Diary of a Polyphasic Sleeper

Around the time I began experimenting with polyphasic sleep, I began keeping a log of when I was actually going to sleep.  Since days were blurring together, a record of my naps was very useful in trying to translate how my waking hours mapped onto days as the rest of the world experiences them.  The blue areas represent time I went to sleep.  The dark blue represents time I recalled dreams upon waking (and therefore know for a fact that I had achieved REM sleep).

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I believe this log was also helpful in formulating the hybrid schedule that I am attempting now.  Looking at this graphic, there were a few things I noticed right away.  I was struggling to staying awake in the wee hours of the morning, while having almost no difficulty during my traditional waking hours.  I also noticed that I remembered my dreams upon waking most often at 8am.  Sometimes I would recall dream in the earlier hours of the morning, but never during the day.

I combined this information with the subjective observation that I wasn’t accomplishing anything useful or entertaining during the early morning hours that I fought to keep my eyes open.  It was pretty intuitive, then to imagine getting a sold chunk of sleep from midnight to 4:30am (estimated 3 or maybe 4 REM cycles) and hang onto a couple of naps.  8am is an obvious choice because of the known success I’ve had hitting REM.  Noon was chosen as the second nap time largely because it is easy to slip out during lunch when I am at work.

Note that the dark blue areas are almost certainly not the only times I reached REM sleep.  Those are simple the times I remembered a dream upon waking.  Particularly in the stretches where I was asleep for several hours, I’m confident I had one or more REM cycles.  It’s likely that some of the 30 minute stretches that appear the lighter shade of blue covered areas of REM sleep that I just can’t verify.

Polyphasic Hybrid

I’ve been thinking about an idea for a hybrid somewhere between the Uberman schedule (the specific polyphasic schedule I’ve been trying) and regular monophasic sleep.  As I was easing into polyphasic sleeping, I was taking two naps during the day and then sleeping for a modest chunk of the night.  I remember that didn’t feel too bad.

I’m picturing a core sleep from midnight to 4:30am with naps at 8:00am and noon.  The 4pm and 8pm naps are the ones that I’m the most likely to stay awake through right now anyway.  And from midnight to 4:30 I seem to have a great deal of difficulty staying awake. 

I think this alternate schedule would give a little more flexibility.  If social stuff was happening, I think I could stay up past midnight and shift my sleep a little later without being blown out the next day.  It gives me a wide chunk of time to naturally be awake from 12:30pm to midnight every day, which seems ideally suited for social engagements, even when traveling out of town.  (And truthfully, I think I’d have a little more flexibility on when those naps occurred.  If 9am and 2pm were the times sleep was available, I expect that would work since I would have stored up some energy from my core sleep.)

It still gives me the advantage of “stealing” a few extra hours out of the day in the early morning when the rest of the world is snoozing.  I’d be sleeping 5.5 hours a day and should get 5-6 REM cycles.  (6 being the target of the Uberman schedule, and 5 being what I think I got on a monophasic schedule.)   The only question is if my body would be smart enough to jump to REM sleep for the short daytime naps when I was sleeping for a longer period each night.  I think it might, based on what’s been happening over the past few weeks.

Since I’d still be getting up and going to work by 5:30, I’d still be leaving for the day at 3 (which I really like).

I think I could adapt to this pretty easily, since it’s very close to what I’m doing now.  If it does work, than I would be getting some of the best elements of polyphasic and monophasic sleep.

Polyphasic Sleep: Confessions of an Oversleeper

Prior to Wednesday night, it had been three weeks since I had what I would consider a full night’s sleep.  There were many occasions where I slept longer than my prescribed 30 minutes, but Wednesday I was drawing on the sandman’s drought for 8 straight hours.  When I’ve told people this today, the first question seems to be, “Do you feel super rested?”

I can say that I didn’t feel super anything.  I didn’t feel anymore rested than I did the day before.  In some ways, I felt a little fuzzy.  I had a hard time focusing on more complex tasks.  I did skip my lunchtime nap, though.  It’s not that I don’t think I could have fallen asleep, but I came into work very late.  I didn’t want to be eating dinner here at the office.  Hopefully, this won’t magnify the mistake and screw my schedule up even more.

I didn’t actually mean to sleep 8 hours.  The alarm clock I was using requires you to flip a switch to move between “normal function” and “setting the alarm time”.  I switched to set the alarm time and played with the arrows until I landed on just the right time.  I then promptly forgot to flip the switch back to normal function and crawled into bed.

So what have I learned?  I had previously wondered about the ability to handle an occasional change up in the polyphasic schedule.  If I had a big day coming up without a lot of chances to get away, could I just get 8 hours of sleep the night before and make it through the next day without nap interruptions?  Based on today, I’d have to say the answer is a qualified no.  It might actually be possible, but I would be trading off too much of my ability to function in exchange for not needing to take any breaks.

