Howdy!

First, the new-fiction total for the last 24 hours: 3054 words on Project I (there are two). That’s normally what I’d expect in 2.5-4 hours of solid work, assuming it’s a day when the words will come at all. In theory I should have had more time than that…but last night I didn’t.

I’ve talked about polyphasic sleep before, but figured I’d post an update this morning. Basically the notion is that people can (should?) sleep in multiple sessions rather than one long block. There’s all sorts of controversy, and many theories to read about, out on the interwebs–anything from “it can’t work and you’re wrecking your body to even try” to “I slept 2-3 hours a day for six months and was happy” can be found.

Here’s my experience: I could do the 2 hours/day sleep just fine–for a while. The limiting factor wasn’t so much physical/psychological as social. To get by on so little sleep, I needed to take a 20-minute nap every four hours. Missing a nap mattered…some times more than others. Trying to recover from missed sleep on that schedule could get pretty brutal. Sleeping longer than 20 minutes, for any reason, seemed to make later 20-minute naps less effective. Also brutal, in other words. Dealing with people who were not accustomed to my napping? A bit brutal.

A lot of people do the polyphasic thing a bit differently, usually with at least one “core sleep” period–this can generally be anything from 1.5 to 4.5 hours. They supplement that with naps, which are generally around 20 minutes long, on various schedules.

Okay. Two things. First, that “20 minute” part turns out to be pretty important, at least for me. Anything longer than that, and waking up can be very difficult. Some people can apparently take 30-minute naps successfully, but in my case it just doesn’t work. I might or might not wake up to an alarm, and if I do I’ll be very sleepy. Second, I think just about every schedule out there can be junked in favor of listening to your body. Some people (most?) have jobs that are not at all friendly to polyphasic sleep, so some variety of schedule is probably important for them. But I haven’t found any sort of schedule (other than the every-four-hours extreme example) that will work for me for long.

I’ve tried variations of polyphasic sleep that involve a “core” & they also don’t work well for me. They’re kind of hit or miss. Sometimes I’ll just wake up (after 20 minutes or less) and not be at all tired. Other times I’ll crash pretty hard. For a while I was throwing in longer naps of 90 minutes, but they were more trouble than they were worth.

So…these days, I have no real sleep schedule. I have a sort of sleep strategy instead. First, I generally do my sleeping in 20-minute naps. So if I’m really tired, or if I have to be awake for a long time (like…gasp…nine hours or so)? I’ll take a 20-minute nap, wake up, and do it again. I might do it four or five times–but if I do too many, my brain starts to feel a bit jet-fueled and I get worried about it spinning out of control. Yeah, I’m kidding. Sort of. It does feel a bit uncomfortable, so I generally won’t take a huge number of naps at once.

It’s usually convenient to take a series of naps around a normal bedtime–say 11:30pm or so. By 2:30am at the latest, I’m good to go. I might take another nap just before other people wake up, or just after, or whatever. Sometimes I go only two hours between naps. Sometimes, as I mentioned above, it might be nine hours. Whatever; I can be awake and alert at any time I need to be, as long as I’m willing to go take naps as necessary. It’s astoundingly liberating.

Weird? Yes. I’m almost completely adrift from any schedule. But the thing is? I can write in the middle of the night, deal with family stuff early in the morning, operate semi-normally throughout the day, and have normal-style family time in the evening too. My writing can happen any time I can be by myself. Yes, I need to take naps, and I might need one at any time. Yes, my friends and family make fun of me for it. Why wouldn’t they? An ex-foster kid has been calling them “bitch naps” for over a year now, and I guess I don’t hate him too much for doing it. Mostly.

I go longer than I’d like between writing projects. Everything works better if I write every day…generally I can do that, once I get started on a project, but getting the next one up and running can take a long time. Months, even. Stopping for a bit and re-starting is just as hard as starting a new novel from scratch. I’m working on that…but right now I’m getting ready for an influx of foster kids. And working. And I want time to write.

In other words, I have a life. I have other interests. And interruptions screw up my writing. So late night is my (current) designated writing time. If I don’t get my writing time in during the night? It means (1) I didn’t get enough naps during the day, so I was too tired to auto-wake after 20 minutes, and (2) I then slept longer than planned. So, last night was an example. I was busy all day, then had a very draining sort of foster parent class to attend for too many hours, then really wanted to spend some time by myself reading fiction. By the time I was ready to start napping–maybe midnight?–I’d been awake for nearly twelve hours. Long, for me. So I didn’t notice my phone’s battery was low. I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect my phone-based alarm didn’t go off. The battery was completely dead by the time I could look at it, anyway. I slept for 4.5 hours, and woke up sleepy. I puttered around, said the hell with it, and went to take a nap around 5am. That fixed it, so I started writing. A bit late, but I had a good session. It’s now 10:30am, and I just woke from my second nap. I could in theory write more fiction, but I have family-type activities today…so I’m calling it done. (I also don’t want to burn myself out on the writing shtick.)

Some people flat don’t believe polyphasic sleep can work. Some think it can work for other people, but not them. Some find various schedules online, and try those. Some people do it for a while, and then go back to monophasic sleep, aka hibernation, for whatever reason.

I’ve done all sorts of things. Tried schedules. Gone back to monophasic for a month or more at a time. It’s now very easy for me to shift back and forth. I don’t know if this would work at all for other people, but here’s what I do to shift to polyphasic sleep: I start sleeping only in 20-minute naps. That’s it. That’s the only rule. After a few days, I don’t care so much and might sleep longer if I feel like it. But I generally don’t feel like it, and I suspect a pattern of doing that too often would screw me up.

