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This is the half-way point of my 30 day trial, and overall things are going well. My thoughts to this point:

Naps and Core Sleep

I now set my timer for 25 minutes, and it seems to work well. Sometimes I am not aware of sleeping, but I wake up rested. I have had 1 lucid dream (last week) and only a few dreams that I can remember. Waking up between 20 and 30 minutes after I lay down is easy to do.

At first, if I missed a nap I automatically increased my core sleep. Doing so always left me tired in the morning, and not wanting to get up. I tried leaving my core sleep at 3 hours, I was ready to wake up but I was tired again within a few hours.

The new plan if I miss a nap or am over-tired is to take 3 hours of core sleep, then add 1 or 2 naps as needed.

Tiredness

From 6:30 am to 8 am is a struggle if I am sitting down (which I am since I’m trying to write). From midnight to 1 am is almost impossible if I am sitting. I am moving my morning nap to 8 am or even 7:30 am, since tiredness is not an issue during the day. In the evening I am trying a later nap time (9 or 10 pm) and I need to keep moving, I have plenty of house projects to do! Daytime, afternoons and evenings I rarely feel tired.

Over-all effect

Since I mainly work from home, and my husband works nights, the adaptation has been fairly painless on my commitments. My evening nap gets shifted back often, but taking it later seems to work better anyway. Major workouts are something I will have to figure out, I will probably try adding more naps.

The Next 15 Days

So for the second half of the trial I’m going to move my naps around (8am, ~2pm, 9:30pm) to combat tiredness. I’m going to take extra naps if needed, and keep my core sleep the same. I am really looking forward to experimenting a bit. Being a night owl and a morning person at the same time is great.

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I overslept on my core sleep on day 5, probably due to my youngest getting up at 2am. I messed up my wakeup time on 2 naps on day 6, so I have been tweaking my phone alarms to make it easier to set the correct wakeup time (I haven’t been able to find my timer). Falling asleep for naps has gotten easier. Being awake late at night is slightly easier, but being awake in the early morning is tough. Today I had to stay up and moving, but that means that the house looks a lot better, I even decluttered my desk. The day has gone well and I’m enjoying the schedule - the sleep times are semi-important, but the length of each sleep period is the most important.

Week 1 Notes

• Core sleep needs to start on time (within 5 minutes).
• The time I take naps seems to be semi-flexible, but the length needs to be adhered to. Oversleeping a nap makes it difficult to fall asleep on the next nap.
• Actually waking up (core and naps) is rather easy. I’m not groggy unless I oversleep.
• My short term memory has suffered this week.
• Being a night owl and a morning bird has been great.
• Very late night and early morning are the most difficult times (the time you would normally be asleep). Daytime and evenings are normal, other than occasional tiredness.

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Day 3

Yesterday I was dragging in the early morning. I overslept (communication error about my wakeup time) for my morning nap. In the mid-morning and afternoon I felt great. I had a difficult time sleeping for my afternoon and evening naps.

I was productive: I organized / simplified my email. So now everything goes to one gmail account and I will be setting up filters as I receive mail to properly tag items, and to automatically archive my “routine” emails (so they do not appear in the Inbox at all, just under their labels). I am not done tweaking but I got the entire base system set up.

Mentally I even managed to explain the backend process of a database driven web page to a client in a way she understood, but most of my activities today were physical. It was a pretty good day though.

Day 4

Today it was a little harder to get up, but still nothing like when I was sleeping normal hours and attempted to get up early (or I failed to get up early). This morning I actually was able to work at my computer, filing in sample data on a client website for the purpose of showing them how the web site works. (We are going from a mostly static website to using Drupal). Not a lot of mental processing, but a very promising start - getting up at 4 am to do dishes won’t motivate me for long.

I slightly overslept on my morning (about 1 hour) and afternoon nap (35 - 40 minutes) - apparently adding 30 minutes to the current time is difficult right now. I was unable to sleep at all for my evening nap but I did set the alarm properly.

I am trying to be honest in my experience and strike the right balance between detail and brevity. The next four days will be easier (my husband will not be on graveyard, so he can watch the kids and I can be more strict on nap times) - I hope to be physically adapted by then.

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I got up at 4 am, again without procrastinating. I couldn’t really focus and started nodding off while sitting and reading. I solved that by getting up and doing housework.

