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 ;)

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

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!