The first time I tried to adapt to polyphasic sleep I was careful to be sure there were four hours between naps, and it took me several days to start experiencing REM sleep (assuming that is in fact what’s going on when I have these weird dreams that sometimes feel as if they last for hours but also sometimes take up less than ten minutes according to a clock), but I got past that initiation period. But now I don’t do sleep deprivation. At all, or at least for more than a few hours resulting from schedule/planning failures. If I take a 20-minute nap and I’m still sleepy? I just do another one. When my brain/body/ghost/whatever realizes that’s all it’s getting, it adjusts. Stuff like my longer sleep last night can still happen occasionally. It doesn’t seem to matter.

So, here’s the upshot: I got over-tired last night. Slept too long. It’s been about 10 3/4 hours since I went to sleep. In that time, I’ve produced over 3000 words of fiction. And this blog post. And sat around talking with family. And cooked breakfast for everybody. And you know what? I’m wide awake.

So. Now you know I’m crazy. If you had any doubt. Because, after all, it can’t be this easy. Right? I mean, not in real life. If you decide to give it a try anyway, here’s the key point: that “20 minutes” is the total time for your nap. You start an alarm, and you wake up when it goes off. If it takes you 15 minutes to go to sleep? Oh well. Doesn’t matter. If you think you were awake the whole time? Well, you can try another nap…or not. Turns out sometimes lying there for 20 minutes is all you (I?) need. Plus there’s this weird thing that I had trouble believing and still don’t understand: occasionally I’ll take a 20-minute nap, lie there with my eyes closed, and get up convinced I didn’t sleep at all. I’ll be able to repeat conversations that went on around me. But according to witnesses I was snoring. Implausible? Yep. What’s my explanation? Don’t have one. But two of my friends who’ve done the polyphasic thing report the same experience. I think the boundary between being asleep and being awake, like damn near everything else, is more complicated than we know.

All right then. Don’t believe everything you read, and have fun out there! {8′>

Howdy!

Say hi to Danny on the right, if you’d like. He’s visiting for a few weeks. Very cool! Earlier Sunni came to see us, which was also very cool.

I haven’t posted much here for a while. The kids are part of the reason. You’d think the polyphasic sleep thing would give me lots of free time, wouldn’t you? And you’d be right. But:

• Also we spent a few weeks at our cabin near Wasilla
• And I’m working to learn more about ebook formatting, because the times they are a-changing
• And I’ve removed most of my stories from non-Amazon locations, because of their Kindle Unlimited offer
• And, you know what? There’s stuff going on. Hell, I even bought a violin.

IOW, this post is sort of a non-post, here primarily to assure you that all’s well. I’m still sleeping polyphasically, still suspicious of the common wisdom among practitioners thereof, still writing, still planning 30 days in Vegas and a book themabout (hey, it’s my blog), still just bopping around up here in Alaska.

There’s enough above to spark a bunch of blog posts. I might even do one on how I’m using Evernote and Dropbox to keep things organized, and possibly write a bit about how we’re hoping to remove lots of physical clutter from our current abode (while bringing huge amounts of crap, most of it traveling thousands of miles in the process, to that same abode), and…you know what?

I have stuff to do. I hope you do too, and would love to hear about it. But I gotta get back to work for now.

Have fun out there!

Wow, I feel good!

I know: I promised–well, sort of promised–no more polyphasic updates until I was done with the first month. But come on, people! I’ve had an epiphany. I have a new goal. I’m totally going to have a blast. And you think I can shut up about it all? No way!

First, the epiphany.

Actually you might do better to skip this part and move on to the “new goal” section if polyphasic sleep per se doesn’t interest you. You have been warned.

I think polyphasic sleep is a fairly natural process. Or procedure. Something. Anyway, I strongly suspect many people make it harder than it needs to be. Chiefly, I blame a slavish adherence to schedules for many of the difficulties our sleepytime explorers encounter.

Here are a few principles I’ve either come across, or deduced, or simply declared. These principles are very likely to help those who design schedules for polyphasic sleep. But I think there is at least one better use for them! More on that in a bit. First, the principles:

1. Circadian rhythms are real, and not to be trifled with unnecessarily or without a well-defined purpose.
2. Ultradian rhythms (recurrent periods or cycles within a single day) also exist and serve a purpose.
3. Nonetheless? It’s clear from the fact that I’m not dead–nor detectably more insane than usual–that these things can be modified somewhat.Chiefly, it appears well-established that with sufficient (un?)training the human body can derive a great deal of useful rest from a 20-minute nap–which can be fully sufficient for survival and happiness even if no other type of sleep is allowed to occur. This conflicts with pretty much everything you’ll read about sleep in humans. However, I am demonstrating it on a daily basis–and I’m not the only one doing so.
4. Although some polyphasic sleep schedules, such as the Uberman, are set up to assume equal intervals between naps and equal nap lengths, there is no immediately obvious reason why this would in the long term be ideal for me or anyone else. (It is, however, an excellent way to train the body to usefully take 20-minute naps!)
5. Shit happens. Interruptions to schedules are virtually guaranteed. It’s necessary to know enough about the theory and one’s own body’s reactions to compensate usefully, or–it appears to me–failure is inevitable.
6. Schedules are often planned in terms of the effects of circadian rhythms and also specific ultradian rhythms called BRACs (“basic rest and activity cycles”). These can apparently be anywhere between 90 and 120 minutes in length. Their precise duration supposedly responds well to training. For the classic Uberman schedule, BRACs are trained to repeat every 120 minutes, and thus naps can be taken every four hours–with the possibility of an “extranap” at the intervening two-hour marks.
7. Some schedules call for one or more “core” sleep periods, with lengths ranging from 1.5 hours to 6.5 hours. These are often most usefully performed at times of day that are consistent with an individual’s circadian rhythm.

