ugh. that didn't work out at all. Went to bed around 23:30 last night and woke up at 7am. No way is that anywhere near polyphasic. I need to take a look at my diet and water intake and try to readjust to get on a schedule i can manage.
I think one of the things that burned me out last time was the shear volume of work I did and it seemed like I wasn't doing anything fun for a week or two. I don't imagine I do much more fun when I have no sleep schedule, but sleeping is a nice release to the work of every day. Just time that you don't have to think or do, just relax and be. Maybe some more yoga, some more cooking, some new guitar strings, and some playlist mixing will be on-tap for my next round. As for timing, I'm still trying to prepare myself for this. Maybe tonight? Waking up before 7am is particularly rough, and staying up til 3am isn't my cup of tea either.
Ok well, at this point, I think I have enough mindless organization work to keep me busy tomorrow morning, so I'll shoot for 6am and down about 3 bottles of water tonight to try to wake me up tomorrow morning. Oh and I'll try to read some more of the Three Musketeers. If you haven't read it, go pick up a copy (by Alexandre Dumas) or let me know and I'll give you mine when I'm done. It's a great read and it goes quickly. Before you know it, you're sucked in and see things from D'Aragnan's POV. Lots of fighting, drinking, bravery, womanizing, etc.
Ok sleep time, my head hurts. Maybe after I get some dental work tomorrow and start drinking more water I'll feel better. I've got 2-3 cuts on the inside of my mouth that aren't healing well and I think they developed due to the stress of the past couple weeks. Got to find a way to control that.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Back To It!!! Everyman 2.0
Ok so after a couple weeks of tough work and sleep schedule, along with a near-meltdown this past weekend, I think I'm ready for more polyphasic fun. My workload at this point is dictating how much I sleep. I would love to get more, and I thought long and hard about just going back to normal sleeping and cutting some stuff out of my life to make me a more sane individual.
Then I thought about how much I COULD be getting done. That sold me. I'm such a pushover sometimes. Whenever someone suggests something to me that could be really awesome, I tend to be overly optimistic and try to jump right in. Maybe that's a bit of a flaw. meh.
So most importantly, the next however many days will track my crazed second attempt at the everyman sleep cycle.
Salut to shoeboxed.com for driving me to this! We better be very successful, become millionaires, eat at fancy restaurants all the time, own yachts, make really shitty speeches that get broadcast on YouTube only to be pulled days later because your company has that much pull and you suck, etc. etc. etc. This is the life of a successful social-networking website CEO. This is the startup lifestyle. Maybe I'll get that too! um, yeah.
Loopiness is not setting in, that probably just was not that funny. boo. Ok work time! will take nap number one of tonight will be served up in about half-an-hour or so.
Cheers!
Then I thought about how much I COULD be getting done. That sold me. I'm such a pushover sometimes. Whenever someone suggests something to me that could be really awesome, I tend to be overly optimistic and try to jump right in. Maybe that's a bit of a flaw. meh.
So most importantly, the next however many days will track my crazed second attempt at the everyman sleep cycle.
Salut to shoeboxed.com for driving me to this! We better be very successful, become millionaires, eat at fancy restaurants all the time, own yachts, make really shitty speeches that get broadcast on YouTube only to be pulled days later because your company has that much pull and you suck, etc. etc. etc. This is the life of a successful social-networking website CEO. This is the startup lifestyle. Maybe I'll get that too! um, yeah.
Loopiness is not setting in, that probably just was not that funny. boo. Ok work time! will take nap number one of tonight will be served up in about half-an-hour or so.
Cheers!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Days 9-14:The past week
So I completely fell off the face of the earth this past week. I'm almost 100% certain that I am a workaholic. Quick Recap:
Tues. : 4 hours of sleep. Good sleep schedule.
Wed. : 4.5 hours of sleep leading into wednesday. took some good naps.
Thurs: 4 hours of sleep followed by an interview at 8:30am Thursday. I'm at this point completely into a sleep schedule of 3am-~7am.
