Week 4 Overview of Adjusted Sleep Schedule

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

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

Average = 6h.

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

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

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

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 26

Day 26:

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

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

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

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

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

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 22

Day 22:

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

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

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

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

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Polyphasic Sleep Schedule - Day 5

Day 5:

This morning staying awake before my core sleep was difficult. An inexplicable wave of tiredness washed over me, which is weird considering how alert I'd been previously feeling during the day. I couldn't focus on anything. It was even so bad that I started having auditory hallucinations, and to top that I was so out of it that I started trying to interact with the voices. I managed to fight it off though. Definitely one of the weirder experiences in my life.

I slept from 3:30am to 8:00am like always. For some reason though, despite how tired I was, I couldn't fall asleep for ages, so when I woke up I have the suspicion that it was middle cycle, stage 3 sleep. I basically felt like hell and almost considered giving up the experiment. I discarded the idea though soon as it formed. I won't give up so easy.

The classic post core sleep drunken feeling that I've gotten so used to lasted for about four hours today. My body stopped aching from lack of sleep a few days ago, leading me to believe that my body itself is for the most part adjusted. I just have difficulty figuring out why it seems such a challenge to move during the inebriated like state after my core sleep.

Today I felt quite sleepy. I found my eyes closing in on themselves accidentally. It wasn't the type of tiredness that hurts like it does during a zombified state, it was easy enough to stay awake. One strange thing though is that despite the sleepiness, I still retained that general feeling of wellbeing. It's a very euphoric type feeling.

Apparently sleeping more frequently yet for lesser hours throughout the day increases levels of dopamine, which is basically like the body's own version of natural cocaine and is responsible for the emotional wellbeing of a person. I've always had low dopamine levels, so the feeling of being genuinely happy and elevated is new to me. Polyphasic sleeping is currently being studied as a form of effective cure for depression. I can personally attest that it works. Oddly.

My first nap of the day was at 2:40pm. I fell unconscious for a few seconds at the most, my high level of anxiety levels due to the idea of being woken certainly didn't help. It was disappointing to say the least seeing how sleepy I'd been feeling all day, and the lack of sleep certainly didn't help raise my energy levels.

My second nap was taken just recently at 10:10pm. I was super tired by this time and was starting to worry how I would make it through till the morning. Turns out I didn't need to worry though because one minute I was thinking about the plot line to Heroes, listening to my iso-chronic tones, and the next thing I know I'm being disturbed by my alarm clock wondering when on earth the music stopped playing, and why I didn't hear it stop playing. (The music track usually finishes about a minute before my alarm is set to go off.)

I fell asleep properly for the first time during a nap! I think I must've dozed off after about fifteen minutes, meaning I reckon I got about five minutes sleep. I know really it's not that much but I feel so incredibly better now. More alert and awake than I've felt all day. Personally those five minutes or however long felt like a miracle. If I hadn't've had my alarm on I'm pretty sure I would've fallen into deep sleep and would've failed to wake up till at least seven in the morning.

I'm still suffering from eye strain from time to time as well. It's not pronounced like it was on the second day though. Also, the dark circles under my eyes are still prominent and I've had to switch to a thicker concealer. Otherwise, not much has changed.

Overall, I feel ten times better on this polyphasic sleeping schedule.

Tomorrow's saturday and I'm begging for a sleep in, saturday usually being the only day of the week I can sleep in till at least 10:00am without being disturbed. My mum won't wake me up at 8:00am this time so I've set my alarm, unfortunately. Apparently occasional sleep ins are acceptable once I'm fully adjusted, but for now I'm gonna avoid them like the plague to prevent myself from messing up the integration of my new circadian cycle. Unfortunately.

I always have been a light sleeper, but extreme sleep deprivation can override even the sound of morning alarms set to maximum volume. Let's hope not.

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