Well, guess what? I came up with my own schedule, to which I intend to shift after my first month of Uberman is complete (IOW, in about a week). But…although I love many things about polyphasic sleeping? I do not like the rigidity of schedule that many seem to believe is required. Plus, the notion of scheduling things to occur near “dusk” is pretty damned laughable to those of us living in, for instance, Alaska. Plus, I’ve never really been strongly tied to a circadian rhythm, sleep-wise. Like many people’s, mine appears to naturally be a bit longer than 24 hours. And a regular sleep schedule is just not something that’ll ever make me happy.

So instead, I’m introducing a “new” scheme: The Polyvagrant.

It consists of the following rules for napping and sleeping:

• All naps will be taken as close as possible to 30 minutes past the hour on (some but not all) even-numbered hours. This is arbitrary, but matches my current schedule.
• There is no goal of striving for an “equiphasic” schedule (meaning the naps can be of different lengths, with different amounts of time between them).
• Naps will be either 20 minutes or 1.5 hours in length. A semi-inflexible goal is to take a maximum of one 1.5-hour nap per calendar day.
• During the hours I tend to be wide awake, I will tend to space the naps more widely. During the hours I tend to be sleepy, I will either (a) space the naps more closely, (b) precede the shorter naps with a longer nap, or (c) do both.
• I will feel free to move naps around as seems convenient. I will not take a nap simply because a clock tells me to–I will do so only if I am currently sleepy or trying to use the nap to be sure I’m awake and alert for some non-nap activity that is scheduled in the near future.
• I will feel free to take extra naps, of either length, to compensate for periods of unexpectedly long awake-time.
• When planning naps I will take into account what I have learned (via the Uberman schedule) about the times of day/night during which I tend to be especially alert or sleepy. If necessary, I will also take extra naps to account for the effects of exercise.
• Just for fun: jet lag should be impossible with this scheme. In half the world’s timezones, I’ll take naps 30 minutes after odd-numbered hours. The others should require no modification. In any timezone, the local sunrise and sunset (and/or my exposure to light) will very likely affect the timing and length of my naps.

This actually strikes me as easier than sticking to any of the schedules currently extant. It will require a certain degree of mindfulness. Perhaps even a bit of good judgment. Well, I might make it work for me anyway!

My “starter” schedule currently consists of one 1.5-hour nap, three 20-minute naps, and one optional 20-minute nap. I think it’ll work very well for the majority of my days–it’s designed to fit my family’s current schedules as well as my sleepytime needs. But! I can modify it whenever I want…such as when I want a night on the town during what would normally be my 1.5-hour “core” nap.

My New Goal: Vegas, Baby!

In a couple of months (or so), I intend to put my polyphasic superpowers to the ultimate test. Bear in mind that I’m a big fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books and stories–Reacher travels the world without a suitcase and with no fixed address. He doesn’t own a car. He buys new clothes as needed, and rents places to sleep. He doesn’t keep much of anything besides a toothbrush. It’s very cool.

So what am I going to do? Simple: I’ll go to Vegas for 30 days. I’ll rent a car. I will not rent a hotel room or an apartment. I will do all my sleeping via naps–most or all of which will happen in the car. I will play many many hours of poker. I may even do a few days’ worth of 20-minute naps only (a la Uberman) in the car in a nearby parking garage, or possibly in some sort of lounge if I find a good one where I might be left alone, and I’ll see if I can keep playing at the same poker table for…three days? Five? Who knows?

Speaking of that, I’ll do some sightseeing. I’ll get into odd conversations, and exert myself somewhat to make new friends. I’ll visit old friends and acquaintances.

And I’m going to write a book about it all. It’ll involve my Polyvagrant adventures in Sin City, the difficulty/ease of maintaining my fasting schedule in the midst of that, probably a few barefoot escapades, my decades-long love affair with Las Vegas and how it’s changed over time, the poker subculture and its changes over time…for me, this trip will be a blast. Guaranteed.

And my wife love love loves the idea. Which is how I feel about her, too. She gets me, and she likes me just as I ever-changingly be. Cool!

The book’s working title? Same as this post’s. But that may change. Much, in fact, may change before this adventure is completed. In fact I’m counting on it.

But I really, really want to pack up (lightly!) and leave right now.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Either way, have fun out there! I know I will.

Which morning? I have six of them each day, functionally speaking. If we can agree to call it a morning whenever I wake up and have stuff to do for a few hours, to be followed by sleeping again. Rinse and repeat.

Why is this important? Because last year I discovered a reliable way to produce a lot of fiction. The catch? It only really works for me if I can wake up and jump into writing without distractions. Later in the day? Not so much. My inner editor gets in the way. And…my method worked very well. It was fun. I felt good about myself and my accomplishments. But mornings are important for other reasons–meaning I had to make some sacrifices.

