Day 2 of Hiatus

Felt a LITTLE rested sleeping a full 8 hours today, but I was still way sleepy when I rolled out of bed. With the help of Landon's nagging I went to the gym before work, and it felt great! I only did a 30 minute workout, but it felt good to get the blood pumping.

I need to get some goggles and a swim cap because I think I threw mine away accidently :(
I really want to start swimming again. I think I will try to get to the gym after work at least every other day if I'm not stuck at work too late. With this schedule down and a much more simpler sleep schedule I think the process will be much kinder on my body. I'm also trying to drink more water, which I know I wasn't drinking enough of during the first attempt at the sleep cycle. So hopefully with all these positive changes the experiment will go more smoothly. One more day of catch up and planning, then it's back to 5 hours a day!!

Here is a fun map and blog website I found on someone elses blog. Nice to see a lot of people out there trying this out!: http://trypolyphasic.com/map 

End of Attempt #1 and Hiatus

Hello to whoever is reading this,

Well I had another major setback today, I fell asleep for over an hour way before my scheduled nap. I feel way worse than before. I came to the decision to put the experiment on hold for a few days, so I can catch up, re-group and come back at it strong. I know a lot more now and I think if I take these few days to rest and plan out not only a sleeping schedule, but an eating and workout schedule as well, things might go a bit smoother.

I still plan on taking the two small naps at the scheduled times of 5:50pm and 2:15am in hopes my body will still get used to sleeping at those times. But I am going to allow myself to sleep 7 to 8 hours after I get home from work. I would like to start the schedule again on Saturday, give myself the weekend again to take on the worst part.

I feel frustrated hitting so many road blocks, but I really don't want to give up!

Day 6

This last nap was probably the deepest sleep I've had since starting this thing. Still no lucid dreaming yet, but I noticed I can shape my dreams early on before I fall asleep. I think of a particular scene and my dreams have usually been an off shoot of that, not totally random like they once were...


Coming up on a week doing this sleep thing. What a long week it's been. I feel ok today, still pretty tired when I wake up from each nap though. I dunno if I have to wait a whole other week before I start seeing results because I changed my schedule, hopefully not. I don't know if I would want to carry on doing this if I still feel this tired by week two. I really REALY want to get to the next phase!!

Day 5

Well the set back from yesterday hasn't really hindered me all that much. I think the change I made in the schedule was good, I still feel really tired but I'm not feeling as crazy as I was. The 4.5 hour nap gives the illusion that I slept a normal amount at night, although under that illusion I almost hit the snooze button this afternoon and went back to sleep :P

I think I might start going to the gym again this week. Want to start swimming and doing yoga after work if I get off early enough, seems like good early morning exercise (although it would be late at night exercise for me).

Now it's time for coffee. I feel like the last result I will see out of all this is drinking less caffeine. I have been drinking waaaaaaaay more caffeinated beverages since this started, and so far I don't want to stop. Doesn't help that I just bought 3 cases of redbull for work... :)


                                             and why not; kitty zelda!!

Day 4 continue

A setback. Totally overslept today. I was hoping the restful feeling I was experiencing was this experiment to FINALLY be working, but then I rolled over and looked at the clock to see it was 1pm already, 2 hours past when I was supposed to wake up. I cannot tell you how frustrating this is. Most of what I went through this weekend was pretty much for nothing, since now my body is all off schedule. I have several options now. Start my experiment again, which will add even more days onto my body being acclimated to the cycle, start a new schedule that is less intenseness but will have some desired results, or quit...

 I don't want to quite, having experience the worst part of this experiment and not getting any great results is really bumming me out. I then realized as I stopped seething in rage this afternoon, is that I'm in no rush. I probably should have started slow on this whole project. My ultimate goal isn't to get to the Uberman Cycle of only six 20 minute naps a day. I just wanted to have more time in the day, and start feeling better health wise. All this pressure on my self and added stress is NOT making me feel better. So I'm going to dial it down a few notches and start light. Here is what my new schedule is going to look like:

--7:30am to 12 pm will be my first core nap: Most sites recomend sleeping in 1.5 hour intervals if you choose to sleep in large chunks.

--5:30pm to 6pm: Time for second nap. Time will be closer to when I go to work, so hopefully it will help me not be sleepy when I first get there.

--1am to 1:30am: Time for the third and final nap of the night.

Hopefully, if i get used to this schedule i can ween myself down to 3 hour core nap again and adda fourth nap time. hopefully this will be less brutal...

