Hey guys,
I started again last night with polyphasic sleeping, this time on the "Everyman" schedule.
To clarify, I have a 3 hour core sleep from 4-7am (5-8 before daylight savings changes) then three 20 minute naps throughout the day roughly evenly spaced.
The first day was pretty comfortable and at times I couldn't even tell that I had gotten 3 hours sleep the night before. There isn't all that much to talk about because I felt pretty decent the whole time.
I'm guessing my midnight->5am awake period is going to be the hardest during adaptation so we'll see how that goes.
It's currently 1 hour till my second core sleep and I'm reasonably tired/crappy which is to be expected, and will probably worsen over the next couple of days but I expect to have a few hours of good awareness to get in some poker in then play games when I'm feeling worse.
Haven't slept in a nap yet but that's pretty standard at this stage.
I'm keeping well fed, gonna go get more food tomorrow and stock up on Up 'n' Go which is basically a small liquid meal and is great for staving off the hunger late at night when I don't want to make too much noise making food in the kitchen.
Alex
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Days 1 & 2 on Uberman
Hi guys,
My first attempt was epic fail, and I was too tired to blog about it at the time (which is even more fail) but I am definitely revisiting this in the near-near future.
Day 1 (the first night and day after no sleep):
I spent the night at my girlfriends place, and spent the whole time playing League of Legends with my polyphasic buddy (we both started this at the same time), Adrian.
It was fun in a "yay all-nighters" kinda way and much lols were had. Getting up from naps wasn't that hard as I didn't sleep at all and really wasn't all that tired due to the excitement of it all.
I did notice late morning (5-6am) that I was getting kinda hungry so I had some bread and water from her pantry, this was really inadequate though and I felt kinda crappy till I got home at 8:00 in the morning and made myself a breakfast of weetbix/toast & smoothie which made me all good again ;)
The rest of the day was pretty much spent playing LoL/various flash games and spacing out (staring at web pages for 10 minutes then reading them, rinse & repeat).
By late afternoon I'm feeling generally crappy but still not too bad as I'm eating good food and distracting myself from the tiredness with gaming.
Then I made a huge mistake, I agreed to spend the second consecutive all nighter at my girlfriends place, thinking "meh, it was alright last night".
I brought over some baguette, a cup of vegetables, a carrot, an apple and a banana. I make it to midnight alright. (note: i havent been able to sleep in any of my naps yet)
Day 2:
This was terribly inadequate and after trucking it to my 3am nap (after eating everything) I think it's all gonna be fine. I wake up at 3:25 and Adrian has not woken up from his nap.
An hour later I start feeling sick to my stomach with that queasy, caused-by-hunger-but-have-no-appetite feeling which is amplified x10 if you haven't slept in 40 hours. I go get some bread and water but it's shitty and insubstantial.
I would have done myself good by walking home (only 15 minutes away) at this point but my logic centres aren't really functioning right now, just so I can make myself a decent chicken sandwich with some fruit/vegetables. Instead I loaded up LoL and tried to play a game.
Half way through I suddenly started feeling tired as if I had already been lying down trying to sleep. I somehow make it to the end of the game and get up from my chair, walking around trying to stay awake and wait out the sick feeling but it doesn't go away ;(
I realise that I'm not all that exhausted but it's just the sick feeling that is messing me up. At this point it's around 6am, 1 hour from my nap time and I throw in the towel like a true life-noob. I wake up 6 hours later with HUGE regret about failing. I plan to immediately start napping again but then every hour from midday I change my mind.
In the end at around 10:30pm I decide to stop for now because I thought about the morning/evening time I spend with the girlfriend as we go to sleep/wake up and it eventually overcomes the want for extra time (at this point it's an unfair fight as my brain is screaming for sleep).
Post Fail Analysis
I have to pretty much put my social life on hold until I'm adapted to the schedule. The first night was okay, but without every bit of help and reducing other discomfort sources apart from the exhaustion it gets too hard.
It also didn't help that my already adapted friend was AFK and Adrian had overslept so I had no one to motivate me except myself.
Overall I'm quite disappointed in myself but at least I know what to watch out for in my next attempt (hehe ;p).
Next Attempt
I haven't decided yet if I want to try the Everyman (3 hours core sleep + 3x20 minute naps) or try again with the Uberman.
Everyman takes quite a bit longer to adjust to but the adjustment isn't as crushing. It also allows some kind of alignment with the real world, for example I could time it to awaken with monophasics (4am-7am) and feel somewhat normal =)
On the downside you get 2 less waking hours a day, 20 instead of 22 and don't feel as energised as a fully adjusted uberman.