You may now–as who wouldn’t?–picture an oddly slippery slate altar concealed within a primeval rainforest, in a green hollow well-encrusted with scattered bones (tending to the small, but some over-large and…you hope they were somehow distorted post-mortem, because otherwise…), the bones in various states of decay showing the site to be in regular use, but still–there’s something fuzzy about the air–it smells not of death, but not of life either–if the emptiness between galaxies had a scent? this might be it–and the sounds behind you may or may not be footsteps–then, once you step into the circle of my daily ritual, it becomes hard to see beyond the place of sacrifice. The place of death, and rebirth, and stories shouted into a void. A void that hungers for structure, but is eternally incapable of hewing to it for longer than a panicked heartbeat. Which may be your last. You are not certain the world you left behind is still there. Anywhere. You find yourself becoming hoarse as your measured words, your entreaties, your final appeals to reason…shade into screams. As my knife rises, and falls. All that you are becomes Anguish. Followed, natch, by lunch. And then editing, but that’s another story. No pun intended.

But it mostly wasn’t like that. My chief sacrifice? I had to shut myself off from my family for the first couple of hours each day.

And I’ve come to very much enjoy first-thing-in-the-morning playing with my daughter. My wife and I talk about all sorts of things. We plan. And, also? My productivity-enhancing regimen really worked better if I did it every day. Which made lots of weekend activities difficult to impossible. Or it meant I’d take Monday and Tuesday to get back up to speed. Up to me, right? Life’s all about making choices.

Well. I chose to spend my precious morning-time with my family when I could. And kept trying to get the sand out of my fiction-machine gears in some other way. I wrote, but slowly.

So I’m doing this ridiculous nap-every-four-hours thing. I’m spending the morning-time with my family. But once or twice a day, I’m also going to be waking up and going in to write. First thing I do. Well, after shutting off the alarm(s).

Will it work? I don’t know. I’m sleeping less than two hours out of every twenty-four. I feel good. I am soundly mocked by many. (Though truthfully I feel a little bit like a superhero and so don’t mind the gibes too much.)

But I’m just now getting my head clear of the sleep-fog that’s dogged my thoughts as I’ve moved into this strange new world of waking dreams. Just now about to discover whether I’ll be able to do…what I’ve always wanted to do. To write, a lot, without sacrificing family-time. (I’ll note here, parenthetically, that brains are awfully stupid organs–they’re unreliable and messy and ornery and won’t always do what I want.)

My first session under this new schedule will occur during a time-slice many of you would call “tomorrow morning.” Right now I’m going to do some editing. It’s tempting to do prep-work to make things easier later, but…no. I want to see what happens when I don’t. Then I’ll sleep. Then I’ll study a couple of subjects that interest me, then I’ll sleep again. Then I’ll spend family-time with family, and sleep again.

And then, finally…we’ll see how the writing goes. If it doesn’t flow well at first, I’ll tweak. I’ll try again.

I know: I’m nuts, and impractical, and also barefoot. But…you know…what if it works? Won’t that be cool? So why not try?

I’ll keep you posted. Have fun out there!

This last week was fairly difficult in some ways. I don’t think it was because of polyphasic sleeping per se, but this was generally a tough week to be sleepy. So I’ll start with the negatives, partly ’cause I think they kinda built on each other…um…to make a hole…?

Anyway. Bad stuff first. (And don’t skip ahead! Because I’ll know if you do! We has allz our zombie-tracking and mind-control lasers up and running on this here blog. You think it’s hard to follow an eyeball or two with our setup? It’s just not. But go on. Test me. See what happens. You have been warned.)

• I got slightly sick. No big deal; just lots of congestion, a sore throat, and dry/itchy eyes…that kind of thing. It made some of my naps difficult, ’cause I hate not being able to breathe through my nose. And the eye thing meant I felt extra-sleepy all the time. Also there weren’t a lot of drugs I was willing to take under the circumstances, so I just had to bull through. I did try some “natural tears” eye drops by Visine, but I think I’d have been better off with shellac. Just: ouch! I heartily disrecommend them.
• I got terrifically hungry. A lot. So my regular fasting was suddenly neither of those things. I decided polyphasic adaptation was a higher priority for me in the short term, and extreme hunger plus sleep deprivation just came to seem like too much trouble. Plus, cooking/eating pass the time and don’t put me to sleep.
• To add to the mix…you know how I quit drinking caffeine? Well, I stuck to that (aside from some minor experimentation). But until recently I drank lots of very strong coffee of a mornin’, and also drank tea by the gallon throughout the day. Doing without the caffeine per se was not an issue for me. But what the hell was I gonna drink instead? I never have liked drinking water unless it’s fresh from a creek or something. So…what the heck. I bought diet syrups for our Sodastream carbonating dingus and drank them. Even though I’d quit drinking stuff with artificial sweeteners a while back. So that was another healthy habit shot to shit. Again, it was all about prioritization. It totally made sense. Or so I kept telling myself.
• Overall I got much more groggy this week. I wasn’t quite sure what I should do about it–catch up via “oversleeping”? Take a bunch of “extranaps”? Revel in my barely-functional state? So I tried all three. The oversleeping didn’t really work, ’cause when I tried it (once!) I only slept for 38 minutes anyway and woke up groggy as hell. The extranaps worked okay, but sure did make it hard to think about anything else. Just letting myself get groggy was mostly okay, but one morning my eyes kinda went sideways on me and I realized I really shouldn’t be driving–the sleep-deprivation hadn’t seemed so bad, until it suddenly became obviously horrible. Fortunately I was only about two miles from home–but after that, since I was being a single parent for the week, I made sure I didn’t let things go that far. I don’t know whether that helped or hurt with the overall adaptation thing.
• My daughter (5 years old today!) was pretty wonderful, but I did need to be available for her. And she did interfere with a couple of naps. Still, I loved the way she tried so hard to let me sleep when I told her I needed to. It just…didn’t always work out.
• I moved all my nap times back by an hour when my wife got back into town. While she was gone I needed to be able to pick up our daughter in the afternoons. With her back in town, it’s better if I finish a nap right before they get home. Anyway, changing the schedule might have made adapting to it a bit harder. Or not–I’m still not sure the timing of the naps is all that important.