Day 4

So Day 4 is beginning, my core nap just minutes away. Only 12 hours of sleep in the last 87 hours.  All I can say is I'm hitting the wall my friends. Not too sure how much further I can go without seeing some sort of sleep depravation plateau or improvement. I think today will be crucial. At the very least I want to say I made it a week and tried....

                                                                  here goes nothing...

End of Day 3 (and weekend)

I'm into the part of the experiment where bloggers describe feeling like "being ran over by a truck" or being in a zombie haze. I feel OK for the most part, until I have to wake up from a nap. My friend just said I sounded drunk and I was slurring my words when I woke up from my first night nap. I feel pretty crappy until I get some sort of caffeine in me and about an hour goes by. I really hope I can start to see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel, because the incentive to keep this up is getting less and less after each nap goes by.

Today went by a little better than Saturday, I had some activities to take up my time like checking out some doggies, going to see Kick Ass and playing some video games at Landon's. The day still felt long but not as bad. It i nice to do so much stuff with friends and not regret staying in my room all day having slept a majority of it... although sleeping for 12 hours sounds so good right now.... I'm off to make some more instant coffee to keep such thoughts at bay...

the Milk Teef know how to enjoy a good cup of coffee

Day 3

Day 2 (Saturday) was an absurdly long day. Having more hours in the day has been the best part of trying out this sleep cycle, but when I don't have any plans the day just drags on and on. I guess it's my fault for not getting out and doing something. In between each nap I feel pretty shitty for about 2 hours, then I start to feel better, so I'm wary of leaving the house. Lets see, yesterday I:
--watched 6 hours of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations"
--did laundry
--watched the Sharks game
--watched "Clueless"
--played 5 hours of Zelda; Twilight Princess on Wii
--watched 2 hours of "Full House"

I think I will watch 2 more hours of No Reservations until it's my core nap time. Too much of a sleepiness haze to really concentrate on the video game...

Today I'm going to go check out some pups at an adoption fair. I'm still in the mindset that I'm going to get a dog, and think actually going to look at some is a good step. More than likely this time next month I still will be without a dog, but there is no harm in checking some cute puppies out, right?...

Day 2

Like my 4th nap of Day 1, I had a really hard time falling asleep for my core nap today. Then about 2 hours in the gardner started working next door so I had to scramble to get my head phones and eye mask on and I fell back asleep without much problem. I'm just worried about not getting a full 3 hour core nap, but I guess thats what happens when I have my core nap be in the mid morning...

I'm really feeling the sleep depravation this afternoon. I'm tired like before but I feel really heavy and hazy. I was reading some other polyphasic sleeper blogs and most of the side effects are normal and what I'm used to but an interesting one that caught my eye was the feeling of being cold. One guy mentioned he felt a lot colder all the time and thought it might be due to his metabolism working faster now that he was eating more often. I noticed from last night to now I have been feeling pretty cold, I don't know if this is an actual symptom or if I'm just cold from the cool weather outside :-P

It's taking me forever to write this post, I have spaced out like 3 times, my grammar and spelling might be way off, sorry about that! I just need to get past this daytime waiting period. The ultimate reason why I'm doing this is so I can have more hours during the day to do stuff, but until I'm used to this cycle, the daylight hours are the hardest to get through and I'm pretty useless during them. Time to play ZELDA!!!

End of Day 1

Just woke up from my last nap. A bit strange since it's still dark outside and I'm at home already. We got off work a little early today so I got to take my last nap at home. Except for the 2nd nap, all of them were way off schedule, especially my last one. Hopefully I can start fresh with day 2 and really stick to the schedule.

The last nap was the hardest to fall asleep. I kept thinking about the day and was tossing and turning and only got about 10 minutes of real sleep. The 2nd and 3rd naps were better, I felt I got a full REM cycle in each and I even woke up before my alarm went off for my 3rd nap, although I think it was just from me being paranoid that my alarm wouldn't go off and I would continue to go on sleeping for several hours :-)

In all I feel OK. I'm pretty tired but I have gone though days like this before. I think the next few days will be even more tough since my body will probably feel like it needs to "catch up" on sleep. Excited that day one is over and I'm ready for the weekend!!!

                                              Now I enjoy a clay revitalizing mask. Tingly!

The REAL Day 1 continues...

Just took my second day nap. Oy, I'm still pretty groggy,  I should have bought 5 hour energy when I was at Costco yesterday. I feel like the hardest part of the day will be here at home. I cant really just fall asleep at work, but here I can snooze anywhere anytime. I'm glad I have activities this weekend; bbqs, movies and drag shows. I need excitment to keep me awake! In the meantime, more coffee....

