while. It seems to have become more of a meditative exercise than anything, which is just as beneficial as actual sleep in its own ways.

I have 3.5 hours minimum before I can drift off to sleep for the night. My eyes are feeling somewhat dry tonight, but I think more than anything that's down to the lack of water I've had today. Over all I still feel quite alert. As for tomorrow morning, I think I've decided to skip the sleep-in for now and carry on with the schedule, I don't want to confuse my body and thereby my sleep cycle test results.

Also, I feel like this tweaked schedule is a lot better, due to it being more in sync with my body's natural inborn circadian rhythm. I've written down a list of things I've always wanted to do, but have never had the time nor the energy to do, and I've loosely arranged them around the extra waking hours in my life and the best optimal times for that specific activity. I say loosely because I've given myself a total of three hours to procrastinate through the day on the internet. So with that included, this is a brief outline of what I currently want to achieve during a period of 24 hours:

7:00am-8:00am ~ I'm going to take up martial arts for self defense, going along with a morning workout video thing. This is is to get my blood pumping and to fully wake me up to be awake and alert for the day to come.

8:00am-2:00pm/2:30pm ~ This is when I have to get ready and do some homeschooling. I have both breakfast and lunch in this time period.

2:00pm-2:30pm/2:30pm-3:00pm ~ Read a book. This is because it's the time right before my nap, and personally I don't find reading at all that much stimulating. I feel it's a good activity to wind down to sleep from.

3:30pm-4:30pm ~ Learn Russian for half an hour or so between this time period. My mind will be tired but ready to tackle new problems after my short term memory being wiped clean and given a new slate thanks to the nap.

4:30pm-7:30pm ~ Make dinner, eat, do house jobs, chat with family.

7:30pm-9:30pm - Write fiction/write music. This has always my most creative phase of any 24 hour day and I can do incredibly creative things during this time of day.

9:30-10:30~ Get sent to bed (yes I'm 18, yes I know), and use the time to write my blog, ect.

10:30pm-2:00am ~ Catch up on the tv shows I never watch. This is quite a relaxing period, and personally I can't stand doing anything too creative before sleep, it interferes with my ability to get to sleep.

The main thing I want to get out of this really is learning how to use all this extra time effectively. There's no point of me gaining all this extra time just to wile it away on double the amount of pointless procrastination. I think many people don't prepare for this hurdle of polyphasic sleeping when they start. They enjoy all the extra time, yet have no idea what to do with it because it's onslaught is so sudden, and they have no idea how to loosely schedule it around their body's own natural circadian clock. I have been a victim of this over the last couple of weeks and that's why I've finally ventured to do this scheduling my day thing.

Otherwise, I'm intrigued as to how tomorrow will go. Everything's going well so far but I'll probably return with another log anyway, albeit a much shorter one. Untill then.

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