But then there were good things that happened!

• I dug a “Happy Light” out of storage. It had never done anything for me before. But it definitely helped me get going a few times.
• Night lights! I quit letting myself sleep (or, possibly more important, wake up) in a dark room.
• Exercise! I had to stay in at night because of my daughter, but a few sprints on an exercise bike worked wonders. Woke me up a bit, anyway.
• I noticed that barely getting to sleep during a nap for whatever reason, or waking up partway through and getting up right away, felt a hell of a lot better than waking up groggy. So I shortened my sleep timers again. Originally I’d given myself 30 minutes. Then 25. Then 20. And so far I’m happy right there–it’s helped a lot. I swear, completely missing a nap isn’t anywhere near as tough as trying to be alert after waking up at the wrong time. And I never seemed to wake up on my own if I went past 20 minutes for the nap anyway, so…I’m not sure any of the above makes sense, but it seems to work.
• I finally got some cool/vivid dreams out of this deal! That started a couple of days ago. It doesn’t happen every time I sleep (I suspect different sleep phases are occurring in different naps), but it’s a huge perk. I’m lovin’ tha dreamses.
• You know how I got sick? Well, I got over it about a day and a half ago.
• I’ve been fasting for nearly 24 hours now, and it feels great. I won’t be doing my normal 36 this time, because of birthday cake and ice cream and so forth this evening, but I expect to pick that right up later in the week. (Though I’ll note that 36 hours can seem a lot longer when it suddenly includes nine sleep/wake cycles! I may cut back to three 24-hour fasts/week. Or not. We’ll see how it goes.)
• I tried drinking a bit of coffee. No troubles with napping. Alcohol didn’t seem to matter either. So I’m still staying away from caffeine for the most part, but beer is back on the menu!
• Since my stupid cold-like issues went away? I haven’t needed or wanted any extranaps. I feel, in fact, pretty gosh-darned good.

By which I mean: in the last 36 hours or so I’ve been no worse than pleasantly sleepy at any time. Which was actually quite nice whilst cuddling with my girls after they (finally) woke up this morning. And even that level of sleepiness has, so far, gone away entirely after my next nap.

So okay, it was a semi-tough week. And I’m still not happy about my progress in finding something worth drinking (rooibos tea and carbonated water with lime juice are okay but not quite sufficient).

But, otherwise…man. No, Uberman! In spite of a few difficulties, this whole experiment seems to be working out quite well.

And I have lots of plans for the time it’s getting me. This website needs some work, for instance…but I think I’ll hold off on further polyphasic sleep updates until I’ve been doing it for a month. And maybe I’ll include a list of things I’ve found to be helpful along the way, and maybe also some links to more comprehensive resources (such as puredoxyk’s website). And stuff.

Meanwhile? Sleep well, and dream of large…no, never mind. Just: have fun out there!

So far: fun and interesting, but not entirely within my control. Come to think of it, the bit about “control” is probably self-evident, redundant, and pointlessly repetitious–three writing sins I try never to commit, which is also like having two things and another thing I don’t want to do. Otherwise, how entertaining could all this be, really? Plus, control is a pretty lie at best.

Where was I? And why was I bothering?

Are you still here? Hmm.

Okay, fine. I’ll try to make this worth your time. Or at least worth my time. As I already told you I don’t have a lot of doubt left that this polyphasic sleeping thing, specifically the “Uberman” schedule, works. It feels kinda good actually. But it ain’t all roses and first blood at dawn–or anyway all ain’t yet. Specifically:

