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.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.
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