Polyphasic Sleep Experiment:  Day 2 Part 2

An interesting story about that dentist appointment – when I was first making the appointment yesterday (yesterday….is there such a thing for me anymore? Time gets so confusing, as I’m not sure whether I’m talking about today or yesterday because I have no block sleep to separate days for me) anyways….when I was making the appointment the assistant told me that I could come any time after 11 AM the following day. At first, I almost reflexively thought “Dammit! That’s freaking early…” seeing how I’m not used to waking up that early on my monophasic schedule. But then, I realized that I was going polyphasic, and I actually ended up asking her if she had anything earlier so I could more easily fit it in between my 7am and 11am naps. She didn’t, but I just thought the experience was interesting. There is no more morning, to me. I will no longer schedule things according to whether they make me wake up early or late or whatever – now all I will do is schedule things around my naps.



Today, I had my 3:30 nap just about on time, and was woken up by my father for a haircut (which I thought was a half an hour later, or else I would have scheduled my nap more efficiently around it) about 25 minutes later. This means that I got approximately 5 minutes less sleep than usual in this nap. I don’t think that this was the reason that I was so tired between my 3:30 and 7:30 naps, but it was a pretty tiring experience. It was hard to keep focused and have a conversation with my father on the drive over, and I found myself just wishing I was sitting at home, out of the sun and relaxing. I remember feeling this way earlier today, too, on my way to CompUSA. I took my motorcycle, and remember wishing that I was just at home, out of the sun. When I got back, nothing could have talked me into going back out until I recuperated a little bit. I’ve really noticed that the more I focus on how little sleep I’ve been getting, the more fatigued I seem. I found that once we got into a political conversation with my barber and his wife, and I was engaged mentally, I started to wake up a little. On my way home, we picked up some food, and I ate a pretty good meal of an Italian beef with hot peppers, followed by some candy which I’ve been munching on until 45 minutes ago or so when I ran out :). It was kind of exciting to get home today, because after the dentist I went to CompUSA to pick up a new graphics card and a game and drove those home.



You see, a long while ago I came pretty securely to the conclusion that computer gaming, although fun occasionally, is not something I should spend a lot of time doing. Save for certain games that I really like and play every once in a long while, I have pretty much stayed away from computer gaming, and even gaming in general as of late. This has been working out just great, but that’s when gaming had no positive benefits for me. In my current situation, I have realized that gaming is the *perfect* way to help me get through the more boring, tiresome spaces in my new Ubermans schedule. Gaming is relatively engaging, enough so to keep my attention and focus off of being tired or my next nap or what not, but at the same time is not so mentally focused as other tasks that I’ve been looking to complete during the transition that revolve around programming or web design. These tasks, I think, would be too difficult for me to focus on, and could just make things worse by getting me frustrated and mentally fatigued. So, I decided to pick up a new video card (like I said, I’ve been out of the gaming industry for a while, so I was a bit behind when it comes to hardware) and a good first person shoot em up game that could hold my interest without being too mentally challenging.



So, I have been playing the game, and it was been working very well so far. I feel engaged, and not tired at all. As a matter of fact, I think I may have had a breakthrough during my last nap. I napped from about 7:15 to 7:45 and when I woke up, I was pretty damn tired. However, I rolled out of bed, drank some water, and all of a sudden felt very energized, as if I had gotten a full nights sleep. I wonder if this was my first real bout of REM sleep during a nap…..but it seems to have come far too early in the experiment. Maybe my body had already adapted somewhat to getting REM sleep during naps from my napping habits before. I never used to nap in small intervals like this, but I often laid in bed for a long time before I got to sleep, and then stayed in bed for a pretty long time after I woke up just to relax. Who knows, maybe I really was only getting somewhere between 30 minutes and 1 hour of actual shut eye. This would explain a lot, as I have been wondering why I am not as fatigued during the experiment as I expected I would be, and why I thought I might have had dreams during a couple of my naps (which, at the time I passed off figuring they were daydreams that just had me confused). If this is true, could it be possible that I am already partially acclimated to the polyphasic sleep schedule? Only time will tell – if by “tomorrow”, this time, I am still feeling generally energetic and not that tired….I will assume that this must have been the case. Three days of REM sleep deprivation with almost no effects just makes no sense, so there must be another answer. Either way, in about 24 hours we’ll see if I was just prepping for a big crash, or if I am somehow already partially acclimated to the schedule.



I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned this before, but due to reports that caffeine can mess with the REM sleep schedule, I have decided to go completely without caffeine or any other substances to try and keep me awake for this experiment. It is only my will power and positive thinking that I will use to keep myself up for as long as I need to be up.



I think I am going to try and take my 11:30 PM nap a little early (around 11), so I can get back onto a more rigid 11, 3, 7, 11, 3, 7 schedule. I will wait to post this blog entry until after this nap, so I can comment on it as well.



I am a little worried about driving, especially my motorcycle, while I am sleep deprived. I thought it would be easy to tell when I was too tired to drive, but I have felt relatively good pretty much through the whole experiment so far. Although I can tell that I am tired (things tend to happen a little slower, I feel a bit hazy, etc.) I do not feel too sleep deprived to drive safely. We’ll see how things turn out “tomorrow”, there are some errands that I might be able to run depending on how I feel. It’s odd, though, I still can’t get over it. I’ve been awake for over 35 hours now, and I do not really feel like taking a long monophasic sleep. I feel a bit tired, but there is nothing in me that actually wants to fall asleep for 7 hours straight. Maybe it’s just a subconscious motivation to get the sleep schedule to work, I don’t know. All I know is that I am perfectly happy getting these small naps, and I have no urge to go back to my monophasic schedule as of yet, even factoring in my increased tiredness.



Well, that was pretty crazy. Believe it or not but, for the first time since the first two naps I ever took on the polyphasic schedule, I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. I’m not sure exactly what it was, I think that it may have had something to do with me being excited that the polyphasic schedule was working so well due to me waking up from my last nap (the 7:15 one) relatively refreshed and feeling like I had gotten REM sleep. It might have been this, or it might have been a slew of other reasons, but all I know is that I laid there for the first 20 minutes or so, I think, without any real sleep. I felt like the alarm woke me up, so I might have gotten a little bit of nap in near the end….I feel about the same as when I went to sleep, though. A friends phone call coincided almost perfectly with my alarm, as they seemingly went off within seconds of one another, which is just something I found interesting. I wonder if the phone ring alone would have been enough to wake me up. I am interested to know how deeply I sleep during these naps – once the schedule is more secured, I might have to do some tests to determine this secret. So, this last nap went pretty horrible, but at least I don’t feel any worse or more tired after waking up from it than I did when I first laid down for it. I am becoming slightly worried, to tell the truth. It is odd to me that I have only slept approximately 4.3 hours – probably much less due to tossing and turning instead of actual and what not – within the last 35 hours, but that I am awake enough to keep myself up during a nap. This isn’t even factoring in the idea that I am probably getting little to no REM sleep in those previously mentioned 4.3 hours. I think that around Day 3 it is supposed to get real hard, so we’ll see how it pans out. Look out for my next post, I get the feeling it might be an interesting one.