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 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.

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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