Everyman Spamayl Adaption - Days 9 to 10

Day 9 was good. My nap quality went back to normal, whatever that was on day 8. Felt a little tired half an hour leading up to the nap times themselves but no biggie.

Day 10 went well as well. Last night though went a little awry. I accidentally fell asleep thinking at about 12:30am and didn't wake till 3am. I felt good upon waking but decided I should go back to bed to keep the pattern as I usually go to bed at that time now. So I put my alarm on for 5am like usual. Except when I woke I couldn't be bothered to stay awake. So I fell back to sleep at 6am and woke up at 8am. One thing I've noticed is that the more I sleep the more I feel the need to sleep, which is where all my will power disappeared to. So altogether I slept about 6.5hrs but in parts.

It felt like an eternity. I don't feel particularly bad since it wasn't anything like sleeping 8hrs, except the fact my head feels extremely sensitive, almost migraine like, but after looking at my sleep graph it's obvious that the last two hours were completely pointless. I don't like the way everything seems though. It's like the world seems different on more sleep, like it's there but it's not really. It feels like a dream. Which doesn't really make sense but I don't like it. And of course my day feels much too short.

I doubt I'll be able to nap today. And considering 3hrs of sleep can make me go 22hrs awake, I wouldn't be surprised if I stay all the way up to 3am without a lick of tiredness today. It shouldn't be too difficult to get back into it though. A sleep-in never killed anyone.

So today is a bit of a failure, but mainly out of laziness than anything else. I haven't actually slept more than six hours in over about two months. It feels so wrong.

Everyman Spamayl Adpation - Day 8

Last night I skipped my evening nap as I didn't feel tired thanks to that oversleep in the afternoon. The next nap I took after that was at 11pm, which went as normal. I was okay all night, no problems. I went to bed at 3am feeling a little hyper, as I'm still not used to going to bed so early. I got woken up by my smart alarm at 4:45am and was feeling a little tired but preocuppied myself with some more youtube fan vids until it was time for my next nap. For reference, I haven't had any hallucinations in the last 30hrs or so, which I really see as an improvement.

For some reason though this morning, I decided to take two naps back to back, which I think really ended up as three naps back to back and about half an hour after that of microsleeping due to laziness, but I'm not really sure as it was all a little blurry. I probably didn't actually sleep more than half an hour extra all together, I'm not sure. My need to stay in bed and think in the morning is my downfall. But I forgot that I'd had so many naps in the morning back to back, and so come my afternoon nap when I couldn't fall asleep even after 20 minutes I got really worried. I didn't feel tired, but I've fallen asleep to every afternoon nap for the last month now, so of course I was a little worried. But then I remembered all the back to back naps I had in the morning and it kind of astounded me. It really does work then with this SPAMAYL approach, that if I need to skip a nap later in the day, then I can take it back to back with the last nap and be fine.

Considering I may have had three back to back naps then I may not be able to sleep for my evening nap as well, but we'll see at the time. I shan't really be worried about it. If for some reason I have just instantaneously lost the ability to nap then I can just go full on SPAMAYL for a day or two and that should fix it, as I'll be so tired that I'll have to sleep during the naps. But that's a far away possibility at the moment. Otherwise, I've come to an average of four naps per day, this here is a pie chart I compiled of the times I'm roughly falling into sleeping:

I was initially worried about that large gap in the morning but two days into the schedule and it's caused me no further problems. I can go the whole morning with no tirednes, completely alert until the early afternoon when I just have to crash for 15mins. This is about 3hrs sleep altogether. I know that at the moment it's not exactly consistent (I'll make an excuse as it's the weekend), but the point is for the last four days or so I've been sleeping around 3 to 3.5hrs with no problems, except for hallucinations early on. I really love this schedule. It's the best I've been on as of yet. Also, it feels like the day almost never ends as the only credible amount of time I sleep for is the early-mid morning for a couple of hours. It's a very nice feeling. I have no plans to come off this schedule, or this amount of sleep. It agrees with me perfectly. Tomorrow I'll continue sticking to the schedule as I was before the weekend and we'll see what follows.

Everyman Spamayl Adaption - Day 7

Last night went without a hitch again using my new technique to stay awake. I had one hallucination upon waking this morning when I looked at the clock for the time, where I saw creepy red hands reaching out for me, but I shook it off, did some stretches, and carried on with my obsessive stalkish fan-girling behavior over Supernatural on youtube. I actually only had four naps yesterday which seemed to feel a lot better. I don't actually feel the need for five naps anymore.

My morning nap went alright as planned, but I had a little hiccup in my afternoon nap. I couldn't find my phone and I only had a short time period in which to nap, or so I thought, so I decided to use my iPod alarm to wake me up instead. Except it didn't wake me up. I don't know what happened, but I think having earplugs in prevented it from waking me up fully like it should have done, despite it being right next to my head. I ended up sleeping for an hour before my sister appeared and realized and woke me up. It is a little weird too because I didn't even feel tired this time when I went to take a nap. I took it just for the sake of keeping the equilibrium.

So today I think I'll just skip my evening nap as it'll be a miracle if I could sleep for it at all anyway, before carrying on as normal. It's only an oversleep of a grand total of half an hour anyway, not too much of a big deal. I realize this probably puts back my progress a little towards total adaption, which is a shame. Hopefully though I shouldn't have any trouble sliding back into my schedule. It seemed easy enough a few days ago, and it's not as if I overslept for a couple of hours or something. I remember dreaming a lot during the nap, but to be honest it felt like it was full of stage 2 sleep, not exactly productive. Not to mention that it killed most of my afternoon. I don't feel like I've had an afternoon at all today. It doesn't feel very nice. On the other hand it feels like I've just started a new day, like I've just woken up afresh in the morning. I guess that's down to sleeping so long. It feels a little odd.

Energy level wise though I don't actually feel any different compared to say if I'd only slept 15 minutes. It did feel quite pointless. I actually believe I prefer this Everyman 1.5 schedule to the standard triphasic I was praising so highly before. It's a god send, although apparently not as natural as triphasic, which is probably what I would've fallen back into without an alarm. Also, if I were to oversleep at all I'd prefer it to be in the day rather than in the night where it's harder to stay asleep for ridiculous periods of time. I don't really know how long I would've slept for though if I'd been left to sleep for how long. Thank goodness it didn't get to that.

So today has been a little disappointing but I am trying to look on the bright side. I've certainly learned from this. No earplugs if I plan to wake up to my iPod alarm. For reference I found my phone as soon as I woke up by accident...

Everyman Spamayl Adaption - Day 6

Progress!

Yesterday I found I only needed to take 5 naps. I took naps at 7am, 2pm, 7:30pm, 10pm, and 12:30am, along with my core at 3am. However I found myself extremely tired during the evening, around about 5pm, I was literally falling asleep on my feet. I could've done to have a nap there instead but I rarely can there. I know it'll get better though. After a week or so my body should improve the quality of my afternoon nap to help me ride out the whole afternoon and early evening without becoming ridiculously tired. Otherwise no blackouts or oversleeps! Well, not per se, as I'll write below, but generally the last 24hrs have been extremely good. It didn't hit me as hard as I thought it would. Usually in any adaption day 2 is always my hardest so now I know I'm out of the dark and actually have a chance at making this work. It should be plainer sailing from here on out.

I found myself taking micronaps during the early hours of the morning. I was having mild hallucinations too, although now I have experience with them I recognized it for what it was at the time and shook myself right out of it. I tried many things to keep me awake. I tried watching tv as if it's something I'm really interested in it'll wake me up, but I found that I couldn't let it stream without having a million micronaps, and I was having difficulty getting any links to actually work, probably as I was so tired. In the end I found going on youtube and fangirling over some Supernatural fan vids worked. It woke me instantly as obviously fangirling is a dangerous business. I joke, but I guess it's something to do with the onslaught of happy endorphines. It took me about 2hrs to figure out that this was the only thing that was going to keep me awake, but lo and behold 2hrs after this discovery and I was still just as awake. I hadn't experienced anymore microsleeps or hallucinations, or not even the urge to sleep. It was miraculous. I did this first thing in the morning too and I was awake instantly and stayed like that for the rest of the morning. I had no problems. It's definitely my new stay awake trick. Hehe. Me gusta.

I took my core at 3am. The night before I found that waking up after 1hr45mins felt a little premature, so I set my alarm for 2hrs instead with a half an hour gap for my smart alarm to wake me up in. I woke up just before 5am feeling like I'd woken on time. I guess I'm good to go with a 2hr core, with four or five 15 minute naps. So altogether I'm sleeping about 3hrs, which was my initial goal. I'm getting no light sleep now, perhaps 20 minutes at most, and that's a stretch. The first hour cycle of my core was all deep sleep, followed by 20 minutes of my second cycle in deep sleep before being followed up by about 40 minutes of REM sleep. 40 minutes of REM I think is sufficient for a person to live on, but I believe the reason my core is more deep sleep heavy is because although I can't be certain for sure, I think that around the first 5mins of each nap is REM sleep, which would make up for another 20 to 25 minutes. I can't be certain for sure because it's all at the beginning, I can't remember and I have no zeo, but today I decided to take a short timed 5 minute nap to help me through the large morning wake period and I awoke in the middle of a dream, which was the last in a series of separate dreams. So that's why I believe at least the first 5 minutes of my naps are REM, whilst my core is cushioning all my deep sleep.

