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.

Night 6

I snapped this gem at the NC state fair earlier today. I've seen these shirts before, but never in groups. Looks like the kid on the left has been chowin' down on a few too many Jesus Peanut Butter Cups....

I ended up caving in and laying down for a nap at 21:45. Planned on 30 minutes, but I was in my girlfriend's bed and ended up just sleeping until 2:00am. Whoops. My sleep schedule is officially fucked. I've now been up for an hour and a half since then and I'm debating how I should get back onto Everyman. I had a promising run there for a couple days. I think the drinking last night really did me in, not to mention my Thursday night reboot. I still don't feel all that well, so I think I'll probably pass out soon and then tomorrow start napping properly again.

Ok I'm tired and I hurt. I don't know why, maybe it was sleeping on the floor last night. Blah.

Night 4: Stupidman

Tee and Matt J have admitted to being a part of a polyphasic variation movement. This is new and very groundbreaking. They've coined their sleep patterns the "stupidman" sleep cycle.

The stupidman sleeper doesn't go to sleep until he is TOTALLY SATISFIED with what he's accomplished during the day. Maybe he falls asleep in the process of trying to accomplish this. Matt J says this happens pretty often. He's woken up several mornings with his laptop opened up on his bed. He gets depressed when he sees this; it's worse than normal waking up.

Tee usually wakes up 4-6 hours after falling asleep with a feeling of despair about not finishing what he's done. What do these guys think of polyphasic sleeping and the everyman cycle?

"It takes too much committment and thought, for a stupid man. It's pretty self explanatory: the stupidman sleeper says he'll begin the everyman cycle -- tomorrow." Tee and Matt J collaborated on that one. Brilliant.

Tee explains his most recent sleep cycle: "went to 4 oclock bed 9am." Obviously this is a very efficient method of retaining full mental capacities for extended periods of time.

Idiots. They'll be everyman converts soon.

As to my night schedule: nap from 22:00-22:30. Woke up a bit pissed that someone called me mid-nap and woke me briefly. But I got over it and now I'm being productive! Planning on a core sleep time of 2:30-7

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.

Night 3

I woke up feeling like I've been in a time warp. Nap from 23:20-00:00. It was much needed, although I think it was a bit long for a polyphasic nap. Once I got over about half an hour, my body was expecting at least a couple hours' hibernation. Core sleep comes at 2am tonight though, and I will be attempting to shake things up even more -- after announcing a plan to start at 5.5 hours per night and every couple days decrease that amount in half-hour increments, the uber-college schedule has forced me to modify. I'll attempt (rather desperately) to sleep 2-6 tonight with the intention of finishing edits on an article due friday before attending a conference starting at 8am. Talk about productivity. Or maybe just a bunch of talk about nothing...

I'm really trying to avoid looking like this guy in the future! But who knows, maybe one day when I'm 64 and no one still needs or feeds me, I'll doze off in a chair and someone will snap a picture like this one. I actually kinda dig the beard & eyebrow combo.

Back to work for a bit -- it seems like the couple of days right after fall break are non-stop work. Don't know why, but this design course has some ridiculous expectations and not much consistent organization. I bet we get to lab tomorrow (having prepared last-minute for our presentations) only to find no projector. Actually I now recall that we have a conference room reserved, but I don't understand how since the school has a Massive photonics conference starting up tomorrow. The guy who's famous for the cloaking device (Dave Smith) will be a celebrity at this thing, and rumour has it that Sir John Pendry will be here! Don't worry, if you don't get as excited as me, it's because you're normal. All this sleep deprivation is going to my head...

maybe I'll call it:
polysomosis - a condition resulting from abnormal sleep patterns. Most commonly characterized by red eyes, disheveled hair, and a general inability to make sense of the world.

Issues with Core Sleep

Over the past couple months, I've gotten used to a variation of 5-10 hours of sleep per night. I know this sounds like pretty extreme fluctuation. Usually it doesn't change that much from night-to-night though. I tend more to go through a week-long period where I sleep about 9-11 hours each night and then maybe a week where I sleep about 6-7 hours a night. This uncovers yet another motivation for everyman/polyphasic sleeping:
I want to be on a standard schedule where I know how much sleep I need and can count on filling the rest of the time with work.

I'm sick of needing to study the morning of a test and not being able to wake up before 11am! Anyway... The fact that my sleep schedule is fairly constant from day-to-day but varies over weeks/months suggests that little shifts by half an hour to an hour are really easy to deal with, but large shifts just don't pan out well.

Maybe this is why the past 2 nights I haven't been able to fall into a 3-hour core sleep cycle. I wake up just fine when my alarm goes off (drinking enough water before I go to sleep helps, because then I have to pee and that gives me a reason to get out of bed!). But with only 3 hours of sleep, I feel much different than I do when I get 8 hours of sleep. I'm much less conscious at first, I feel hazed, dizzy, headachey, physically jittery, etc.

As soon as I start thinking, my first thought has been: go back to bed! Second thought: Don't do it! Third thought: Ok, just set an alarm for a couple more hours or so. This will be a good compromise.

That last voice in my head has won out the past 2 nights. I've never been able to pull all-nighters effectively or get by on close to no sleep (this doesn't include party nights and recovery the next day...) in a way that allows me to work the next day. Maybe I just need to shift slowly.

The Everyman is supposed to be a great transition into the uberman polyphasic cycle; maybe a slow gradient of sleep changes will produce the best results as far as A) getting me into the cycle, B) making sure I can maintain it, C)keeping me mentally sane and not hating myself for screwing with my sleeping.

Last night's plan: 2:30-6
Actual sleep: 2:30-6 6-7 7-8
Each little increment there represents a time that I set and alarm, got up, rationalized, and crashed out on the futon again.

But I feel pretty good right now, and that was an aggregate of 5.5 hours last night. Not bad when I slept ~9 each night last week. From here, I'll trim about a half hour every 2 days for the next week or so. With luck, I'll be down to the core of 3 hours per night and solidly napping through the day!

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!

Night 1

I don't think I got into details of my sleep plan in the last post.

I'm planning on an "Everyman" sleep schedule, which will involve a 2-4 hour long sleep period at night and then 3-4 naps lasting about 20-30 minutes during my day. Kind of an elegant scheme of traditional sleep deprivation and power naps.


Log:
Day 1 - 10/8/07
- decided to do give Everyman sleeping a try. (17:00 EST)
- Afternoon Nap: 17:12-17:35
- leave office, head home feeling quite energized ~ 19:30
- feeling tired; instead of napping I have a cup of tea ~ 21:00

Day 2 - 10/9/07
- feeling sleepy -- I wish I had taken that nap about 2 hours ago... (00:31)


That's it for now. I need to find an effective way to journal and chart this experiment on a calendar. Any suggestions?