1. Somebody or other promised me a bunch of vivid dreams. Maybe even lucid dreams. So far I haven’t remembered a single dream upon waking. Darn it. I want me some o’ them.
2. Also I was told I might wake up after a very short nap with the impression that hours had passed. This has happened many times. Sounds nice and peaceful, doesn’t it? But there’s a hidden catch to this: it’s not all that pleasant a feeling. Not that it’s physically disabling or anything, but what I’m trying to do is train my body to sleep according to a somewhat bizarre and appealingly arbitrary set of rules…right? So when I wake up and think I may have screwed that up, sleeping through who knows how many alarms and possibly days or weeks…I feel much better when I check the actual time and realize it’s in fact been something like fifteen minutes since I started a timer. Maybe this aspect will become more enjoyable, or at least somewhat less discombobulating, as I get used to it.
3. Sometimes I’m very alert, and other times I’m somewhat sleepy. I had the naive notion going into this that “adaptation” might happen, and it was all about training the body to sleep differently, possibly even more efficiently (as if any of us knew what–if anything–that might mean), and…you know. Once I was on the schedule, and getting by day to day, I’d have all this alert-time available. Well, it’s only sort of mostly true. I’m mostest alertest after my 9:30PM nap. But right after that? I get sleepy after my 1:30AM nap. Every night. If I just deal with it till after my 5:30AM nap, and sneak in what I call an “extranap” at 7:30AM? I’m awake and alert afterward, and seem to remain so until the following night. But! I become reasonably alert sometime during that cycle with or without the extranap. But! Trying to take an extranap prior to the 1:30AM nap doesn’t help at all. Neither does napping between 2:00AM and 5:30AM, as I just wake up all groggy. Bizarre! Is this failure??? Heh. Nope. Because it’s slowly getting better. The single biggest daily improvement came after I made myself get outside and hike on a trail (no bears that I happened to notice, but they were as always present in my mind) from about 2:30-5:00AM. See, I had nowhere to stop and sleep…but I can’t keep doing that for the next several days. More on why in a bit. Meanwhile I’ll just note that my body really, really didn’t want to get any kind of workout during those hours. But I had a nice time anyway.
4. Sometimes I get a bit sore. And my eyes dry out. This particular complaint is purely in the “whining” category. I know this. And yet I continue! See, I’ve read various people’s theories about cellular repair whilst sleeping, and growth hormone production (never mind that those things can actually interfere with each other, bein’ this blog’s nohow scientific), and stuff. Some people say you can’t get much exercise unless you get a lot of sleep. Others simply do it and say they’re fine. You know what I say? My body was already accustomed to standing up or walking around (also known, often, as pacing…and using a goofy standing/pedaling desklike object dingus) for most of the day. But guess what? With less sleep, it gets more physical activity. Maybe I’m a bit sore of late…should I be surprised? Or hey, what about the dry-eye thing? Well, mine eyes are now expected to be mostly open for about six more hours a day than they used to be…hmm. This is not only simple whining, but also dumb, because in fact all that stuff is already fading away as I get into the swing of things. But if there’s at least one reader out there who actually tries this polywhateveritis for his/her/its/their ownself and feels a twinge of impending doom? Maybe this will prevent a panic attack. Maybe it’ll even count as a good deed and improve my karma so I don’t get reincarnated as a goldfish. Again. You know they can’t either talk or write, don’t you? It’s so frustrating. I say we should eat ’em all ASAP just to help their o’er-dampened little spirits move on to something better. But that’s another topic.

Truth: this has been really cool so far. Though I can’t get any of my relatives to agree with me. They just sort of say they’re glad I’m having fun but they don’t care about this any more than the last twelve things I got myself into. But don’t I want to look at pictures from their garden now? Or whatever. Tough, huh? Families are like that.

This next week will be especially fun, ’cause my wife will be out of town and my 5yo daughter will be much more able to interfere with my naps. I don’t think she will, though–she likes the idea that Daddy can work at night and play during the day an awful lot. But we’ll see. And this is why I can’t wander off into Alaskan summer non-darkness when the clock sez night for a few days. Maybe my stationary bike will work as a substitute, if I also go stand outside on a balcony for a bit? Or maybe decaf cold-brewed French Roast (at which concept my soul shudders and seems to fade a bit) will do the trick? With chicory, though? We’ll see.

This continues to get easier. I haven’t had trouble falling asleep for a nap in a few days now. I set my timer for 25 minutes, lie down, and often wake before it goes off. I haven’t “overslept” at all.

One more thought, or thoughtlet, before I go. When I got into fasting regularly, I eventually realized that hunger just isn’t that big a deal–because it goes away whether you eat or not, and in very nearly the same amount of time. Sleep seems to be somewhat similar of late, as I seem to be sleepiest during the hours my body is accustomed to sleeping…and that goes away whether I get in an extra nap (or extranap) or not. In other words, it seems to help to laugh at this stuff. Because there’s not much I can do about it that makes sense. Sure, I could modify my schedule and sleep away a few of the wee hours of the night/morning/whatever. But would I be any less sleepy afterward? I doubt it. Eventually, sure, I’d get used to it. But that’s happening anyway.

Let it happen, I say. Which strikes me as ridiculous, because letting go is precisely what I’m not doing in general with this sleeping schedule. And yet–maybe some things just take a bit longer than others.

Hope you’re having fun out there, and not hibernating your lives away!

Yo!

I got a bit sleepy after my 1:30AM nap last night, and fixed it with another 7:30AM extra. Is this fascinating, or what? Because other than that I have no new info about my adaptation process. Something over 80 hours into it, I feel pretty good.

I do have a few more things to say about polyphasic sleeping, and I’ll probably get to them eventually. But it’s already clear to me–low day-count notwithstanding–that this stuff works. So I’ll hold off for a while with the updates. Think about clever stuff to say. Maybe add a pun or two. And learn what I can as I go along.

A few thoughts before I (temporarily) drop the subject:

First, beware those who tell you anything at all about sleep schedules. For instance, the Polyphasic Society would have you believe that “No one has EVER adapted to Uberman without the help of others, often in the form of a human alarm system.” Um, I’ve seen many claims to the contrary. And then there’s me. It’s only been a few days, and I still get sleepy at times, but I’m sufficiently convinced it’s working that I’m ready to quit thinking about it and move on to the next project-thing, or at least consider candidates. Whilst napping every four hours or so. And next week I have some ambitious writing plans. Stuff goin’ on here!