One weird thing I found though is that I keep waking up with hiccups recently. I recently  read someone else's Uberman adaption log who said they get this too, but that it went after a few days. I can't for the life of me figure out why this is but it is annoying for sure. The only other thing I have to report is about my idea of setting an alarm every half an hour during the night and morning hours just in case I blackout or oversleep. In the night I didn't need it as I managed to prevent myself from blacking out, but it came in extremely useful in the morning. I have a tendency to want to stay in bed and think for at least half an hour, and it's usually the cause of all my oversleeps. I think I went through about 2 or 3 backup alarms spaced five minutes after each other before finally realizing I needed to get up and move. I did a few stretches before going on youtube to try out my new stay awake trick and was okay until my morning nap. I don't know why exactly but my morning nap always feels so freaking long, like I've been sleeping for another 2hrs. I woke up and again stayed in bed in order to think, out of habit. Of course if it hadn't been for my alarm set every half an hour I would've overslept, as by the time the alarm went off, 10 minutes after initially waking, I was already in stage 1 sleep. So all these alarms were definitely a good idea, and now with my new stay awake trick, tonight should be a breeze!

Everyman Spamayl Adaption - Day 5

Today went really well with my new core time. Last night I had only a nap at 11pm as along with the afternoon nap I'd slept 4.5hours the night before and so had basically reverted to an Everyman 4 schedule. I didn't see this too much as a problem though because I was expecting to feel quite tired by 3am, which I was, which coincided perfectly with my plans. I fell asleep instantly. I actually woke up 15 minutes later, which is interesting as it appears my body really is adjusting to my naps. I woke at 4:45am without any problems with falling back to sleep. It was really weird going to sleep at 3am and waking up at the time I would usually go to bed though, it felt like the mental lines I'd established between night and day had been usurped. Now I have to establish new boundaries between day and night in my head. I have to admit though it feels much more natural going to bed at 3am, it still feels like it's night. In fact after looking back at my graph it's obvious to see that the quality of sleep was twice as good than at the time I usually take it at. The whole first 50 minutes was comatized deep sleep, followed by a second 50 minute cycle of all REM sleep. Absolutely perfectly partitioned I think. I hope it stays like this.

However, that was the easy part. For some reason I can't fathom I was out of it for the first hour upon waking and I couldn't focus properly. The funny thing is that I didn't realize this until looking back later. Here's a tweet I woke right upon waking: "That hasn't woken the nap quality was life xaving. But don't lice is hp omf, white.o" If I hadn't've looked back at it I wouldn't have realized how out of it I really was. What that was meant to read as I have no idea, but at the time I remember thinking it made perfect sense. I do remember fighting for consciousness though, despite waking after REM and having virtually no sleep inertia. I went to fight it off by pacing up and down my room for about 45 minutes. I actually even fell asleep whilst pacing and almost crashed into my bed frame. It was only my autonomic system sensing my weightlessness as I swayed to the floor that woke me up. I guess that proves that you can't fall asleep standing up or walking without waking.

In the end though I decided to change tactics and decided to try watching some Misfits since I'm really quite into that now and figured something interesting enough might wake me up. Well whilst waiting for the video to load I blacked out a number of times. I was sat up on my bed though and everytime I blacked out my muscles went limp and my iPod fell out of my hands into my lap, which ended up waking me up. This happened about five times until Misfits loaded, it couldn't have taken more than a minute or two to stream. And then as by magic as soon as Misfits started playing I woke up. Just like that. It was so weird. At least I know what to try the first thing I wake up tomorrow morning. Otherwise I had my first nap at about 6:30am, which I awoke from after five minutes. I decided to reset my alarm for another ten minutes, which went fine.

I was a little tired for the first couple of hours after waking but ever since I feel like I've had twice the amount of energy than usual. I've only needed one afternoon nap at 2pm so far. Also, my nap quality is still increasing in quality. I seem to be waking from deep sleep in all of them now. That's not too much of a problem in the afternoon, but in the evening when it's the strongest it takes all my will power not to fall back to sleep. I keep thinking I'll probably pay tonight with more blackouts, but I won't be so quick to judge yet. Also, the day feels like it's going so slow. I often keep thinking it's later than it actually is. Part of me thinks "how much more longer till the end of the day?" end of the day being 3am now. Considering I've been up since 4:30am you could imagine how that would feel. So far I've actually only slept 2hrs. I'm hoping to get another half an hour in at least.

As for oversleeping I've invented a better way to preventing that or blacking out from happening. Basically, every half an hour, nap times excluded of course, I've set an alarm. The purpose of this is to A) wake me up after 30 minutes maximum if I do blackout, and B) to keep me awake as I have to get up and do some pacing or stretching for five minutes after the alarm goes off. Also I have multiple alarms set for my core time, four set five minutes apart, with an extra set 20 minutes after. They all have difficult maths questions and other brain games that have to be answered before the alarm went off. I had a practice run last night and it went very well. I'm hoping this system will work tonight and perhaps for the next few nights as I try to adjust to this schedule. So far so good though. Then again the first day is always the most misleading.

Everyman Spamayl Adaption - Days 3 to 4

The day before yesterday, day 3, went without a hitch. I ended up missing a nap in the early morning due to being distracted on msn, (always social networking ruining our lives, right?) and although I went to take it a little late at 3am I couldn't seem to get to sleep, my mind was just too active. I got really tired though, just unable to fall asleep, despite quieting my mind. It didn't seem to affect me though, no problems with oversleeping for my core.

The problem came yesterday, day 4, when I decided to do two naps back to back in the afternoon and skip my evening nap. Everything was going dandy until 3am. Up to this point I wasn't feeling anymore tired than usual, except the fact I took an extra nap back to back with my night nap to make up for any sleep I may have lost from skipping my evening one. Come 2:30am I decided to take my last nap of the day, which went fine, I woke up nice and dandy. The problem comes after. I seemed to have blacked out around about 3am when searching for some Misfits to start watching, before waking up again naturally at 4:30am. I really don't know what happened there because I didn't particularly feel tired, but I was a bit bummed that I had to take my 3hr core straight after having a blackout. This wasn't a particularly healthy behaviour, but I didn't know what else to do, I was frustrated and just wanted it to all go away. Needless to say I had no problem waking up after my core from light sleep.

What's interesting though is that when I look at my sleep graph I seemed to have gone through four 15 minute sleep cycles before finally settling into a normal 1.5hr sleep cycle. I don't remember this exactly but it does go to show how well my body is accepting my 15 minute naps. I feel like the quality is improving every time I take one. In fact now I pretty much always wake up in low frequency stage 2 sleep or deep sleep. The way I can tell the difference is that waking from stage 2 sleep is like waking up in the morning and feeling lazy, wanting to do nothing more but sink my head back into the pillow for the sake of comfort. Waking from deep sleep usually ensures disorientation. Also, waking to my alarm from deep sleep seems to take a gradual process of about 15 seconds as my senses become more attuned to the world again, rather than when being woken from stage 2 sleep when I tend to jump up startled from my vibrating alarm.

I've been pondering on why I always seem to blackout at 3am and after some research I've come across the reason why. What happens is that the body's cortisol levels are naturally lowest at 3am, cortisol being the hormone that regulates the endorphins in your body that keep you awake. This is followed by the body's naturally lowest occuring dip in tempurature at about 4am. Add the two together and of course it's going to be extremely difficult to stay awake between the hours of 3am to 5am. After that time period, the body's cortisol levels and body temperature rapidly increases, to the point that by the 5am, the tired dip that naturally occurs there is equal in frequency to that of the mid afternoon.

Considering this I've decided to move my core back to 3am, and replace the nap that would usually be there in the late morning at around 7am instead. However, my body at 3am can only seem to manage sleeping 1.5hrs at most at the moment due to the core sleep at 4:30am being too deeply imbedded into my system. I've decided to use this to my advantage and use it to convert to an Everyman 1.5 schedule instead, where I'll be taking about five to six 15 minute naps, one in the morning, one or two in the afternoon, one in the evening, and two in the night/early morning. It'll look a little like this:

 This may or may not work. I'm especially worried about the large gap in the morning, although if I adapt properly this shouldn't be a problem. I'm hoping though that when I wake, my body's naturally increasing levels of wake hormones will be sufficient to pull me through without blacking out so easily for at least the first 6 to 8 hours, although I don't doubt it will be hard. Also, as I become more sleep deprived my 3am core will probably want to lengthen to make up for my lost sleep, either that or my morning nap will try and revert back to my old core. I'll give it a maximum sleep length of 2hrs15mins though, nothing more. I expect to be very sleep deprived, maybe I'll hallucinate like on when I tried Spamayl, although my naps are better quality now so it might not hit me quite as hard. I think it's worth a try though, moving my core to a more suitable time, as this would ensure I really would be getting the best quality sleep I can get.