Thurs. night: hard crash. I've done so much work the past 2 weeks that I think I'm burning out really hard. Napped at 11:20, but my naps have become shortened, to the point where this one was only 10 minutes long. Not enough to recharge. But I just keep waking up early or being interrupted by a phone call or something. Had ONE beer because my stress level varied inversely to my sleep levels. Needed to calm down, and instead ended up mentally breaking down. Came back to my room at midnight and spent an hour mindlessly emptying out my email inbox (it's accumulated over the past week...) Crashed around 1am to sleep and get ready for another interview.
Friday: woke up after 6 hours of sleep. Friday I felt hazy like my burnout on Thursday was still causing some residual meh-ness. Got a lot of work done, went into the shoeboxed office and worked more. Don't remember how Friday night went... ??
Saturday: woke up early (7:30am) after about 6 hours of sleep again. Felt absolutely GREAT that I got to sleep that much. I've been a bit too stressed out lately. I'm coming to the realization that I need more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night. It's fine for a couple days (with strategic naps), but overall it has some bad effects. One guy in the office pointed out that neuron ion channels replenish themselves when we are asleep and there is LITTLE TO NO electrical activity going on - ie: non-REM sleep. So maybe these have been damaged and depleted lately, making me really screwed up.
Ok well, I'm going to keep blogging now after this falling off of the map. My sleep schedule is changing more toward something that resembles normalcy. Probably 6 hours at night augmented by 2-3 naps during the day. I don't need to be pushing the early morning and late night as much as I am right now -- I just need to make my daytime hours more effective I think.
Tomorrow morning: interview at 8:30am. So I'll plan on sleeping from about 1am until 7am. Nap 1 set for ~12pm, nap 2 at ~6pm, and nap 3 at 10 or 11pm. Or something like this. I might try to do more naps closer together, but for 10-15 minutes instead of 30 minutes.
Tues. : 4 hours of sleep. Good sleep schedule.
Wed. : 4.5 hours of sleep leading into wednesday. took some good naps.
Thurs: 4 hours of sleep followed by an interview at 8:30am Thursday. I'm at this point completely into a sleep schedule of 3am-~7am.
Thurs. night: hard crash. I've done so much work the past 2 weeks that I think I'm burning out really hard. Napped at 11:20, but my naps have become shortened, to the point where this one was only 10 minutes long. Not enough to recharge. But I just keep waking up early or being interrupted by a phone call or something. Had ONE beer because my stress level varied inversely to my sleep levels. Needed to calm down, and instead ended up mentally breaking down. Came back to my room at midnight and spent an hour mindlessly emptying out my email inbox (it's accumulated over the past week...) Crashed around 1am to sleep and get ready for another interview.
Friday: woke up after 6 hours of sleep. Friday I felt hazy like my burnout on Thursday was still causing some residual meh-ness. Got a lot of work done, went into the shoeboxed office and worked more. Don't remember how Friday night went... ??
Saturday: woke up early (7:30am) after about 6 hours of sleep again. Felt absolutely GREAT that I got to sleep that much. I've been a bit too stressed out lately. I'm coming to the realization that I need more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night. It's fine for a couple days (with strategic naps), but overall it has some bad effects. One guy in the office pointed out that neuron ion channels replenish themselves when we are asleep and there is LITTLE TO NO electrical activity going on - ie: non-REM sleep. So maybe these have been damaged and depleted lately, making me really screwed up.
Ok well, I'm going to keep blogging now after this falling off of the map. My sleep schedule is changing more toward something that resembles normalcy. Probably 6 hours at night augmented by 2-3 naps during the day. I don't need to be pushing the early morning and late night as much as I am right now -- I just need to make my daytime hours more effective I think.
Tomorrow morning: interview at 8:30am. So I'll plan on sleeping from about 1am until 7am. Nap 1 set for ~12pm, nap 2 at ~6pm, and nap 3 at 10 or 11pm. Or something like this. I might try to do more naps closer together, but for 10-15 minutes instead of 30 minutes.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Night 8: CrAziNeSs & one down
Today was a bit rougher. I think it will take a couple days to get used to low core sleep. But 4 hours last night was promising. I think tonight I will shoot for 3.5. I'm set to sleep in 2 hours, at 2:00 until 5:30. I'll try to do this so that I can take a nap at 9:15 while keeping nap intervals semi-normal.