A possibility would be to attempt the Everyman, then if I'm feeling I still don't have enough time in the day transition to the uberman, which is just a matter of reducing the length of the core sleep and adding in extra naps during the day, much easier than attempting uberman straight up.
Should I just (Uber)man it up and don't be such a wimp, taking into account the fail factors and try avoid them next time?
Should I half-conform to society and try to be an (every)man, hibernating like the rest of the human race for several hours at a time?
Expect an answer within the week.
My first attempt was epic fail, and I was too tired to blog about it at the time (which is even more fail) but I am definitely revisiting this in the near-near future.
Day 1 (the first night and day after no sleep):
I spent the night at my girlfriends place, and spent the whole time playing League of Legends with my polyphasic buddy (we both started this at the same time), Adrian.
It was fun in a "yay all-nighters" kinda way and much lols were had. Getting up from naps wasn't that hard as I didn't sleep at all and really wasn't all that tired due to the excitement of it all.
I did notice late morning (5-6am) that I was getting kinda hungry so I had some bread and water from her pantry, this was really inadequate though and I felt kinda crappy till I got home at 8:00 in the morning and made myself a breakfast of weetbix/toast & smoothie which made me all good again ;)
The rest of the day was pretty much spent playing LoL/various flash games and spacing out (staring at web pages for 10 minutes then reading them, rinse & repeat).
By late afternoon I'm feeling generally crappy but still not too bad as I'm eating good food and distracting myself from the tiredness with gaming.
Then I made a huge mistake, I agreed to spend the second consecutive all nighter at my girlfriends place, thinking "meh, it was alright last night".
I brought over some baguette, a cup of vegetables, a carrot, an apple and a banana. I make it to midnight alright. (note: i havent been able to sleep in any of my naps yet)
Day 2:
This was terribly inadequate and after trucking it to my 3am nap (after eating everything) I think it's all gonna be fine. I wake up at 3:25 and Adrian has not woken up from his nap.
An hour later I start feeling sick to my stomach with that queasy, caused-by-hunger-but-have-no-appetite feeling which is amplified x10 if you haven't slept in 40 hours. I go get some bread and water but it's shitty and insubstantial.
I would have done myself good by walking home (only 15 minutes away) at this point but my logic centres aren't really functioning right now, just so I can make myself a decent chicken sandwich with some fruit/vegetables. Instead I loaded up LoL and tried to play a game.
Half way through I suddenly started feeling tired as if I had already been lying down trying to sleep. I somehow make it to the end of the game and get up from my chair, walking around trying to stay awake and wait out the sick feeling but it doesn't go away ;(
I realise that I'm not all that exhausted but it's just the sick feeling that is messing me up. At this point it's around 6am, 1 hour from my nap time and I throw in the towel like a true life-noob. I wake up 6 hours later with HUGE regret about failing. I plan to immediately start napping again but then every hour from midday I change my mind.
In the end at around 10:30pm I decide to stop for now because I thought about the morning/evening time I spend with the girlfriend as we go to sleep/wake up and it eventually overcomes the want for extra time (at this point it's an unfair fight as my brain is screaming for sleep).
Post Fail Analysis
I have to pretty much put my social life on hold until I'm adapted to the schedule. The first night was okay, but without every bit of help and reducing other discomfort sources apart from the exhaustion it gets too hard.
It also didn't help that my already adapted friend was AFK and Adrian had overslept so I had no one to motivate me except myself.
Overall I'm quite disappointed in myself but at least I know what to watch out for in my next attempt (hehe ;p).
Next Attempt
I haven't decided yet if I want to try the Everyman (3 hours core sleep + 3x20 minute naps) or try again with the Uberman.
Everyman takes quite a bit longer to adjust to but the adjustment isn't as crushing. It also allows some kind of alignment with the real world, for example I could time it to awaken with monophasics (4am-7am) and feel somewhat normal =)
On the downside you get 2 less waking hours a day, 20 instead of 22 and don't feel as energised as a fully adjusted uberman.
A possibility would be to attempt the Everyman, then if I'm feeling I still don't have enough time in the day transition to the uberman, which is just a matter of reducing the length of the core sleep and adding in extra naps during the day, much easier than attempting uberman straight up.
Should I just (Uber)man it up and don't be such a wimp, taking into account the fail factors and try avoid them next time?
Should I half-conform to society and try to be an (every)man, hibernating like the rest of the human race for several hours at a time?
Expect an answer within the week.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Alex the Uberman, an introduction.
Introduction
Hello guys and gals!
I've created this blog for the purpose chronicling my transition from a Monophasic sleep schedule to a Polyphasic one, specifically the "Uberman" variation.