It'll be a little weird to sleep at 3am and wake up at 4:30am, but I'll start tonight and see what happens. I guess not updating till the end of this week failed again, I'll start updating this daily again.

Moving my Blog.

For those of you that were following my blog on livejournal I've decided to move it here for convenience reasons. I've managed to export all my older posts to this blog too so nothing's lost. I'll probably keep my LJ account open for a while longer, and perhaps I'll use it to blog other stuff, but as far as this blog's concerned here lies all my entries on polyphasic sleep. Enjoy.

Everyman Spamayl Adaption - Day 2

Last night went very well. I am so glad I'm back to staying up the whole night without any problems. In fact it feels like it's been so long without staying up all night that staying awake till 5am felt daunting for the first time in a long time. I had a nap yesterday at 2pm, 7:30pm, 11pm, and then again at 2am, before having a 3hr 15min core at 5am. The 11pm nap I left a little later than usual so I was a little overtired and it took me a good 15 minutes to fall asleep. The 2am one wasn't really needed, I just put it there so it was halfway between my night nap and my core sleep. It could have been done to be put forward to 3am though, I notice I get really tired around then. So that's what I'll do tonight. I'm not too sure how tonight will fare but I feel like it should be ok. No more sleep deprivation. I am having a problem with oversleeping for my core at the moment thanks to my body trying to catch up on lost sleep from my cold turkey spamayl attempt this weekend, but as long as I be rigid with my wake up times I should be fine. In fact if it wasn't for my sister waking up just after me this morning and chucking teddies at me on my past orders I probably would've overslept a good hour. Thankfully as it was she'd caught me just in time and I'd only overslept 5 minutes. So this is the one thing I'm dedicated to nailing before moving on to shortening my core and adding more naps. After all, if I can't wake up after my standard 3hr core, then how am I supposed to wake up after shortening it? No, better that I learn to wake up on time first. Hopefully being dedicated enough it should only take me five days at most. Then I can move on. So unless I have any more problems I probably won't update until that day arrives.

Everyman Spamayl Adaption - Day 1

I'm sad to say that last night I failed once more. I managed to prevent myself from blacking out by pacing up and down my room, but I overslept twice. The first time I overslept it was by half an hour only, which isn't too much of a problem. Although for some reason for the first half an hour from waking I was experiencing some very vivid and freaky hallucinations. Which is a first for me in my life ever, and definitely not desirable again. The main problem came about though when I went for my core sleep; I didn't wake up for another four hours. I can now see that plunging into this is not the answer. I've decided yet again to go about this in a different way, as the end goal remains the same, to be a fully adapted Spamayl sleeper, perhaps with a short core, by lengthening the adaption period.

My body obviously can't override the urge to sleep for longer than at least a couple of hours in the morning, as I've been sleeping like that for a while now. So I've decided to go about this by following a basic Everyman 3 schedule for the first week, except with floating naps as in Spamayl, instead of having fixed nap times. Usually an Everyman 3 schedule consists of a 3 hour core with three 20 minute naps, yet as stated in an earlier post, I prefer 15 minute naps, so I shall be taking four of those instead of three. This shouldn't be too much of a stretch as I was sleeping a number of different ways for naps before, yet the 3 hour core was always constant. This will give me 4 hours sleep altogether, which should be enough for me to live on, as before I started this I was sleeping an average of 4.5 hours comfortably, whilst giving my body enough time to adapt to repartitioning my 15 minute naps.

After a week or so when I feel adapted enough, the idea is to cut 45 minutes off the end of my core and replace it with another 15 minute nap in the day. And after a week or so of that, repeat, and so on and so on until I'm at my goal of sleeping between 7 and 9 naps a day, perhaps with or without a core. This way it should take me at least a month to adapt, and probably two at most. It is longer this way, but it should be the most pain free. It also gives me a tangible goal to work towards. The idea is to cut my needed amount of sleep down to a minimum of 3 hours, although I'm sure that once I'm adapted to this schedule, 2 hours won't be much of a push from time to time.

Here is a series of pie charts I compiled to show how the ideal adaption process would take place. Remember that although the naps aren't fixed they would be around about these times as they're more ideal, and because I feel tired at these times.)

First week with a 3hr core and four 15 minute naps = a grand total of 4hrs sleep:


Second week with a 2.25hr core and five 15 minute naps = a grand total of 3.5hrs sleep:


Third week with a 1.5hr core and six 15 minute naps = a grand total of 3hrs sleep:


Fourth week with a 45min core and about seven 15 minute naps = a grand total of 2.5hrs sleep:


Note that I haven't put up the full Spamayl schedule without any cores. As much as this would save me an extra half an hour per day, I don't think it would be very efficient, as I would have to nap most of them in the late morning, and I can't really be bothered to nap-wake-nap-wake constantly, nor do I see the benefits in it. I think I would prefer a core anyway to help reset my circadian clock every morning by going to bed while it's still dark and waking up when it's light. Once properly adapted this can probably be shifted throughout the seasons without much problem. So this here is my end goal, and this is the way I shall be going about it. This shouldn't pose much of a problem and should be easy enough to adapt to. I really want to adapt to Spamayl because it seems like the perfect schedule, saves hours and yet isn't rigid. I have my whole heart dedicated into somehow perfecting and adapting to this schedule.

Spamayl w/Core - Day 5

Here I list the times I've slept over the last 24hrs so far, all being 15 minutes long except the core taken at 04:45am which was closer to 50 minutes long:
20:00
22:40
23:45
00:45
01:45
02:45
03:45
04:40
06:00
07:15
09:55
12:20
13:30
16:00
As can be seen I've taken 14 naps, which equals a grand total of 4hrs. This seems to be a good start. I found it a little difficult sleeping on the hour every hour throughout the night, but it was necessary. I realize now that the point isn't to start at a larger amount of sleep solely to soften the adaption of sleeping less, but instead to pull the body through on enough light sleep for the first few days while the deep sleep and REM is repartitioning itself to fit within the 15 minute naps I gave it. Otherwise without those extra naps it would be similar to going completely without sleep for those first few days, which is near impossible, especially without oversleeping and blacking out.

It is a little annoying to have to sleep so often but it should only be necessary for the first three days at least. Then I could in theory start to omit naps. Already after following the 15 minute nap rule for the last 24hrs I can see a major increase of nap quality. I even believe I received some deep sleep in a couple of naps during the day, more so than I did last night.

Last night wasn't too difficult although my legs were aching from sitting up most the night. Last night there was no chance of blacking out, but tonight will be different. Tonight I'll stand between all my naps, without a wall to lean against. I believe this will prevent me from falling asleep standing up, lest I fall and wake up anyway. Otherwise it still felt like I'd been awake all night, the only psychological reset I've managed to have my 50min core. Time is already seeming to go a lot slower, almost dilated like, and as if there's no beginning or end, morning or night, yesterday or tomorrow. Time seems to be standing still once again.

I am dedicated to seeing this through without one blackout or sleep-in. I really want this to work. I find that 15minute naps are extremely convenient. I can't count how many times I've woken up from a nap today just about to be disturbed. Five minutes longer on the standard 20minute Spamayl schedule and I wouldn't have stood a chance. I really like this so far. I feel great. I am rooting all my luck and will power into surviving the second hardest day of adaption. The second night.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Spamayl - Day 4

Last night didn't go very well at all. I didn't feel as tired as apparently I was. I had two blackouts and failed to wake up in the morning when I forgot to take my nap. Here are the times I've slept over the last 24hrs:

20:30 - 15 minutes (Planned)
22:30 - 30 minutes (Planned)
12:00 - ~60 minutes (Blackout)
02:00 - 30 minutes (Planned)
03:00 - ~40 minutes (Blackout)
04:45 - 40 minutes (Planned)
06:00 - ~100 minutes (Forgot to reset my alarm)
14:30 - 15 minutes (Afternoon nap)

=a grand total of 5.5hrs.

I am pleased with myself over the fact that I didn't blackout for hours at a time and only needed five hours or so to recuperate. My body seems to be accustomed rather well to polyphasic sleeping now. One thing though, I had a hell of a load of dreams last night. This is probably due to the REM rebound I've often heard about, seeing as I barely had any yesterday.

I was on the trypolyphasic forum earlier discussing my schedule and someone suggested that I need to keep all the times asleep the same, rather than having two separate times. That would apparently confuse my body. So instead, I've decided to try just 15minute naps, for convenience. I've learned from my past failure. Waiting till I'm tired to sleep won't initially cut it. It'll just end in blackouts, and that's something I don't want, nor need.