Today: nap from 9:30-10:00,nap from 14:00-14:30, nap from 20:20-20:40, nap from 22:50-23:10. Not bad, but the 4th nap was not planned. It was just needed. Might be because of how little sleep I got last night and that adjustment. Oh well. PureDoxyK said something about taking naps when you feel tired. I felt tired, and definitely needed another nap. It's looking like polyphasic straight would definitely drive you crazy for a while. As is, I think it'll take me a couple days if not a week or two to adjust and not feel like crashing here and there throughout the day.
New development in office friends' polyphasic sleeping: Justin B crashed hard this weekend. He had a major reboot of 8-10 hours after being on a straight polyphasic schedule for a week. I think he's decided it's just not worth it. This was his second time trying it out. I'll have a bigger update when I talk to him next; due to my crazy schedule of work and sleep and the fact that I'm in the shoeboxed.com office from about 19:00-00:00 on the nights I am here, it might be until the weekend before i get to talk to him. I'm looking forward to interviewing Justin!
Ok time to leave the office and go back to my dorm for work on other projects.
Today: nap from 9:30-10:00,nap from 14:00-14:30, nap from 20:20-20:40, nap from 22:50-23:10. Not bad, but the 4th nap was not planned. It was just needed. Might be because of how little sleep I got last night and that adjustment. Oh well. PureDoxyK said something about taking naps when you feel tired. I felt tired, and definitely needed another nap. It's looking like polyphasic straight would definitely drive you crazy for a while. As is, I think it'll take me a couple days if not a week or two to adjust and not feel like crashing here and there throughout the day.
New development in office friends' polyphasic sleeping: Justin B crashed hard this weekend. He had a major reboot of 8-10 hours after being on a straight polyphasic schedule for a week. I think he's decided it's just not worth it. This was his second time trying it out. I'll have a bigger update when I talk to him next; due to my crazy schedule of work and sleep and the fact that I'm in the shoeboxed.com office from about 19:00-00:00 on the nights I am here, it might be until the weekend before i get to talk to him. I'm looking forward to interviewing Justin!
Ok time to leave the office and go back to my dorm for work on other projects.
Day 8
WOW it's 47 degrees (F) outside! It's starting to get chilly in Durham in the mornings! This is the first time I've majorly noticed this for 2 reasons: 1) I don't have air-conditioning this year in the dorm I'm in, so I've been using the window-open, fan on trick to pull in cold air from the commons room across the hall. 2) I'm up at 6am on schedule!!!!
I think that sleeping up in the loft and having to climb my ass out to turn off the alarm was a perfect pro wake-up procedure. I made one other key change. Instead of making my initial alarm a blaring beeping, I turned on the radio alarm feature of my clock for the first time ever. With NPR talking about the Blackwater controversy right now, I certainly realized that something was going on and I woke up. BUT there was no voice inside my head saying, "YEEEARRRGH GHGHHGASDLASDKLA FFHDAKJFJL AKF"PAW:LS THAT NEEDS TO BE TURNED OFF NOW!" Instead I listened for a second (long enough to realize what I had just done to myself) and then figured since it did hurt my ears a bit I should turn it off. Maybe a slightly lower volume will make me get up and will allow me to listen to the BBC world news and get smart in the mornings too!
Ok, so this could be the first semi-correct Everyman day for me. Last night I had 4 hours of core sleep and I'm a bit groggy for it. Maybe I should chop down quickly to 3 hours to correspond to REM cycles? Since I'm up I think I'll do some research on it ;)
I think that sleeping up in the loft and having to climb my ass out to turn off the alarm was a perfect pro wake-up procedure. I made one other key change. Instead of making my initial alarm a blaring beeping, I turned on the radio alarm feature of my clock for the first time ever. With NPR talking about the Blackwater controversy right now, I certainly realized that something was going on and I woke up. BUT there was no voice inside my head saying, "YEEEARRRGH GHGHHGASDLASDKLA FFHDAKJFJL AKF"PAW:LS THAT NEEDS TO BE TURNED OFF NOW!" Instead I listened for a second (long enough to realize what I had just done to myself) and then figured since it did hurt my ears a bit I should turn it off. Maybe a slightly lower volume will make me get up and will allow me to listen to the BBC world news and get smart in the mornings too!
