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!

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.

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 Adams

That 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.

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

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!

Day 4

Agenda: Woke up (7am -- overslept again...), worked on editing paper. Submitted this morning, went to FIP conference intro. Did homework during. Was really tired through class (10:05-11:20). Crashed for a *sweet* nap at 11:30 on the Teer couches. Note to self: one of the resources that must be made available with a campus map is editable locations of good sleeping spots. Because Teer is a great one. I may start sleeping there exclusively. Lord knows I haven't made my bed yet since fall break because I've been living on my futon. Maybe once I get into a good schedule pattern I'll start using the bed again. But not now.

Did great all day, felt like I needed another nap around 16:00 pushed it to 17:00(30m). Went to the Shoequarters and passed out on our nice little sleep chair. It's glorious. Now I'm up and coding quite happily! I think I'll plan on another nap around 22:00. Ok busy with work, so I'll deal w/ that and not make a really long post right now. busy, busy, busy!

From PureDoxyK:
"Messing with the core-times is bad, in that it will make you feel generally unrested all day. But messing with a nap is a big no-no, because it makes you feel like somebody drove a bus into your frontal lobe, parked it there and had a clambake. *gag*"

Thanks Tomas for pointing that out. I would have to agree.

Justin seems to be doing well, so does Tomas.

Tomas: "they've been going pretty well. it sucks to miss a nap, because you don't feel tired then but then you crash. it messes you up for your core sleep because you're so tired even though you don't realize it."

Well put, agreed. I think I'll be at the shoe-office until about 2am tonight! maybe a break for dinner, but I should get some major work done after being in a time-warp the last couple days.

Not Quite There, or More Excuses

I was planning on a 6am wake-up in order to get a shit-tonne done this morning. That didn't QUITE happen. But the good news is that I cut my core sleep from 5.5 to 5 hours! the 1.5 hour jump wasn't there, but this is a good indicator that consistency is a much better path to take.

Off to finish up a draft of my BME magazine article (engineers should NOT have to write like this... 2000 words coherently on a topic is more than I'm really capable of - in a week no less!) then maybe a bit of the photonics conference if there's time. Oh that thing on the left? That's a precancerous cell image as seen from the adjacent cell's perspective! Doesn't it look warm and friendly and inviting? Beware, it'll attack at any moment now...

Life is too busy all the time to be short! I really just need a weekend where I can clear my head and enjoy the everyman cycle while catching up on the things I want to do. Too bad I didn't stick with the last blog I had -- it had the very apt title of "overworked and underpaid".

Maybe I'll sneak in a nap in place of yoga this afternoon, I've got a couple absences I can burn in there.

Day 3

Last night I slept for 5.5 hours. A little bit long, but as I explained in the last post I'll be gradually shifting to a 3 hour core sleep schedule.

Up at 8am, felt very energetic. Got some work done, did some abs. Drank water. Golf at 10:20, by the end I was a bit more tired. Had a smaller lunch, basically a salad bar @ HT with bean salad, corn, and chicken. By noon I was definitely ready for my nap. Slept from 12:30-1:00 and woke up feeling rather well.

Went to the lab I work at and put in about 3 hours of solid work. Note to self: writing and editing papers SUCKS! Now I understand why I am an engineer. We don't have to deal with that crap in school. I had an optics test at 4:30, and was really apprehensive the past couple days as to how I would do with the sleep schedule maybe taking a toll on my mental abilities. But suprisingly, I didn't feel the fog that I sometimes get the day of a test when I really try to be well rested and relaxed! I don't know why, but the test went fine and by 6pm I was ready for another power nap.

Another piece of advice: do NOT eat McDonalds and drink chocolate milk right before a nap. That is a bad, bad combo. Maybe it was the fact that I just passed out on a couch in the student union next to the McDonalds and got 2 phone calls during my nap -- I woke up feeling a bit groggy and dehydrated and still had that minor headache that I usually get by the end of tests. No big deal, just a nuissance.

So now I am ready for my evening work chunk! ...just about. I've got a ton to get done, namely 3 assignments for my biomedical design course that are due tomorrow and then this article draft needs to get finished tonight so I can give people a day to edit for Friday. All this, and tomorrow marks the start of the Photonics conference on campus that I really should make an effort to walk around at. If I have time.

My hope is that with a nap right now before some solid work, I will be able to take my core nap tonight and wake up bight and early to get more done. With any luck the next 2 days will be a telltale sign whether Everyman is a beneficial change for this man.

Night 2

I took a 10-15 minute nap around 20:00. Felt GREAT.

But unfortunately it wasn't completely satisfying. I wanted another one almost immediately, but instead got up and walked around for a bit. A couple of chocolate squares later and a litre of water and I was ready for a couple more hours of work.

Now it's 23:30 and I think it's time for another little nap. Tonight I'll be shifting to a definite 3-6 core sleep schedule.

NEWS FROM POLYPHASIC FRIENDS:

Tomas (fellow developer at Shoeboxed) skipped 2 naps yesterday and overslept his core sleep by an hour. Right now I believe he's passed out.

Tee has now admitted that, like half of the development team, he's ready to try it out. With any luck, we'll have a group of overachieving college kids tossing in 20-hour work DAYS. On the downside, we'll also have to add 3 more couches in the office for napping... :P

Naptime!