The idea is to start with around 15 naps per day and then reduce down to around 10 to 12. I'm going to start then by sleeping 15 minutes on the hour every hour for ten hours during the night. Then I'll sleep an extra five or so in the day. Hopefully one or two before lunch, two or three before dinner, and two or three before nightfall.

I created these pie charts earlier to help me visualize the schedule.

Here is an example of what I'll be doing for the initial week or so in order to get my body used to sleeping in 15 minute increments without cutting too much time off my current amount of time spent sleeping, with purple being the time awake and red the time asleep:

Eventually though over the next month or so I should be able to cut it down to something more like this:

Obviously a lot of time could be saved on a schedule such as this. First though, I need to worry about any more blackouts. I've decided that to prevent anymore blackouts I'm going to do a somewhat crazy yet necessary thing. I am going to spend the whole night awake standing up, no matter what I'm doing, tv, japanese, writing, chatting, ect. That way I can't fall asleep without falling over, which isn't really possible anyway. Yes it will be painful, but it's necessary. That and a load of backup alarms. I don't trust myself to not fall asleep accidentally anymore. The only three blackouts I've had in the last two months of polyphasic sleeping and they've all been this past week. I take that as a warning.

So I realize how extreme this schedule is compared to the others I've done so far but this time I'm trading comfort for results. Apparently, if I'm disciplined enough. I should adjust within 5 to 7 days. I can do this, if even to prove the depths of my own will power to myself.

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Spamayl - Day 3

The last 24 hours have been good, although so far a little inconsistent with the periods of time spent sleeping. I found that I only needed my alarm twice and would often wake 5 to 15 minutes early. The nights that I would often be awake I found I couldn't sleep more than 15 minutes at a time, which I'm sure will change and stabilize soon enough. So here follows the times I slept in the last 24 hours or so, and for how long:
20:00 - 15mins
22:30 - 30mins
12:00 - 15mins
01:00 - 15mins
04:45 - 45mins
06:00 - 30mins
07:00 - 30mins
10:30 - 15mins
14:00 - 30mins
So altogether I've slept for 3.75hours, which is quite an improvement. I found I really enjoyed the night naps, even the premature ones. They felt so long and refreshing, and would often end with REM. I haven't particularly felt tired during the day, although when I have I've taken a nap. I can only seem to sleep for 15 minutes at a time in the day though, and often feel groggy if I try to sleep for longer. So these two things I've noticed.

First that 30 minute naps are more refreshing at night when they involve deep sleep, and that 15 minute naps are more refreshing during the day, and that if I need longer I can always take two back to back, separated by at least 30minutes. Also this is more convenient, only having to sleep 15 minutes a time during the day.

So my Spamayl plan has changed somewhat. The idea is to get between 4 to 6 thirty minute naps at night, followed by 2 to 6 fifteen minute naps during the day. I believe this will work much better. That would average to about 3.5hours of sleep per night. I'll probably sleep a little more at the beginning though, although I'm hoping to tone it down to about 2.5hrs though over the next month or two.

Otherwise I haven't felt particularly tired today. Surprisingly I haven't felt any different to the way I was sleeping before, whatever that was. I'm really rooting for this personalized schedule. Tomorrow shall be interesting.

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Spamayl - Day 2

So last night I had two thirty minute naps at 10:30pm and 12:00am. I didn't really feel tired till my core at 4:30am so I left it till then. Well that may have been a bad idea as I had my first blackout today. I assume I awoke to my alarm at 6:00am because the only thing I remember is waking at 8:00am naturally with no earplugs in or sleeping mask on. Initially before realizing any of this I thought I'd overslept but that was impossible because my alarm is set to vibrate infinitely until I wake up and turn it off. And it wasn't vibrating. Plus when I looked at my sleep graph it had apparently stopped recording at 6:00am, so I must have turned it off. Everything points to me waking up, going through the motions, and then accidentally blacking out so fast that I don't even remember anything. Very weird indeed.

After looking at my sleep graph I noticed that at the half an hour mark I had REM on my core sleep, which I guess was only confusing my body with the two different times. So I've decided to skip the core sleep and just go full on spamayl. I think this would probably be easier not to oversleep on due to it being quite short. I just have to make sure I get a couple more naps in the nights, at least for the first couple of weeks. Just in case I oversleep or have anymore blackouts or whatever, I've decided to have multiple alarms from the 4:30am nap onwards, separated by a couple of minutes each. I have no trouble sleeping for short periods of time at night, unlike most people, and tend to have a problem waking up for my morning sleeps instead.

So last night I had 4hrs of sleep altogether. Fast forward 7.5hrs. I've been feeling good all morning, and just had a 30min afternoon nap. I tend to feel more tired after my afternoon nap though and I've finally come up with a hypothesis as to why. It's probably because I get almost next to no stage 2 sleep at night anymore, meaning come afternoon, my nap is the perfect place to be enriched with stage 2 sleep. That's also probably why I get the urge to just sleep and sleep and sleep till the evening. As seen previously, I can easily stay in bed for 2hrs in the afternoon, lazing in and out of sleep. I have to realize that this is pointless on this schedule, and that if I still feel tired upon waking I can always wait 40mins before having another 30mins sleep as a back to back. I feel okay now though.

I may have a nap pre-8pm, but I'm thinking it's probably not a good idea. Although with this schedule I don't have to go to sleep at any certain time, I'd still like my first nap to be between 10 and 11pm, just as for now I'd rather keep a nap at 4:30am for convenience purposes. This may change over time though if I manage to successfully work the schedule. So here's luck for my first day tonight starting the true spamayl schedule.

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Spamayl w/Core - Day 1

Today was my first attempt at the SPAMAYL based schedule that I wrote about yesterday. Last night I slept half an hour at:
-10:30pm
-11:40pm
-1:00am
They were half an hour long because even though I gave my smart alarm a 15 minute period to wake me up in for some reason it always woke me at the 30min mark, which I'll now be changing to 25 minutes.

I have to say though that sleeping like this was really interesting. I had a second nap soon after the first because I was feeling quite groggy. I noticed that upon waking from the second nap I felt much more awake. Falling asleep was no problem. When I awoke overtime I felt like I'd slept forever. I don't really understand how sleeping less more frequently feels better than sleeping more less frequently, but it does. My third nap I took because I was bored. Now that was a blessing, not having to wait up pointlessly for my next scheduled sleep. I awoke alert from a vivid dream on that nap, which pleased me to no end. Already I'm seeing benefits.

I noticed I got really tired at about 3am though, which doesn't usually happen. I decided not to have another nap though because I wanted to be tired enough to fall asleep for my core. I ended up having a ton of micro-naps. Come 4:30am I fell asleep straight away for my nap. The entire last hour was REM, although I don't remember it because I woke a little late at 6:20am just as I was falling back into deep sleep.

Now. I ended up oversleeping. I haven't woken up before 7am in over six weeks so of course the first thing I would do is look at the clock and think, omg. Why. Even though I felt awake enough I decided to just go back to sleep and have a normal three hour core and wake at 7:30am instead. So it figures that I forgot to set my alarm and I woke naturally at 8:30am drenched in sweat. Somehow that always seems to happen, and although whenever I oversleep I never have my sleep graph running, it seems like I got straight back into deep sleep for that hour before waking.

So altogether I actually slept about 6hrs. I'm not too bothered though, I felt like that sleep in was due for a long time, and is a good way of feeling rested when about to attempt another extreme schedule. I didn't feel awful when waking either because it was all taken in parts. In future though I'll probably just have a nap an hour after waking for some more REM. All in all over the first three naps and 90minute core I recorded, I had about 2hrs of deep sleep, an hour of REM, and twenty minutes of light sleep. Of course then I accidentally slept an extra 2hrs so it was probably more than that in total.

I had a tired period a couple of hours ago and so decided to prepare by having an afternoon nap. I had about 10 to 15 minutes of light sleep. I may refrain from having an evening nap though, even if I'm tired because I've already slept so much, and sometimes it can still take me up to half an hour to fall asleep at night if I'm already so well rested.

So concludes my weird first day of a SPAMAYL type schedule.

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Back to Triphasic - Days 9 to 10

Yesterday I had my first undisturbed nap for the last few days, yet I couldn't fall into deep sleep. I would say it was frustrating but I've started taking 5htp which is an anti-depressant, and it sorta made me zoned out enough mentally to not care. It's also used for insomnia, so when I went to have my night nap I actually accidentally fell asleep early, which has never happened before. I overslept by 35minutes though to make up for not having an afternoon nap, which almost doubled my original intended time asleep. Today I haven't felt tired at all in order to take an afternoon nap. It could be down to the extra sleep at night or due to the anti-depressants, or down to both.