The REAL Day 1

Yup, this is going to be rough for the next couple days. Just had my first "nap". It was around 3 hours and 40 minutes, I need to try to get it down to 3 hours flat but I did snooze some today because I had trouble getting to sleep. I kept jumping awake because I thought I might have slept past the alarm, thus ruining the experiment, but I still had plenty of time left, so I didn't get the full amount of nap time I should have.

Making a big pot of coffee right now and I'm just going to stick around the house, don't want to tire myself out for work. It's going to be a looooooong night. Hopefully our tapes wont come in and it will be slow for me.

Day 2 of "Prep"

So I tried out one of my Night Naps, the 9:40 one, at work today. I brought one of my small throw pillows with me and I took that and my jacket and went into the executive producer of One Big Happy Family's office and lay down on their couch. I had started resting at 9:30 to give myself the 10 minutes to fall asleep. I was surprised to find that I actually did fall asleep, I was dreaming about something to do with tennis. Anyways, my alarm woke me up at 10, I was pretty groggy, but pleased to know I can fall asleep at work. Also I had set up a 30 minute output to capture while I was sleeping, so I was pretty smug that I could work while napping.

Although I said in my last post I was going to wait until Saturday to start, I think I'm going to start the process Friday. That way I can take the brunt of the drowsiness over the weekend and be more used to the routine when Monday comes around. So I'm about to have my last "Full Night" of sleep. A good 8 hours. Then it's so long for a month. I'm still very excited.

Also unrelated but still very amusing, I finally saw Star Trek IV tonight. It is the best thing I have come a cross in a loooong time. Pure joy to hear Spock cuss, amazing. Makes me love Leonard Nimoy even more for directing it.

                                             So good.

Day 1 is now Day 1 "Prep"

As Hillary predicted in the comments of my last post, the loud noises did ruin my experiment this morning. I should have remembered gardner day, since they are so loud every Wednesday. I gave up trying to wake up by 11:10 seeing as I was still awake at 10:30 with weed wackers and chisels from the termite people buzzing and banging in my head. Should have planned better, I was just too excited and wanted to start right away...

So I think the best bet is to start off my schedule after work on Saturday morning. That way I have the entire weekend to work on getting my nap times down, testing them out before I head back to work. Already I'm seeing that the trickiest part is going to be the noise in the morning. I might have to invest in some noise canceling headphones. Any suggestions?....


                                       Me still sleepy at 4pm. I dont want any more of this!!!

Day 1

OK kids, here we go...
As we start out now, I weigh 165 lbs. At 5'9" it's not too bad (but definitely not ideal). I would
like to lose some weight in this experiment, but who knows how that will go. 
I consume on average 3 caffeinated drinks a day, hopefully I can get this down to one a day.
So I worked out my sleep schedule and here is the one I'm going to try to stick to:


8:10 AM - 11:10 AM SLEEP

11:10 AM - 4:20 PM  AWAKE --------- 5 hours 10 mins

4:20 PM - 4:40 PM SLEEP

4:40 PM - 9:40 PM  AWAKE------------- 5 hours

9:40 PM- 10 PM SLEEP

10 PM - 2:50 AM AWAKE----------------- 4 hours 50 mins

2:50 AM - 3:10 AM SLEEP 

3:10 AM - 8:10 AM  AWAKE------------- 5 hours 

AM PM

The only part I am concerned about is the 9:40 pm nap. Sometimes producers are still hanging around the

office at that time so it could be hard to explain why I'm snoozing on the job. I might have to bring my 

yoga mat and hide under an abandoned editing bay to catch some Zzz. I set in my iPhone 8 

alarms. 4 for telling me it's almost nap time, and 4 for my wake up alarm. So I wont forget

either way. Well back to work, going to take my first nap at 8:10, thats when I'm marking the

clock for the month!

Here's what I look like before the madness!!!

Everyman Polyphasic Sleep Cycle

Although this experiment is very spur of the moment I think that it could work out well.
Here are some links on "Everyman Polyphasic Sleep Cycle":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

http://www.highexistence.com/alternate-sleep-cycles/

Although the Uberman Sleep Cycle is the ultimate cycle to reach, I feel It's just way too much for me. 
6 naps are a bit much. Ultimately I just want to be less fatigued, healthier and have more time on my 
hands. In the few hours I have been considering taking on the experiment I have been met with a lot 
of enthusiasm and a ton of skepticism. I'm not trying to prove anything, I just think that my lifestyle of
being a Night AE lends itself to trying out this alternative sleep cycle.
I will try to update everyday, my 
stats as well as how I'm feeling. Wish me luck!