First a little bit about myself! I'm a professional poker player and I work from home. I juggle my feeble attempts to get in as much "work" as I can with a girlfriend, PC gaming with my friends and some social activities (choir for example ;P, shoutouts to y'all).
I feel like there is enough time to work the minimum, see the gf reasonably often and play a few games but there is no room for learning/taking up new hobbies which can be time intensive without displacing a significant portion of time with things that I enjoy like gaming.
As an example I studied chess for a time and have had a brief stint with Go but wish to return to both of these as I love strategy games in all forms and would love more time to delve into them as well as putting in a few extra hours a day at the tables to earn a better living.
Uberman?
Most people sleep monophasically, or have a single block of sleep per 24 hour cycle, typically 8-9 hours, during which we get 1.5-2 hours of REM sleep which is critical for our brain to recuperate, solidify memories the details of which you can read about online if you're interested.
The idea of polyphasic sleeping is training yourself to enter REM sleep immediately after going to sleep instead of several hours in a monophasic schedule.
The uberman polyphasic plan revolves around taking six 20 minute naps a day, once at the beginning of each 4 hour period.
As an example, my target nap times will be at 2-6-10-2-6-10 with ~3.5 hour awake periods in between. This results in 2 hours of sleep per day and thus 22 hours of awakeness instead of the usual ~16. However
I have read up on other schedules such as the Dymaxion (four x 30 minute naps a day) which are inherently more flexible in terms of an extra 2 hours of awake time per awake period but are apparently much harder to adapt to if you haven't successfully adopted a polyphasic sleep schedule before.
I'm going to attempt to adopt the Uberman schedule then get in contact with others who have transitioned from this to the Dymaxion and go from there as it's far superior in the flexibility of co-ordinating social activities etc. but we'll see how the Uberman goes first.
What you can expect from this blog
I'm going to keep track of my progress daily on here in terms of how alert I'm feeling compared to my monophasic which is pretty good lately as I've been eating healthy a exercising a bit the past several months.
There will be my thoughts on how this schedule conflicts with social situations and how I cope with them.
I'll also put in tips to adapting as I struggle through the first fortnight or so.
I'll leave it there for now, any questions comments or whatever let me know and I'll try answer them asap.
Alex
Hello guys and gals!
I've created this blog for the purpose chronicling my transition from a Monophasic sleep schedule to a Polyphasic one, specifically the "Uberman" variation.
First a little bit about myself! I'm a professional poker player and I work from home. I juggle my feeble attempts to get in as much "work" as I can with a girlfriend, PC gaming with my friends and some social activities (choir for example ;P, shoutouts to y'all).
I feel like there is enough time to work the minimum, see the gf reasonably often and play a few games but there is no room for learning/taking up new hobbies which can be time intensive without displacing a significant portion of time with things that I enjoy like gaming.
As an example I studied chess for a time and have had a brief stint with Go but wish to return to both of these as I love strategy games in all forms and would love more time to delve into them as well as putting in a few extra hours a day at the tables to earn a better living.
Uberman?
Most people sleep monophasically, or have a single block of sleep per 24 hour cycle, typically 8-9 hours, during which we get 1.5-2 hours of REM sleep which is critical for our brain to recuperate, solidify memories the details of which you can read about online if you're interested.
The idea of polyphasic sleeping is training yourself to enter REM sleep immediately after going to sleep instead of several hours in a monophasic schedule.
The uberman polyphasic plan revolves around taking six 20 minute naps a day, once at the beginning of each 4 hour period.
As an example, my target nap times will be at 2-6-10-2-6-10 with ~3.5 hour awake periods in between. This results in 2 hours of sleep per day and thus 22 hours of awakeness instead of the usual ~16. However
I have read up on other schedules such as the Dymaxion (four x 30 minute naps a day) which are inherently more flexible in terms of an extra 2 hours of awake time per awake period but are apparently much harder to adapt to if you haven't successfully adopted a polyphasic sleep schedule before.
I'm going to attempt to adopt the Uberman schedule then get in contact with others who have transitioned from this to the Dymaxion and go from there as it's far superior in the flexibility of co-ordinating social activities etc. but we'll see how the Uberman goes first.
What you can expect from this blog
I'm going to keep track of my progress daily on here in terms of how alert I'm feeling compared to my monophasic which is pretty good lately as I've been eating healthy a exercising a bit the past several months.
There will be my thoughts on how this schedule conflicts with social situations and how I cope with them.
I'll also put in tips to adapting as I struggle through the first fortnight or so.
I'll leave it there for now, any questions comments or whatever let me know and I'll try answer them asap.
Alex
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)