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

Day 5

Julian, this next nap will be dedicated to you. The last one I took was on the floor about 8 feet to your left since you took the backroom sleep location and people were on the futon. You should really think about trying to nap for 30 minutes at a time!

I'm trying to pull it back together. After a poor night of sleeping pattern (slept 7.5 hours... ugh) I'm trying hard to get back on track. But this weekend doesn't look too promising. I took a 16:15-16:40 nap and woke up feeling non-hazy (very niice!!).

However, tonight I have my girlfriend's semiformal to go to... this will involve dinner, pregame, and dancing/party somewhere. Drinking does not mix well w/ polyphasic sleeping and neither do long commitments that don't fit nap schedules. So, I think I will be using some help from a Thai energy drink (M-150) to skip my evening nap tonight. I'll probably also be really bad and break schedule tonight again.

TOMORROW IS THE STATE FAIR!

I Feel kinda bad, because last week we agreed that WeeklyMeeting.DevTeam will be Saturdays at 14:00, but I had already promised my girlfriend that I would go with and her friends. And it will be great. I'll just get caught back up tomorrow night upon returning. I'm looking forward to trying fried coke, a 2006 Texas State Fair shiner. And I want to see some pigs and tractor pulls. Damn, I guess I have lived in NC for 20 years now...

Ok for the tekkies, Tee just sent me a *sweet* link to a great web development site. Maybe I'll devote some of my extra time gained with Everyman to reading this like a bible. Oh, Tee also managed to coin a new term last night:

Implusion: using a true statement to incorrectly support a false statement. An Impluder, one who impludes, is always characterized by a general sense of douchebaggery.

And that's the word of the week! So long from Shoeboxed.com!

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.

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.

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.

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!