Another interesting quirk came up.  Historically, I have required my home air conditioning to be set no higher than 71 degrees Farenheit during the summer in order to be comfortable.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten a little chilly in the morning and bumped the thermostat up to 74.  I had previously attributed it more to the changes in my diet, than the changes in my sleep patterns.  When I woke up from my 8 hour hibernation, I felt sticky with sweat.  Yesterday at work, I was noticeably less comfortable with the temperature.  Even worse today.  The pseudoscientific answer I can give is that when I’m immobile for so many hours, my body has to start producing internal heat to keep my system running smoothly.  (Note the complete and total lack of scientific basis for that emotionally satisfying conjecture.)

What’s most weird about my experience is the vague, ethereal body of polyphasic sleep knowledge mentions people who plan an occasional extended period of sleep (sometimes called “reboots”) on a weekly or monthly basis.  Maybe the key is that these reboots not be 8 hours long, but I don’t feel like my day was any improved from the extra sleep I got last night.

What Constitutes a Satisfying Polyphasic Sleep Episode?

My goal as a polyphasic sleeper is to fall asleep quickly and awaken refreshed.  There’s two parts to that goal.  Falling asleep quickly seems to revolve mostly around how tired I am and how supportive my environment is for sleep.  If I lay down on a bed in a dark, quiet room when I’m beat, I may asleep before I’ve finished adjusting the pillows.

If I’m too tired and the room is too comfortable, then I have a hard time waking back up.  This is most common in the wee hours of the morning when everything is dark and quiet.  My body does not seem to be familiar yet with the concept of stopping sleep at the end of a REM cycle if the moonlight is still shining in the window, so that’s the most likely time for me to oversleep.

I had probably my best sleep since starting the polyphasic schedule at 8am this morning.  I went out to my car (I was at work), kicked off my shoes, and put the tail end of the pillowcase over my eyes.  (The car is not the most comfortable place to sleep, but at 8am I’m usually ready enough to sleep that it doesn’t matter.)  Less than 15 minutes later, I woke up after the natural conclusion of a dream.  I felt like I had slept for hours.  I was alert and relaxed.

My body didn’t even attempt to move to the next stage of sleep.  I just woke up.  Get in, get the REM, and get out.  Maybe it’s because the car was just uncomfortable enough that I didn’t want to stay asleep.  What I think is even more likely is it was approximately the time of day that I’ve been waking up to face the day for most of my life.  It could be that oversleeping at that time of day has more unpleasant consequences (losing my job) then oversleeping at night (losing a few hours).

I’d love to identify the variables that made that experience so restful and duplicate them throughout the day.  I’m not sure Katy would let me sleep in my car all the time.  I suspect that isn’t the most important variable, though, anyway.

One notion might be to intentionally oversleep a little in the early evening.  I’m not sure if that would work, and I’m not sure I’ll try it.  The one time I’ve done that before, I was awake for the entire night without the sleepiness I normally experience at that time.  The intent would be to train my body to stop primarily associating the time from midnight to 4am with sleep.  (One of the things I learned at college is that it is definitely possible to break that association.)  I don’t really have any idea how many days I would have to keep that up before it had a lasting effect on my ability to be alert through the night.  Since the trade off would be losing a few hours of the evening (my primary time with Katy), I’m not really interested in doing it for an extended period of time.

Abrupt ending.

(Re)Set Polyphasers to Stun

It is in the wee hours of the morning as I write this, and I am wide-awake.  Why?  This past weekend we visited with my wife’s family and my adherence to a polyphasic sleep schedule was haphazard.  I truly expected this meant that I was starting from scratch with my attempts to adjust my sleeping patterns.  If that’s not the case, then why?

I think the approach that I took last week, might not be the best one for me.  I took a week off from work and attempted to make a complete switch to the new schedule.  The problem was, I had so much time on my hands that I ended up being bored.  When I'm bored, the attraction of sleep is astoundingly amplified.  I repeatedly overslept in the early morning and couldn’t make much progress.  This week I am going to work everyday.  Since so much of my time is eaten up at work, I don’t have quite so much time to spend at home running out of things to do.  In about an hour I’ll start getting ready to go to work, and I still have a healthy list of things I’d like to work on. 

I think this alternate approach is going to make it much easier to adjust to the schedule.  Viva la polyphasia.

Adventures in Polyphasia

After reading a few accounts of people switching to a polyphasic sleep schedule, I became very interested in trying it out.  I started shortening the amount of time I slept each night and added a few afternoon and evening naps when I got off work.

It reached a point where I realized I really needed to commit to the idea fully to find out if it is something with which I want to stick.  I talked to my boss about disappearing a few times during the workday to fit in some daytime naps.  Although he thinks the entire idea sounds like quackery, he’s willing to let me give it a shot.

Since the adjustment from monophasic sleep to polyphasic can be a little bumpy, I’m taking this week off from work.  I woke up Friday morning (4 days ago) at 4:30, and made the switch.  I go to sleep for 30 minutes every four hours.