Ok, so this could be the first semi-correct Everyman day for me. Last night I had 4 hours of core sleep and I'm a bit groggy for it. Maybe I should chop down quickly to 3 hours to correspond to REM cycles? Since I'm up I think I'll do some research on it ;)
Night 7
Alright tonight I'm back on track with trying to get on a solid Everyman sleep schedule. It's been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I was being pretty optimistic to think that in the first week I'd be able to drop straight into it. The naps feel pretty comfortable now, I just need to work on consistency and discipline with core sleeping.Last nap: 10:00-10:30. The naps have this event-horizony feel to them. I tend to lay there thinking about how I am not asleep and trying to drop into sleep. The longer I lay there, the more rationalize it as being ok since I'm at least getting some relaxation time, but I start to doubt pretty seriously that I'll actually fall asleep.
Then BOOM, I wake up when my nap is supposed to be over (sometimes before the alarm) and I feel great, like I've been sleeping for a while. Very much like time stretches out infinitely long only to then snap into normalness again.
"There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties."
- Douglas AdamsThat is exactly how to approach napping. If you don't get it, try polyphasic napping. You can't worry about whether you will hit the ground or not (read: whether or not you will fall asleep), you've just got to not worry about it and do it. Idk maybe I'm rambling again.
Tonight's projected sleep plan: 2:00-6:00 core sleep. This should provide sufficient sleep time. Further, since I am back to sleeping in the loft (absolutely awesome, though I think one of the shims is loose again...) it should be easy to toss myself down to turn off the alarm then stumble to my towel and jump into the shower. Hopefully this will wake me up!
Oh, as for the picture, that's me with a deep-fried Milky Way bar. Sounds gross, but somehow it tasted really good. and sent me into a food coma for about the next 3 hours. I *heart* the NC state fair. I must be sleep deprived to use the *s like that. uh oh.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Day 7
One Week! (Am I on the wrong day?... maybe...) Nope! after checking it out, I realize that I am in fact on the correct day. It has been one long week of failing miserably with the Everyman sleep schedule.
This week I'll try to do better. By the end of week 2 I plan to have a set of factors for success boiled down. Drinking massive amounts of water will be near the top of that list.
Today I woke up at 11am, 3 hours after my 8am target time. I think that napping during the day makes me awake enough that a core sleep time will be attainable. If I'm too tired going into it, there's no will power to pull me out of bed. Got to work on this.
I'm going to lay down for a nap right now (17:15) in hopes of waking up and getting back on a good schedule. I'll probably take another nap around 22:00 and then shoot for a 2 or 3am core sleep time.
Since I've obviously slept through alarms on the futon, there's no reason to persist in staying on it and not using my nice queen-sized loft. So I think I will go ahead and make my bed (it's had no sheets on it since fall break, whoops!) and start sleeping in it again.
Shit now it's 5:20 and I haven't started my nap yet. It's time.l
This week I'll try to do better. By the end of week 2 I plan to have a set of factors for success boiled down. Drinking massive amounts of water will be near the top of that list.
Today I woke up at 11am, 3 hours after my 8am target time. I think that napping during the day makes me awake enough that a core sleep time will be attainable. If I'm too tired going into it, there's no will power to pull me out of bed. Got to work on this.
I'm going to lay down for a nap right now (17:15) in hopes of waking up and getting back on a good schedule. I'll probably take another nap around 22:00 and then shoot for a 2 or 3am core sleep time.
Since I've obviously slept through alarms on the futon, there's no reason to persist in staying on it and not using my nice queen-sized loft. So I think I will go ahead and make my bed (it's had no sheets on it since fall break, whoops!) and start sleeping in it again.
Shit now it's 5:20 and I haven't started my nap yet. It's time.l
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