Second. This has been ridiculously easy to do…so far. And of course I don’t know what factors have made it work out that way for me. But I’ll include my guesses, in case they’re helpful to anyone considering similar ridiculosities:

1. I’m 45 years old. I’ve done lots of things before, and some of them were hard. I remember how difficult it used to be to do without food for even a few hours when I was a kid–and I might as well be considered an entirely different person by now. Who does three 36-hour fasts a week, and enjoys them. This is just my latest experiment-toy. It may or may not be a good choice for you, if it’s your first.
2. I spent years being sleep-deprived after my daughter was born. And I’m a very light sleeper–my brother used to put one foot into my bedroom, on carpet, to wake me up just for fun. And laugh at me. So sleeping in larger chunks? Not really my thing. Never has been. I just never tried spacing out my shorter chunks instead of getting them all at once.
3. I quit consuming caffeine about a week and a half before trying out a polyphasic schedule. It made naps possible. Even easy! Which was a heck of a revelation in itself. I used to basically count an entire day lost if something woke me at an inconvenient time–it was very hard for me to get back to sleep. Which is why I didn’t take naps. They just didn’t work. Turns out, if I’d just stayed sleepy and avoided caffeine, then tried again in an hour or three? I probably could have salvaged the larger part of my days. Good to know.
4. The “light sleeper” thing means I don’t need to worry about sleeping through alarm clocks. It’s just never going to happen, unless I’m actually dead. Which, in this context, is quite handy.
5. I’m in Alaska, and it’s summertime. Going outside into the non-darkness seems to invigorate me quite well. If I were trying this in December? It might be harder.
6. I’ve been able to be by myself, with little chance of interruption, for the vast majority of my naps thus far. That may change this weekend, and if it leads to trouble I’ll eventually mention it–unless it leads to major trouble, in which case I’ll probably blog about it sooner.
7. I started off in a very well-slept and healthy state, which I credit to my diet/exercise plan. But if that’s not your starting point…it may make a difference. Though what do I know? It may even help you. Ignorance may or may not be bliss, but it’s where I live.

I guess that’s it for now. Let me know if you’d like to try polyphasic sleeping yourself, or know someone who is? I’d love to hear how it’s going for you.

Either way–have fun out there!

Hi!

Yup, this is still going on. About…lessee…60 hours into this thing, and I just woke from a 17-minute nap (total, including going-to-sleep time). I feel pretty good. I’m still waiting for this to get truly hard. So far it’s striking me as sort of natural-like, though heretofore unknown. At least to me. But…hey, most animals are polyphasic sleepers. Maybe we can be too? Or not. We’ll see!

I’ve had one issue so far, and it was pretty minor. Last night I may or may not have gone to sleep during my 9:30PM nap. I remember my alarms surprised me when they went off, but did they also wake me up? I wasn’t sure. Anyway, that (or something else?) made last night a bit more difficult, so this morning I snuck in an extra nap at 7:30. I was still a little sleepy afterward, but I’ve felt considerably better since finishing my 9:30AM nap. Almost human. Definitely my best day yet.

So I think I’ll keep the “extra nap” option handy, only I’ll reach for it a bit sooner next time I have some sort of issue. Which is a reasonable segue to some questions:

• Is the timing of the naps actually critical? I’ve read that it is, and that trying to build in too much flexibility can derail “adaptation.” Thing is…a regular schedule is probably useful for trying to incorporate any new behavior or activity. Even if it’s true that the people who manage this successfully tend to at least start out with very strict schedules–and are clearly so identified as the ones most likely to succeed–that doesn’t necessarily convince me that the difference (if any) in success rates has any sort of biological basis. But I’ll stick with the schedule for now–it still strikes me as a good idea.
• Some of the folks out there who’ve done this offer self-congratulatory comments on the “best” types of motivation, diet, and so forth. Are any of them “right”? I’m again unconvinced. These sorts of things can have emotional significance, sure, but how do you separate all the threads and reasonably conclude much that’s useful about why a particular individual did or did not achieve success…especially as judged by other people?
• Does this “adaptation” process ever really get hard? Well…here I ask: hard for whom? It may be easier if you’ve done at least a few moderately difficult things in the past. It may be easier if you’re already a champion napper. Here, as above, I think individual variation will be too great and pulling in too many directions to form a reasonable conclusion. However, so far this has been fairly easy for me–though it’s true I’m expecting very little from myself other than “stick to the schedule” this first week. It’s kind of nice to have a good excuse to do fun stuff that keeps me interested, and nothing else!
• Of what does this “adaptation” consist? Beats me! I’ve read various conflicting theories and reports about sleep phases and their rearrangement (or “repartitioning”), but given that the current state of knowledge about normal sleep seems so incomplete…well. I basically believe no theories at this point. Though I do suspect it’ll get easier as I go along, if this is indeed a learnable skill.
• What’s the ideal nap length? No idea! I started setting my alarms to give me 30 minutes, figuring I’d probably take at least five minutes to fall asleep. Well…during the first couple of “naps” I didn’t go to sleep at all. During one nap I really don’t know whether I dropped off or not. Just now I got up after setting my timer for 25 minutes, but I woke up and felt relatively clear-headed with more than eight minutes left. So…maybe there’s an answer. But I don’t know what it is. I’ve read that, paradoxically, shortening a nap can make it more refreshing and easier to wake up from. It may be true. So I’ll see how I do after my recent early awakening, and go from there.
• What about long-term consequences? Beats me no idea can’t tell I’m not even gonna guess! Sure, you can find opinions online. And there may be some issues that arise for those who do this for extended periods. On the other hand, since nobody knows, it’s also possible that it’ll have some sort of long-term benefit. I read various diatribes on this subject and was reminded of the “debates” around low-carb dieting. The results of that are almost uniformly positive in my experience. Some people claim that too will lead to long-term damage, but have little evidence to back up the claim. If in fact they’re right, throwing in a few fasting days ought to fix the potentially harmful theoretical mechanisms I’ve run across in my reading. So is there a fasting-equivalent for nappers? Uh…hmm. No idea. So is all this theorizing, basically, a bowl of cornflakes? Yup! Because I say so. And I don’t eat grains. So…I’m not going to worry about it. Much.