The goal of polyphasic sleep is to train your body to skip most of the stages of the sleep cycle and jump straight to REM sleep (the most restful).  As near as I can tell, the only way to do this is to stop sleeping for more than 30 minutes at a time.  Your body makes the switch because it doesn’t have much of a choice.  My reading indicates the adjustment period is a week or two to reach any kind of normal state and about a month for it to start to feel “natural”.

I had my first big slip last night.  I think I fell asleep around 2:30am and didn’t wake up until 9am.  Like some polyphasic sleepers, I like the idea of having an occasional “reboot” where I sleep for however long my body decides it needs.  I just wasn’t looking to do it this soon.

I’ve already learned some important things about myself in this experiment, though.  The first things to go when I get tired are the muscles in my eyes.  Not my eyelids, but the muscles that I use to focus my eyes on something.

Wondering why I’m attempting this at all?  Here’s what I read about polyphasic sleep that first got me interested.

Meatless: Day 1

I have been a card-carrying carnivore for most of my life.  Even when I dabbled with food combining for a few months in high school, I still had a lot of meat in my diet.  So what would possess me to decide while thinking what to have for dinner last night that I wanted to be vegetarian?

I think it’s because I was reading Steve Pavlina’s blog.  Although he is a vegetarian, that’s not what motivated me… at least not directly.  For about five and a half months, Steve changed his sleeping pattern to polyphasic.  While most of us have a monophasic sleep cycle in which we have a long, unbroken sleep each night.  A polyphasic sleeper will take many shorter naps throughout the day.  It seems that most people have difficulty adapting to this type of pattern, but those that do generally report having higher energy each day and needing less sleep. 

Steve wrote a very detailed account of his first 30 days as a polyphasic sleeper in his blog and included updates over the following months.  I was completely fascinated by his account.  I decided this alternate sleep pattern is something with which I want to experiment.

A theme that popped up a few times in reading the account is a belief held by Steve and some others who left comments that adapting to polyphasic sleep is far more difficult if one is eating meat.  I won’t rehash the rationale here, but it seems plausible enough that I am willing to go along with it.

So the question became just how seriously am I interested in this serial napping.  Just four months ago I blew up my diet when I learned I was gluten intolerant.  Almost everything I had previously eaten was off limits, and I had to learn a whole new way to eat.  Am I ready to go through that process all over again?

Truthfully, I think that experience of changing my diet to remove gluten is probably what makes me know I can do this.  This type of fundamental change in one’s diet is neither easy nor convenient.  It can be done, though, and in this case I think the potential benefits are worth dealing with the obstacles.

So I became a vegetarian last night sometime between 6pm and 9pm.  We had a late dinner of potatoes and onions in a coconut sauce over rice.  The onions were surprisingly sweet; I guess they were Vidalia.  I had the leftovers for lunch today.  The experience of bringing my lunch to work (which I’ve avoided for years) was actually kind of nice.  I can’t wait to have some of millet bread for a snack when I get home.  We tried that last night, too, and it was a very pleasant surprise.  I’d resigned myself months ago to the idea that I would never again bite into a slice of bread and feel truly satisfied.  What a delight to be proven wrong!

I feel good initially.  I like the holistic reinforcement that this choice seems to align with all of my major goals: losing weight, getting off prescription medications (I take a proton pump inhibitor for acid reflux), sleeping more efficiently, progressing with yoga, having more disposable income (from taking my lunch to work if nothing else), and making Katy happy.  She’s wanted us to make this sort of change for years, but I just wasn’t ready before.

photo credit: Matt McGee

Sleep Numbers

With a little time to kill before a movie, Katy and I visited a store in our local mall that sold those high-end beds that let you digitally manipulate the firmness of your mattress.  They have a highly structured sales process in which they demonstrate the bed for you. 

The salesperson keeps the control in their hand for the first half of this presentation.  They start with the bed set to a very uncomfortable extreme (at least for most people).  They talk for a while explaining some things about the bed, and then begin decreasing the firmness of the mattress until it feels comfortable.  It's easy to imagine a dialogue going something like this.

So lay down.  Now, this is the highest setting.
Oh, this is very uncomfortable.  I definitely need a lower setting.
Sure.  You can change the firmness with this control I have in my hand.
Please, make it softer.  Or give me the control, I'd be happy to experiment.  This is so very unpleasant.
Before we change anything, though, I want to direct your attention to this screen.
Ow.
The pressure sensors that we have attached to this bed show where your body is being supported.
Please.  My lower back is starting to tingle.
Notice all of this pressure placed on your hips and shoulders.  There is almost no support being given to your back.
I don't need to see the map to tell me that.  I have pressure sensors built into my body.  They're called nerve endings.  Will you please just hand me the control?
From this we can tell that this isn't a very good setting for you.
I can't feel my legs.

That wasn't my experience, by the way.  I found that the closer the mattress was to a sheet or iron, the more comfortable I felt.  Whenever the mattress got softer, I felt like my lower back was forced to curl in on itself.  My lower back is very independent and doesn't like being forced to do anything.