This week has been interesting. I started off with the Everyman 3 schedule, but ever so gradually I've been oversleeping more and more. The problem I've been having is that for some reason I'm not having good quality naps during the day and I'm feeling really shitty. At times I haven't even been able to sleep. It's frustrating me to no end, and it's causing me to oversleep during the night. This week I've slept an average of 5.7hrs, which is pathetic. I may aswell be back on my original biphasic, I'd gain an extra half an hour on that, and it'd be twice as easy.
Today is the final straw. Last night I woke after 3hrs naturally, and then for some reason I stayed awake for about ten minutes and then decided to switch all my alarms off and go back to sleep. I think I figured I'd wake naturally after another couple of hours. Well, you could imagine my panic when I woke from a really nice dream, and saw light seeping in through my eye mask. I'd slept eight fucking hours, straight through, and I was still in the same position when I fell asleep.
I'm not impressed. Especially as I had reason to wake up early. It's not as if I'm out of things to do. Right now I half-way through watching Supernatural, True Blood, Misfits, and Queer as Folk, plus I wanted to start on Stargate Universe. On top of that I'm writing a Supernatural fanfic, and I plan it to have at least around 120,00 words. I have two months to write it before the new series comes out, meaning I have to write at least 3000 words per day. As I'm writing it on iPod that can take between three to four hours, although I've been splitting the writing itself up. But that's not the point. The point is, I got nothing done last night and it's really irritating me.
In order to make up for all the oversleeping I've been doing I've decided to pull an all-nighter, I have lots of writing to catch up on after all. Eight hours should pull me through easily, perhaps with a couple of short naps, although I sure as won't be taking them during the night for fear of not waking up again afterwards. I remember the last time I slept 6hrs accidentally. It pulled me through for twenty hours before I had to force myself to sleep. Of course though, this will create a sleep pressure to sleep more tomorrow night. I've decided to go with this. I once read an article about a guy who was on polyphasic sleep, but had to return to monophasic. However, he found that eight hours could sustain him for two days, and now he only sleeps every other night.
Using this, I've decided to fast for at least 16hrs to reset my body clock, and then start on this strange way of monophasic sleep. That way my body can be satisfied with a full night of sleep. Plus it should be easier to stay up in the night as initially I'll have lots of energy, and I won't have to worry about waking up properly from a nap and doing stupid things such as switching all my alarms off and falling back to sleep. This sleep schedule hasn't been tried very often, although those people who have tried it show varying success with it. Some people even do it naturally as they have a rare 48hr body clock. So I think it's worth a try. I want to see how it compares to regular monophasic. There would be many advantages to this over polyphasic such as:
-No need to take naps in the day if you're unable to take them
-No need to nap during the middle of a party. You'd be staying up all night and morning anyway.
-No need to stop in the middle of what you're doing to take a nap.
-No trouble with unnatural sleep inertia.
-No need to rearrange your life to fit in with everyone else. It's more natural.
-Possibly being able to have up to half a day to yourself for projects, excetera.
As can be seen, most these advantages are nap based. I want to experiment with it though, because it could really help those people who need extra time but can't afford to nap in the day. I'm going to start with about 8 to 9 hours every other night, which will give me a healthy mean of about 4.5hrs per night. I'll probably do that for about a month. I want my sleep cycles to rearrange themselves naturally first, if they will rearrange themselves as I'm not exactly going back to sleeping normally. At the moment I fall straight into REM and cycle through every 45 to 60 minutes, which I'm not sure is healthy. I think last night I had about ten cycles, which is twice the normal amount. But that's what compressing my sleep polyphasically has done to me. I don't regret it though, it seems like it would be much more efficient as I'm getting all the important sleep at the beginning instead of the end.
I think though, if that goes alright I might do one of two things. I might either gradually cut my sleep down to six hours every two days, or stay with the nine hours, but let it hold me out every three days, perhaps with a couple of short naps. I do believe though, that six hours every two days would be more practical because nine hours of sleep can't be gotten very night.
It's gonna be weird though. I've actually only ever done one all-nighter in my whole life, and I passed out after 27hrs, which I know isn't particularly impressive. I was always afraid of all-nighters. I'm not so much anymore thanks to all my experimenting with polyphasic sleep, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to hold out a lot longer this time, but I have to admit the thought of staying awake all night still gives me chills. I'm not sure why, it's just always been one of those things for me. I really hope though that I can contribute something to the polyphasic community by doing this. It's not a polyphasic schedule in and of itself, but it could certainly be a very good alternative.
Showing posts with label adaption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adaption. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Sunday, 22 July 2012
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.
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.
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