I'm getting fed up of this now. Trying to keep my afternoon naps consistent around my family is not just difficult but goddamn irritating. So, bare with me, I'm thinking about changing schedules again. I'm thinking about changing to an Everyman 1.5/Spamayl/Freeman hybrid schedule proposed by yours truly. This would essentially be a mixture of three different schedules. I would have a fixed 1.5hr nap at the same time every night like on the Everyman 1.5 schedule, with an indefinite amount of 20 minute floating naps, usually ranging between 3-6 like on Spamayl (Acronym for sleep polyphasically as much as you like). That means instead of having the same amount of naps at set times per day, I'll just sleep whenever I feel tired. This way I don't have to worry about missing naps or being sleep deprived, as long as I have at least 30minutes between each nap, the idea is that most of the naps can be taken at night, which is slightly more convenient too.

I know I'm not really a fan of taking only 20 minute naps, but I find they're lovely when I'm seriously tired. On top of that I propose that once to thrice a week, preferably on the weekends when there's less chance of me napping during the day, I have a full night's 6-8hrs monophasic sleep to make up for any sleep deprivation I may have, like on the Freeman schedule. (A schedule someone suggested on the trypolyphasic forum.) It may be hard for me to sleep monophasically again but I think I need to learn to go straight into it from time to time because normal sleeping is quite often inevitable. I think to aid the process I'll take some proper sleeping tablets before hand. Altogether the idea is to still average around 5hrs of sleep per night, but in a more adaptable way.

I'm not completely decided yet on whether to do it or not or how to go about it exactly but I'm sure thinking about it.

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Back to Triphasic - Days 7 to 8

These last couple of days have been a little mixed. On one hand I've been waking up before the alarm on all my sleeps, yet on the other hand due to it being the weekend, I haven't been able to have an afternoon without being consistently disturbed. In turn this is causing me to not only double my afternoon nap to compensate, which is preventing me from sleeping at night, but it's also causing me to oversleep on said night nap from anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

I was doing so well as well. I was really starting to feel good and now I'm reverted to feeling icky again. I have to admit it's made me just a little grumpy, especially seeing as the circumstances are outside my control. I really love my afternoon nap and it really is a pain when I can't get any amount of extended time to myself to sleep in the day. Besides, without my afternoon nap I just get so freakin depressed, as probably can be seen. Although it's not really my family's fault as such, I'm certainly currently no fun to be around.

It's funny because a while back I couldn't wait till I got my own place so I could sleep in during the mornings for however long. Now I can't wait to get my own place so that there's no threat of my naps being usurped during the day. I know things will probably go back to normal on monday, but a couple of days in a row and maybe a promise of another day tomorrow without a nap just makes me want to give up. On the weekends I'm either gonna have to go without them entirely or find a work around. It is disheartening. I had just got to my goal of 4.5hours during the week and now I'm back at 5.5. I just hope this doesn't prevent my body from sleeping at all when I finally do get an afternoon to myself again.

So I guess this is more of a rant than anything else, but well, what can I say. I'm sure anyone would be just as upset if they were constantly being disturbed throughout most their sleep. It literally is like being constantly woken up in the early mornings on the weekends whilst sleeping normally. We all know how that feels. It's goddamn awful.

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Back to Triphasic - Day 6

Today, in comparison to yesterday, I've had a very good day. I woke last night after 45 minutes sleep with minimal inertia. I stayed up most the night watching Supernatural. Come 4:30am I fell asleep straight away. In fact it was one of those sleeps where I fell asleep so fast that I woke again about an hour later wondering why I was still awake, not realizing I'd actually fallen to sleep. It was pretty weird. It took me about ten minutes to fall back to sleep, before I woke up again at 7:20am.

As a side note I believe that from looking at my sleep graph today I've had a lot more REM sleep than I have done for the last few days. As one of my side projects I've actually been inspired to learn about occultism, and one of the exercises involve having a dream diary. At first I wrote it off as not being able to remember anything, yet miraculously after contemplating it for five to ten minutes loads of different dream images and feelings from my core sleep came back to me. I'm hoping I can use this to hone my polyphasic dreaming. From there I'm hoping to go onto lucid dreaming, as many polyphasers do, although that's still a very long term goal at the moment.

The morning core itself was very good in quality, the first half was all deep sleep, and the second half was mainly REM and lighter sleep. I still felt quite tired for the first couple of hours on waking though, although not so much so that I was in danger of accidentally falling asleep. Come 2:30pm and I wasn't tired, yet through all my experience of polyphasic sleeping I've learned to make myself tired and ready to sleep at the switch of a thought. From the moment I think "I need to be tired now," it takes ten minutes before I become so tired that I can't stand. I went to bed at 2:45pm, yet for some reason after it taking me about ten minutes to actually fall asleep, I woke up twenty minutes later. I was incapable of actually sleeping longer. I did try but nada, zilch, no luck. I currently feel great, I'm just slightly concerned for how I may feel later on in the day. The only thing I can think of is that maybe I just really didn't need more than that. I really don't understand what happened there.

Altogether over the last 24 hours I've actually only slept 4 hours, which has to be a record for me. It feels odd, because I feel fine enough, better perhaps. It will be interesting to see how I fare tomorrow and whether my body decides to try and make up for it or whether it really just didn't need all that extra sleep. The only thing I'm concerned about is how there should only be two different sleep times throughout the day, and sleeping 20 minutes in the day makes that three different times instead. Every so often it's fine I'm sure, but all the time and it's more likely to confuse the body. We'll see how it goes anyway.

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Back to Triphasic - Day 5

Last night was very successful. I woke before the 45 minute mark of my alarm. Again I didn't actually realize I was awake until my alarm actually went off, and I put this down to the fact that coming straight out of deep sleep can be disorienting and requires to be awake for longer than 5 minutes to realize that you're actually conscious. I'm not sure if given a little more time whether I would soon fall back to sleep too soon to realize this, for the memory to be all but forgotten, or whether I would come to and properly wake. Either way, I've now woken before my alarm for the last four of all five days doing this experiment, leading me to conclude that sleeping 45 minutes at a time is just as natural for me as it is sleeping 80 minutes, perhaps even more so. Also, I had more progress last night in the form of for the first time in the last couple of weeks I didn't awake to sleep inertia. I was was able to read and to complex mental tasks straight off the bat, no problems at all. I'm hoping that my body will accept this as habit every night.

I had no problems staying up till 4:30am, and once the time of morning rolled around I had no problem falling back to sleep. I shortened my core time to a period of 3hrs, and woke at 7:30am. I'm not sure why exactly but this morning was the hardest time period of all. I would've expected that least of all seeing as my morning sleep is the longest, and I use it to prepare for the day, as the day is the longest period of time that I'm awake, however this itself maybe the problem. The only thing I can do is to gradually decrease the core and see how I feel. I woke with quite sharp sleep inertia, which I chased off with exercise, yet an hour and a half later I was literally falling asleep whilst reading. I decided that if I didn't take a short timed cat nap then I was at serious risk of falling asleep accidently anyway, but instead for a period of at least another hour and a half, and that certainly wasn't acceptable. I gave myself the shortest time period of 10 minutes, any longer and I was afraid of falling back into the deep sleep I woke up from in the morning.

10 minutes proved to be perfect enough. It was all light sleep, it was one of those sleeps where your brain is still active enough to understand the sounds that are going on around you, yet it pays no attention to them due to being in a light sleep trance. On waking I was initially doubtful that it would be enough, yet 5 minutes laster and I had perked up considerably, enough to keep me farely alert until my 2:30pm nap. I don't particurlary know why I was feeling so tired during my first wake period, but I will be keeping an eye on it. Come my 2:30pm nap though and I was exhausted. It's not really something that builds up, the tiredness just suddenly seems to descend on me 5 to 10 minutes before I'm actually due to have my next nap. I went to bed, and the last thing I remember is getting comfortable. I woke up after an hour, but it's hard to distinguish whether I actually slept for an hour. I'm not actually sure how long it took me to fall asleep. It felt like 20 minutes because there was so much going on around me and I was feeling a little anxious, yet my sleep graph says I fell asleep almost instantly. The sleep itself was mostly light sleep, starting with more deep sleep randomly interspersed in there towards the beginning, before leveling out a little.

So today, or rather, over the last 24 hours, I've succeeded in sleeping about 4.8hrs, which is markedly different to the previous two days. I know initially I said I would have my afternoon nap at 4:30pm if I could, yet I've found it a lot more conductive to have it at 2:30pm. So far I'm feeling really pleased with my progress, and hope that I can keep this up long term. One thing though, I'm not really having any REM sleep. At the moment it's pretty much all deep, which is weird seeing as REM repartitioning is supposed to come first. I'm hoping this will sort itself out after a few more nights, maybe two weeks tops. Whilst I've personally noticed that for some reason I feel much healthier mentally the less REM I get, I don't actually want to forfeit my REM. That's the one thing I miss the most about monophasic sleep. I would always get bat shit crazy dreams. I was saving the world from an apocalypse every night. It has to be said I freaking loved it, it was awesome. I've only had one type dream like that in the whole last two months since starting polyphasic though, and that I barely even remember. But of course this is only an aesthetic problem, I couldn't go back to monophasic in a lifetime. I'll find some other way to get my dreams back, maybe when I'm more adjusted by splitting my morning nap into two 20 to 30 minute naps. I don't know yet.