Basically: so far, so good. I’ll keep ya posted.

Have good dreams out there!

Well, here I am. Still. You too, I guess.

Last night was interesting. I got some sleep between 1:30AM and 2:00AM, which was nice. I did notice what some folks call “sleep inertia,” meaning it was a bit hard to get my brain going after the alarms went off. At 5:30AM I slept even more of my allotted half-hour–but I woke up partway through and re-crashed. Maybe I should’ve gotten up right away, ’cause the wake-up when my alarms blared later was a bit tough.

Just at the moment I feel…odd. Sleepy, sure, but not in a normal sense of must-fall-down. More that the world occasionally shifts a bit sidewise and catty-whompus. I’ve read that “oversleeping,” aka sleeping some normal number of hours at a time, is the cardinal sin of this adjustment period–far worse than occasionally lying awake during naptime. Of which neither have I done, but they could happen. And Steve Pavlina suggested at one point that an additional nap from time to time might not be harmful, as long as it remains quite short. So if that’s the case…why would this ever be hard? If it works at all. IOW I figure this’ll turn out to be either easy or impossible. Will I be able to tell which? Maybe!

So far, so good. Still, it’s early. I’ll update this throughout the day.

9:30AM nap: worked out fine. I woke up after about 7 minutes, then went back to sleep for the rest of it. I remember doing that, but I don’t remember being alert enough to make an actual decision on the topic. Hmm. A bit groggy for 20 minutes or so afterward; no big deal. I’d read a bit of slightly boring nonfiction right beforehand, which seemed to make going to sleep easier.

1:30PM nap: Peachy. I woke up 15 minutes in, then treated myself to another 15. Not sure whether I should be doing that. Maybe I should shorten my sleeping period? But I woke up feeling reasonably alert and still feel okay so far. Read for 10 minutes before the nap; it worked well.

…and there you have it. About two hours of sleep in about 36 hours, assuming I make it till 5:30 before I crash. Neat, so far.

I expect things to get tougher tonight and/or tomorrow. And I’ll let you know how that goes. But I have other stuff I want to do today, so I’ll post this and…call it a day.

Have fun sleeping out there!

Well, first off, I’m a bit sleepy as I write this. But maybe even before that…zeroth off?…I do wonder how the hell to count this first day of my polyphasic sleep attempt, and also maybe whether to count it at all. Maybe I’m done with it? Depends. How long is a day, when all the sleep you ever get is in 25-minute naps? If that happens.

See, last night I slept normally and woke up around 5:00AM. So “today” I started this shenanigan, but that just means I laid m’self down for a few minutes at 5:30PM and again at 9:30PM. Didn’t go to sleep, as who’d have expected me to? But it does mean that I’ve completed all my scheduled sleep-times for Day One, if that ends around midnight or so. So I’m calling it good.

Eventually I hope to sleep for 20-25 minutes every four hours, and otherwise keep myself busy with other activities. No, I don’t know whether it’ll work. Some folks around the intertoobz claim they do it, or have done it. But it’s not many people. And they could all be lying after all. Come to think of it, they could all be virtual identities of one teenage girl down Dallas way. If she has an odd sense of humor and an above-average facility with horseshit. So…I’d say the science ain’t settled here quite as of yet.

I found out a few things already. For instance: I didn’t have much of a physical dependence on caffeine. Didn’t expect to, either, ’cause I suspect my younger self’s apparent reliance on caffeine was in fact more of a sugar-withdrawal thing, and I stay away from that stuff these days…anyway, I had a mildly and strangely pleasurably groggy couple of days when I quit drinkin’ the stuff the Friday before last. And–this part did surprise me–I’ve been able to take short naps on a few of the days since then. First naps I’ve taken in…hmm…a decade or so? I guess any caffeine at all makes ’em impossible or at least strongly improbable, but they weren’t so hard to slip into when doing without. Interesting, and maybe enough to put me off caffeine for the long haul? Either way, it’s been tough trying to get other people to drink my last pitcher of cold-brew French Roast for me, I’ll tell ya that for free. And this is in spite of the fact that my chicory gets prepared separately. Don’t other people like thick, chewy coffee that’s been brewing for a week? They should.

Not much is yet known here by me. I’ll probably type more later. I will say it’s been entertaining settin’ up my office to try to ensure I’ll wake as scheduled (I figure going to sleep will eventually take care of itself and I haven’t given that part a lot of attention so far). But…is this really going to be any harder than one of my week-long cross-country road trips? I get by fine without much sleep for those. Is this going to be harder than fasting three days a week? That turned out not to be so hard–though my wife and I did decide to try to eat normally for the last week ’cause of relatives in town. Which felt weird and gluttonous, if you were wondering. I’m looking forward to a break from all the food-shoveling. Not to mention the dish-washing and general cleaning-up.

Is this thing truly, in fact, even possible? Beats me. Oughta be a blast to find out though. For some values of “blast.”

Have fun out there!