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!

The Power of Nap

Tomas: "I just dreamt about somebody trashtalking polyphasic sleep." Rob: "It must have been very vivid"

(we were talking about it while he was sleeping.....)

Tomas and I just agreed that a polyphasic nap is DRASTICALLY different from a normal one. I've noticed going through most of a nap with the conscious thought in my head, "I'm just laying here, why am I not asleep yet??" only to wake up 5 minutes later and think, "DAMN, I was just passed out for a solid 30 minutes and now I feel great....".

I guess this is what happens when you drop into REM very efficiently. Craziness. I think once I've learned to let go a bit more when I nap, I'll have some great lucid dreams!

Intro to Polyphasic Sleeping

Hello World!

I'm a college senior, 21 years of age. Last week I walked into the office of the internet startup where I work as a web developer and ran into a friend & coworker who was just about to lay down for a 30-minute nap.

Last year I got hooked on Steve Pavlina's personal development website, especially the stuff that he wrote about his insane college schedule (I'll save the college productivity posts for another time). I ran across the concept of polyphasic sleeping and was captivated.

Polyphasic sleeping in a nutshell is the practice of taking many small naps around the clock and only spending an aggregate 2-6 hours of time actually asleep during the course of your 24 hour day. Some people only 6 hours a night but end up having a lot of trouble with productivity and staying alert during the time they are awake. This system of sleep supposedly lets you feel more energetic without needing the extra zzzz's...

Ok enough of a sidetrack for now -- if you want more information on polyphasic sleeping, check out Steve Pavlina's stuff or else start at Wikipedia. Another famous blogger who chronicles her encounters with polyphasic sleep patterns is PureDoxyK.

So back to my friend passed out at work for a 30-minute nap. It turns out that he was in fact starting up a new trial period of polyphasic sleeping along with his prior roommate. Last year he made it 10 days into this crazy sleep schedule before the experiment fell apart. I was very intrigued that other people knew about this and were interested in trying it, and almost agreed on the spot to do it.

Only problem is that I'm an engineer, with a schedule that is SUPER busy and would be pretty unforgiving if the whole sleep schedule went to hell and cost me a couple of days in recovery time. This is a realistic possibility. So I figured I'd watch his progress and see how things went.

Three days later, I saw a couple other coworkers (btw almost all of us are college students) napping. I didn't think much of it, since we're an internet startup where students are putting in long hours and sometimes just need to crash for pick-me-up naps. But then I heard that they were starting a polyphasic sleep schedule, too! This was too much for me. I HAD to find a way to accomodate this phenomenon into my schedule and give it a shot, before I graduate. Because we all know once college is over, you're no longer young or fired up about crazy ideas like this... ok maybe that really isn't true. But now is the time!

I've decided to adopt a version of the "Everyman" sleep cycle. For now, look it up on wikipedia or check out PureDoxyK for the details.

I really don't know how long this is going to last -- maybe a couple days, maybe a couple years. I'm going to give it a crack in a very very concerted effort to regain some time during my day. I've just got too much to do in the standard 16-18 hour day and if I can figure out a way to stay awake and alert longer, I'm willing to try almost anything...

Here's to the Everyman sleep experiment!