Back to Triphasic - Day 4

Last night I awoke just before my alarm of 45 minutes again, although I didn't actually realize I was awake and trying to get back to sleep until my alarm actually went off. So far my night nap is the only thing that's staying a constant. This morning my nap was 3.5hrs long, which is okay I suppose but then my afternoon nap which has just gone by was 1.5hrs long. I didn't mean this intentionally but I went to sleep slightly earlier at 2pm and so I couldn't sleep for 45 minutes. In future I'll just keep my nap closer to 2:30pm instead. I moved it back though because I was feeling slightly tired from not having of a nap the day before.

I've decided to move my morning alarm back a little, so I'm getting closer to between 2.5 and 3 hours sleep, that way I won't be in deep sleep when I wake, thereby preventing this sleep inertia I've been waking with. Plus, it'll be a safety net from sleeping too much. Yesterday I averaged at 5.5 hours and today I've averaged closer to 6, and again this is frustrating me further to no end. It's even worse considering how some of it is just pointless time in bed waiting to fall asleep in the afternoon. But hopefully by keeping my nap at 2:30pm that can be prevented. If not then I'm just gonna have to live on the few minutes or so that I do end up getting, hoping that the day or so after I'll be tired enough to just fall asleep.

Back to Triphasic - Day 3

Last night at 10:30pm I fell asleep almost instantly, and had about 40 minutes of sleep before waking up just before the alarm went off. No problems there. I woke up fine, but then a couple of minutes after waking some weird delayed type of sleep inertia hit me again, and I was fighting for consciousness for another two hours. It was difficult to say the least, but I got through it. What I like about having only 40 minutes of sleep though is that it feels like the morning wake period stretches on forever, which is a little daunting at first, but it's a nice feeling.

I went to sleep at 4:30am and fell asleep instantly with no problems, and woke to my alarm at 7:30am. I'm also ashamed to admit that I had my second accidental oversleep since starting polyphasic sleep. This morning instead of deciding to get straight out of bed and exercise I wanted to stay in bed and think over some things. I was feeling alert and awake, and actually I've had no problem with accidentally falling asleep in bed before if I've wanted to stay and relax and think, but next thing I know one of our dogs, let in to my room by my mum, is jumping all over me trying to wake me up. I was absolutely drenched in sweat. I was completely out of it for five minutes after waking. I have absolutely no idea what happened there.

Thankfully though I only overslept by about an hour, but I was just a little pissed at myself, especially as that's never happened before. I wouldn't've minded so much if it was the weekend, but it wasn't and I felt like I'd lost a lot of valuable time. It's a shame too because the sleep graph for my core was perfect, 1.5hrs completely of deep sleep and the other 1.5hrs of REM and light sleep. I hope this sleep in hasn't reset the cycle again. I really don't know what happened because I haven't been feeling tired at all. That's what I love about triphasic, you're always perky, you never have any tired dips. It's weird to be honest.

Either way I've decided to take precautions against this ever happening again by hitting the snooze button upon waking instead of switching it off. That way it'll go off every 5 minutes for half an hour, preventing me from accidentally oversleeping. I'll also get straight out of bed and exercise. Just for a couple of weeks at least whilst I'm adjusting. I've decided that I'm going to put my everything into this schedule and stop dabbling half heartedly because I want it as my main schedule, I love it that much.. Otherwise this schedule seems to be holding up similar to the other triphasic schedule, no daytime or nighttime tiredness. There really virtually is no difference between the two schedules energy wise. I feel really good again. I love this schedule.

As for my afternoon nap, I wasn't particularly tired due to my sleep-in, but I decided to continue as if nothing had happened. I had my nap at 2:35pm and woke at 3:25pm giving me 50 minutes of sleep, although truthfully I was probably awake for half of it. I wasn't tired enough to sleep, but the twenty minutes or so I did get did me perfectly fine for the rest of the day. Not too much of a problem really.

I have my night nap coming up in about 3hrs so I hope I can get to sleep in sufficient time, but if not no matter, 30mins of sleep did me perfectly fine last time.

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Polyphasic Sleep - Week 8!

Today marks the beginning of my 8th week sleeping polyphasically. This week has been pretty rough. Trying to omit afternoon naps was a bad idea. I haven't really much to say on this post but when I first started trying polyphasic I had no idea that I'd still be experimenting with it 2 months down the line. It is a little bit like an addiction, trying to shave off as many hours as possible and yet feel great for it. The few people that I have told are all concerned for my health, but truth be told my health has actually improved for doing this. It's not really something most people would understand without trying it themselves, yet I have to admit it does sound kinda cool saying that I only need to sleep 4.5 hours and feel perfectly fine for it. My napping has improved to the point where I don't really need to worry about whether I can sleep or not. It takes a while to psychologically get used to the idea of sleeping more than once, or even twice a day, but it becomes natural after a while.

What I like is being able to stay up most the night and the day, giving the best of both worlds. On the standard triphasic what I found pretty cool was the fact that psychologically I felt like I was having a full nights sleep yet at the same time it felt like I was always awake and not suffering for it, kinda like one of the vampires from Twilight who never have to sleep, pardon the analogy. I've heard it's the same feeling on the more extreme Uberman schedule too, although more pronounced. It's like watching the world move around you, night becomes day, day becomes night, night becomes day again. It's like the secrets of time itself become known to you. It's a very surreal feeling. Also what I like about that schedule is the fact that time itself seems to stand still, because you always seems to have an eye on it. Eight hours don't just magically disappear in unconsciousness. Altogether it feels like having an extra day or two to yourself for the week. It feels like having 5 days of work and study followed by 3 or 4 days of weekend. I love it.

I have yet to do much useful on polyphasic sleep as at the moment I'm kind of addicted to watching Supernatural. Which means yes, I have been watching it for around about 6 to 8 hours a day. No regrets. But hey, that's what all this extra time is for. If I can't catch up on all my favorite tv shows then what's the point? I have been doing a few other things from time to time though, things I would've no way been able to do whilst having a tv phase before polyphasically sleeping. I've half-heartedly taken up Russian, Japanese, and Latin. There's also all the excerise I've been doing which I never did before. And I've managed to get a bit of reading in, specifically The Republic by Plato, and Dracula by Bram Stoker. Once I've finished my Supernatural phase though I believe that I'll go back to making music and writing some fanfic.

One thing I have found, is that now my body is more adjusted to radically sleeping less, I only have to go through a couple of days of adjustment period when experimenting with other schedules, compared to the week or two it would've initally taken me had I have started from scratch. I don't know if other polyphasic sleepers have this same phenomenon, but I can switch between most schedules now very easily, even if it's a new schedule I haven't tried before. I put this down to the fact that through whatever schedule my body is now trained in learning how to get the best out of any time period of sleep. My body has learned to prefectly optomize it. Being able to nap on demand also probably has a large part to play.

I rarely wake up in the middle of sleep cycles now. Monophasically sleeping I would wake 30 times plus average in a night. I once heard it that the average person wakes 60 times in the night, yet they're unable to remember but a few. As I share a room with my sister, who sleeps about 9 to 10 hours average, I can acertain that this is most likely true. In fact many times she's woken and spoken to me, then fallen asleep again, yet come morning she can't for the life of her remember talking to me. I probably wake up an average of about 4 times per week now during sleep cycles. That's a substantial decrease from at least 210 times waking per average per week down to 4 times. That's really saying something, it's incredible even. This absolutely proves that I'm having excellent quality sleep.

I don't regret the choice to sleep polyphasically at all. I know for certain that my body has adjusted because now when I give my body the chance to sleep-in, I barely sleep past 4.5 hours at a time, and I tend to feel icky for it. The couple of times I have tried sleeping 8 hours all in one go again, I've failed. I'll spend about half of it awake, frustrated by not being able to fall back to sleep, followed by intense tiredness the next day. I absolutely recommend some kind of polyphasic sleeping, even if it's only biphasic. It's a life changer, in a good way.

Back to Triphasic - Day 2

The last 24 hours have certainly been very interesting regarding my new sleeping schedule. One thing for certain is that my energy levels have been a lot more stable. No more deep dips of tiredness, and if anything I seem to have twice as much energy as I have had since I last quit the other triphasic schedule. Yesterday, as presumed, I found it difficult to fall asleep in the night due to the fact that I'd already slept about 7 hours interspersed over the day. I decided however that I wasn't going to add an extra bucket of time onto my night nap to make up for that, and that I would go cold turkey if I had to.

I ended up getting about 30 minutes of sleep altogether for my night nap, all of it deep. It was quite short, and although I awoke to no sleep inertia, I felt myself more tired for the next couple of hours after than I did before I actually went to sleep. Considering I'd only actually had about half an hour of sleep I was dreading having to fight for consciousness all morning. I didn't need to worry though. Half an hour was plenty enough to get me through till 4:30am. In fact I didn't noticce any difference between having half an hour as compared to having 1.5 or 2 hours. I realize now that all the extra time sleeping during the night really was pointless.

Come 4:30am and I had no trouble falling to sleep. I set my alarm for 8am with a period of half an hour for the smart alarm to wake me in. I woke at about 7:45am, which I found weird waking up before 8am again. I was so much more alert upon waking. No sleep inertia, no yawning, none of those horrible symptoms I've been having for the last week. It really is better to sleep less than it is more. It's illusive really because the more you feel tired the more you think you need to sleep to feel better, when in actual fact you feel better by doing the exact opposite. It seems illogical.

Come 2:30pm and I wasn't tired, in fact I felt like I had a wealth of energy, yet I realized that if I needed to take a nap it had to be then, otherwise I wouldn't be able to get one for the rest of the day and we already knows what happens when I'm prevented from taking one. I set my alarm for 1 hour, with a twenty minute period to wake me up in. It actually took me about 20 minutes to fall asleep, but I wasn't too worried. I'm learning to enjoy my time in bed waiting to fall asleep, it actually helps aid the process. Being anxious that you'll never fall asleep never works. Anyway, I woke literally 2 minutes before my alarm, after 40 minutes sleep. I have a habit of doing that in the afternoons. My cycles are always about 40 minutes long in the afternoon. I don't actually need to set my alarm but I did in anyway just in case. An oversleep would be undesirable for the repurcussions it would create at night.

It took me about half an hour to wake up after that but no problems after that, my energy levels have seemed to have doubled yet again. Triphasic is my favorite schedule of all time. This triphasic schedule doesn't seem to differ much to the other triphasic schedule in terms of energy levels. The only thing I would say is different with this schedule is the fact I don't feel like I'm up at all hours of the clock due to my 3 hour core in the morning. After looking at more blogs I've considered the idea of gradually cutting down my core by half after a few weeks, indeed many people have success on a 3x1hr triphasic schedule. Mine would probably be closer to 2x45min+1.5hr or 2hrs. Technically speaking only 1.5 hours of sleep is needed per main stage, so as there are three main stages that's only about 4.5 hours of sleep needed, which is what I'm getting at the moment. And for those who say that stage 2 sleep is completely unnecessary, then only 3 hours of sleep is actually needed, which is what I would be doing in such a schedule. Personally, although I'm not convinced that stage 2 sleep in completely unnecessary, I wouldn't rule it out ruling it out until I'd literally tried ruling it out. So to speak. Anyhow, this is off track. I'll cross that bridge once I get to it.

One thing is that I noticed though is that the pattern of my morning core was slightly different. On the biphasic schedule my 3 hour core would be comprised of 45 minutes of deep sleep followed by 45 minutes of REM, and then repeated. With this schedule it seems that the REM seems to be stacked all in the middle hour, surrounded either side by an hour of mixed deep sleep and light sleep. This may change over the week, but I thought it was just worth noting. My night sleep was virtually all deep sleep, and my afternoon sleep was mostly light with about 15 minutes of deep interspersed separately in there. I know the later I have this nap the more deep it'll contain, but this doesn't bother me that much. The body is perfectly capable of adapting. In actual fact 2-3pm is a perfect time of getting a cross of all types of sleep. Saying that I have yet to have an early afternoon nap with more than a couple of minutes of REM.

Altogether today I've had 4.5 hours sleep and I feel so much better for it. It's incredible the difference. My body just naturally seems to love triphasic. This may be my master schedule, so to speak. Hopefully I shan't run into any problems napping like last time and can keep up with this incredible schedule.

Back to Triphasic - Day 1

So. I'm back here again. For the last week or so I've tried to wean myself off of afternoon naps for practicality reasons, after about a month and a half of taking them almost regularly. Bad idea. It really hasn't been working. My body had been trying to compensate at night and I just feel shitty all over. As far as I'm concerned I may as well be sleeping normally. Which sucks. That's why I've decided to go triphasic again, but with a twist.

Last time on triphasic I found that my morning sleeps were quite restless due to going to sleep after sunrise, and that was confusing my body. After sleeping with a 3 hour morning core for the last week or so I've come to realize how important it is to have the morning sleep before the sun rises. However if I did that on a standard 3x1.5hr triphasic schedule I would have to push everything back a couple of hours, and that's not something I can do.

Instead I've decided to keep the 3 hour core, and tone the other two 1.5hr naps down to 45 minutes. I know most people have a problem with waking up after 45 minutes as their body's will be in deep sleep, but after observing my sleep charts for such a length of time, I've noticed that this doesn't apply to me. I always tend to have a light dip, perhaps even possibly REM at the 45 to 60 minute mark. I'm not sure if this is a compressed cycle or not, or just marks half a cycle, but either way I've decided to go with it.

Today I decided to start. Last night I slept 2 hours at 10:30pm followed by 3 hours in the morning at 4:30am, which I woke up naturally from, and then a 1.5hr nap at 2pm. I had to have it at an earlier dip at 2pm rather than 4pm because for me trying to get a late nap on the weekends is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but surprisingly enough I found it didn't really differ to say if I'd had it later at 4pm..

I know this is a lot of sleep, about 6.5 hours altogether, more than I originally counted on, but I've decided to cut down gradually over the weekend just to get my body back into the habit. Also, though, for some reason I have just felt so tired. I think it's probably down to having to sleep more at night recently to compensate for not having an afternoon nap. I've just felt so rubbish this last week. I'm hoping this will be resolved once I get back into triphasic again. I'm not sure this hybrid schedule will work as well as the original, but it has to be tons better than what I've been doing recently.

Seeing as I prepared my body for triphasic by starting with the afternoon nap, I should be good to go to cut down my next nap tonight as I would've already got at least good amount of deep sleep for my afternoon nap. Therefore, I'm planning on sleeping between 45 and 60 minutes tonight, followed again by a 3hr core in the morning, and then a 1.5hr nap again early tomorrow afternoon. Then come Monday I'll plan to cut the afternoon nap in half.

This should theoretically work, but as this is more of a personalized schedule I can't really seem to find much information on others' successes. Today though I feel great for having my afternoon nap, if a little yawny because I had too much. I really hope this schedule will stick. I loved triphasic too much last time. This should get me the best of both worlds of biphasic and triphasic.

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Back to Biphasic - Day 8

Yesterday nothing spectacular happened. I had 2 hours sleep at night again and about 3.75 in the morning, making it almost 6 hours altogether in total. I got really grumpy in the evening and knew without a doubt that I was going to start napping again in the afternoon. Not much of an update but it had to be written as today I've gone back to triphasic and so that shall be my next post.

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Back to Biphasic - Days 6 to 7

These last couple of days have been a failure. My alarm keeps waking me after 2 hours at night instead of 1.5 because for some reason I have to give myself at least twenty minutes, usually thirty minutes to get to sleep, otherwise I get anxious that I won't be able to fall asleep in time. Problem is I pretty much always fall asleep under five minutes now, which means I'm sleeping too long. I'm also having this same problem in the morning, giving me closer to 4 hours instead of 3 to 3.5. So I've been averaging closer to 6 hours sleep most this week, which I'm not too pleased about. Actually day 5 I accidentally slept 2.5 hours for my night nap, which according to my sleep graph, the entire last half hour was all light sleep, which proves to show how my body has adapted.

The other thing is that I really miss my afternoon naps. I get super tired at about 5, which although I'm unable to sleep at that time, if I don't get a nap at least couple of hours before that I'll end up fighting for consciousness for most the night, which leaves me depressed and grumpy.. Even on 6 hours of sleep. It's not too nice without it. It just feels natural. I know once adapted I don't need a nap everyday but it just feels better to. For that reason I'm YET AGAIN going to change my schedule.

First thing is first. I'm going to set my alarm to wake me up at the right time in the nights and in the mornings by giving myself only ten minutes to get to sleep, which should be plenty. Second thing is I'm going to switch to a triphasic/everyman 3 hybrid schedule. I shall have about a 3 hours core in the morning, followed up with about 45 minutes in the mid to late afternoon and 45 minutes in the night, instead of 1.5 hours. This shouldn't be a problem as for some reason I always tend to wake up after 45 mins anyway, even in the night and the morning, although I don't always remember it. I feel this may complement me better, giving me my goal between 4.5 and 5 hours sleep per night. I did absolutely love sleeping three times per day, I'm just trying to make it more practical for me personally. Here are my proposed times so far:

4:30am-7:45am
4:00pm-4:45pm (latest I can push it)
10:30pm-11:15pm

This will give me a wake gap of about 8 hours in the morning and 5.5 hours between each of the other two naps. Obviously some days I won't be able to sleep in the day, which in that case I'll just sleep an extra hour in the morning, perhaps with one or two10-20 minutes anywhere else in the day I can get it. That shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

I have to admit it does feel a little ridiculous constantly changing between schedules like this but I'm really just trying to find out what works and what doesn't. It's all just a massive experiment. I'm really hoping this will be the schedule that finally works for me, although I doubt it. Any schedule with a regular day nap seems to be impractical for me, which I guess sort of goes against the whole point of polyphasic sleep. But still.

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Back to Biphasic - Days 4 to 5

Day 4:

Yesterday I was so tired in the morning that I accidentally forgot to put my alarm on. I ended up being woken by my mum at 8:45 during the middle of some deep sleep. I ended up suffering from sleep inertia for about two hours, which wasn't pleasant. It wasn't overwhelming, like it is after being disturbed in the night, but it certainly prevented me from being able to do much for the first couple of hours.

I had perked up by about 11am but come 1am I had a tired dip and was feeling pretty low so I decided to take quick nap. I fell asleep pretty instantly but woke again 10 minutes later feeling alert. That seemed to help me pass the whole day, until it got to about 9:30pm and I got super tired. I was prevented from falling to sleep till about 10:30, however, so I ended up quite irritated that last hour. All in all I slept almost 6 hours, as my first nap of the day had been 2 hours long.

Day 5:

Yesterday morning I was back to my perky midnight self after my first nap of 1.5 hours. I went to bed at 4:30am although I didn't actually fall asleep till 5am. I then slept till 8am exactly. I was feeling alright all morning, then come 4pm and I got bored and decided to rest my eyes. Next thing I know I look at the clock and 45 minutes had passed, giving me 5 hours of sleep today all in all. I should've guessed I would've fallen to sleep at that time and for that long. So I guess today technically I went back to going triphasic. On another note I do really miss my afternoon naps. I always feel so good for a few hours after waking.

I think after this messed up weekend my body's having to adjust to less sleep again, even though I feel and look better on it. After all, last week I was only sleeping about 4.5 hours per day and I felt perfectly fine. What I remember from last time though when I switched to that other biphasic schedule is that I was always tired and taking extra naps in the day. That seemed to pass after a week though until I was only having 5 hours of sleep at night and didn't really need a day nap at all. I really hope this doesn't effect my ability to sleep tonight. I shouldn't think so, but I'm hoping my body should readjust again soon in a couple of days. I need to remember: No more careless sleep-ins during the weekends! They never work and always mess everything up, as I'm finding out now.

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Polyphasic Sleep - Week 7!

Today marks the beginning of my seventh week sleeping polyphasically. The last two weeks have certainly been a rollercoaster. I've switched from biphasic 5hr + 30min to triphasic 3 x 1.5hr and back to a differing biphasic 1.5hr + 3hr. The first biphasic I enjoyed because of its ease, yet I never felt rested enough upon waking. The second biphasic suits me better, yet currently I can only get about five hours between sleeps, which isn't enough. Triphasic has been my favorite so far, but sleeping three times a day has proven impractical for me.

Each has its own unique advantages and disadvantages. Personally I am nope convinced that if I had the flexibility I would flourish on something like a 2 x 2hr biphasic schedule, with a sleep at the same times on opposite times of the day. However, this isn't something I can do, and the problem is adapting to a schedule that works around my 14 hour day gap. Half the time I can get a short nap in the mid afternoon, but it's not something I can be reliant upon.

Personally out of all three I think I prefer the biphasic schedule I'm currently on. Yet it would be so much better if I had the flexibility to go to bed earlier so that my wake gap isn't so long. So I've come up with another plan. I've decided that I'm going to keep this current biphasic schedule up for another week at least to see how I feel before cutting half an hour off my nap, as I tend to naturally wake up after anywhere from 45mins to 1hr. And that's not just my sleep monitor talking, I usually remember waking at that time. Although I have no idea how this will affect my morning sleep, as long as I get all my nap before midnight this shouldn't be a problem. They do say an hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after.

If it works I wouldn't have to worry about not being able to chat with friends because I'm sleeping too late into the morning. Usually when I wake up they're all tucking themselves into bed, unfortunately. Also, if it works, I would have succeeded in further cutting my sleep down to four hours, which would be awesome. What I'm hoping for is for more deep sleep compressed between my two major REM cycles in my morning core, so that there's not so much Stage 2 sleep in there. However, I won't get ahead of myself yet, this may not work, it's merely a vague long term goal as of now.

Otherwise, I found this free app on my Android that records how much sleep you get and then creates statistics from it. I added all my information from the last 31 days and found it really easy to keep up to speed with my changing sleeping patterns. Here are the main statistics:

-Number of records: 58
-Number of days: 31
-Total sleep time: 180.2hrs
-Average daily sleep: 5.8hrs
-Average time asleep: 3.1hrs

So over the last 31 days I've gained 83.3 hours compared to as if I'd been sleeping an average monophasic night of 8.5 hours. That's equivalent to 5.2 extra monophasic days, if you count an average monophasic day as 16 hours. It feels like having an extra day on the weekend. In fact more often than not on the weekends now I'll find myself confused as to what day it is. Because of the extra time awake it'll feel like Monday on Sunday. It's weird, but I guess my mind will get used to it in time, like everything else.

I have two graphs here from my statistical sleep app. The first is a graph of the amount I've slept over the last 30 days:

The blue line is the amount I've slept per day, the grey line running through the middle is my personal amount needed per day, namely 5 hours, and the green line is how I rated each sleep. Notice the large leaps of blue. They're sleep-ins. Now notice how the rating goes down underneath those sleeps. My sleep quality seems to have overall improved since going triphasic and then back to this other biphasic.

The second graph shows the patterns in my sleep, aka, a visual representation of my sleep times. This spans the last 10 days:

The first couple of days show my old biphasic system, the middle show my triphasic, and the end show my weird mix of new biphasic and monophasic, bearing in mind that I haven't had time to develop much of a pattern here yet.

So make what you will of all that. I shall have to end this blog here because I need to go and make dinner. Basically, this concludes my overview of the end of my sixth week of polyphasic sleep. This is definitely by far my best week as of yet. I just feel incredible over all. Onwards to week seven! (Yes it is slightly addicting! ^^)

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Back to Biphasic - Day 3

Last night I almost had a lapse in will power again. I kept on thinking that if I wanted to feel better I needed to sleep more, and almost went monophasic again. I guess this is years of conditioning at work here. The only way I got past that was to drill it into my head that more sleep creating better health is an illusion. Then I decided that I can't go wrong with one night of biphasic just to be sure. It's not exactly going to kill me. And if I felt worse the next day for half as much sleep then and only then could I make the decision to go back to sleeping monophasically.

Thank God for my spatial reasoning. It was only that that pulled me through. Every weekend I tell myself not to sleep in because I'll regret it the next day. Yet every weekend I end up repeating the same mistake over and over. It really isn't worth it. After sleeping biphasically again last night for 4.5 hours altogether, I feel so much better. I've yawned about three times today, in comparison to the thirty times I must've yawned yesterday. Nothing aches, I'm not sleepy, my mind is clear, and I've felt bright and dandy all day. I'm currently approaching hour 9 after my core sleep of 2.45 hours, the time my smart alarm woke me, and I still feel as good as the minute I woke up.

I definitely won't be doing that again. No way. Nuh uh. That's what she said...

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A Night of Monophasic

Who's the hell was this idea?! I don't even remember why I did this last night. I woke up after my nap after an hour and a half at 12:30am, and I awoke completely awake, with no sleep inertia or anything, yet I just couldn't be bothered to stay awake for a few hours and go back to sleep. I guess I had a temporary lack in will power. But that's ok because it's reminded me how shit monophasic sleep is.

I must have woken up a gazillion times during in the night. In fact my sleep graph is all over the place. I woke up at 3am bright and dandy after a mega dream, and after looking at my sleep graph all I could think was 'fuck'. The last three hours perfectly resembled the last few days of my morning sleeps. That was the good part.

I couldn't sleep for another 2 to 3 hours after that, and if i did fall to sleep I would just wake up again. Come 5am I was able to fall back into some resemblance of sleep again, but it was just this weird mixture of REM and stage 2 sleep. When I awoke I felt like hell. My head felt, and still feels super groggy, I feel dizzy, I feel sick, I can't stop yawning, bearing in mind that I wasn't yawning at all on the other sleep schedules. My body temperature has also gone through the floor. I feel like I'm on fire and it's awful. I have virtually no energy to do anything. Not to mention that after 9 hours in bed all I could think about on waking was "I just want to go back to sleep, I'm so incredibly tired." My eyes hurt, my muscles feel awfully stiff, and I'm already irritated and grumpy because I'm having to do so much in the day without anytime for myself. It feels like my day has been cut in half.

The worse is that tonight it'll probably take me about half an hour to fall asleep tonight. This was the worse idea ever. I feel like shit, completely unrested. I swear this time that whatever it takes I am going back biphasic. Like I said before I would prefer to go back to triphasic but it's pretty impractical for my schedule. So biphasic it is. Whatever it takes. For my sanity.

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