I was very tired around 6 am again. I couldn’t sit down without nodding off, so I stood in the kitchen and organized a plan to keep the house cleaner and hopefully get my boys to help out. (Haha!) I broke it down into tasks I need to complete as well as what I need the whole family to work on. That is probably what I’ll work on in the early morning for a few days.

My morning nap was great, it felt like I had slept for hours. The rest of the morning went well.

I ended up sleeping through my alarm during my afternoon nap, I probably slept 45 minutes to an hour. It took about 5 minutes for me to get up. I will set my cellphone alarm for naps in the future.

I did another home project this evening, and then tried to take my evening nap. I got to a very relaxed state, but I didn’t fall asleep. Right now I am tired, while trying to review my German lesson I couldn’t concentrate or formulate answers.

I guess I would describe my physical state as great but my mental state as about 50%. Luckily I have several physical projects to do over the weekend - I hope to be fairly adapted by Monday so I can get a productive week of work in.

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Well Day 1 went fairly well. I was able to get up at 4 am without any problems. This surprises me, since I have a very hard time getting up normally - especially if I had under 6 hours of sleep. I have the BioBrite sunrise alarm clock, and I hang my cell phone on the bathroom door with the alarm set. I felt (relatively) alert and got moving.

I had intended to use the early morning time to write, but I’m going to have to stay away from the computer in the morning until I get used to this schedule - it was very difficult to stay awake - especially starting around 6 am. My husband was nice enough to help me stay awake from 8 to 9 am, when I took a nap. I had some trouble falling asleep, but I did doze off. I felt refreshed upon waking up. I really think a shorter nap is the way to go.

I started feeling tired for the afternoon nap, and I believe I slept for a little while. Again I woke up refreshed. My evening was pretty chaotic, between 3:45 and 8:50 we have 3 people in 3 different Taekwondo classes, plus we need to eat dinner. After I got home I was so wound up I couldn’t relax and fall asleep. I stayed laying down the whole time.

I have actually been very productive tonight - working on a client’s website. I am getting tired but at least I am getting some work done. I don’t think it will take long to fall asleep tonight.

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After reading about Steve Pavlina’s Polyphasic Sleep Trial last year, I have considered the idea of trying it myself. Instead of 6 to 9 hours of sleep at night, in polyphasic sleep (also called Uberman sleep) you take a 20-30 minute nap every 4 hours, for a total of 2-3 hours of sleep in a day. Read the original article for more information. Steve Pavlina writes:

Polyphasic sleep completely rewrote my whole concept of time, and I was totally unprepared for that. I no longer think of time in terms of individual days — now it’s a continuous and never-ending flow.

I did research (there is very little information) and always concluded that I couldn’t control my schedule that closely, especially with very young children. While it would be nice to have more quiet time to work, the schedule wasn’t realistic.

Something Has to Change

I decided earlier this week I had to do something to increase my energy. I am sick and tired of being tired and sick everyday. My sinuses are causing trouble and I have a constant cough. I looked at my life and decided the top things to change would be my sleep patterns or my diet. I have already begun changing my diet, and I feel that a little more time is needed to make those changes habits. My current sleep patterns are horrible: due to remodeling last month I have been sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress, plus my bedtime and wakeup time vary by several hours. I haven’t felt rested in a month, and my productivity is non-existent.

Biphasic Sleep

I attempted to switch to biphasic sleep a few times last year, but was unsuccessful. Biphasic sleep consists of a nightly core sleep (usually 3 or 4.5 hours) and a daily nap (usually 90 minutes). I just could not fit a 90 minute nap into my schedule, even when I tried to nap I seemed more tired afterwords. Plus I really hated missing out on what the family was doing.

In case you are wondering, the sleep times are in 90 minute increments because of studies showing that is a full sleep cycle. Waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle will leave you feeling groggy, whereas waking up at the end leaves you rested and alert. At least its supposed to.

The Everyman Polyphasic Sleep Schedule

While browsing information about polyphasic and biphasic sleep I came across references to a different kind of polyphasic sleep: the Everyman Schedule. Instead of eliminating the core sleep you shorten it and supplement with multiple 20-30 minute naps. Typical schedules include a 3 hour core with 3-4 naps and a 4.5 hour core with 2-3 naps. The adaptation period is much shorter than the Uberman schedule, and the schedule is more flexible. I tried a short nap yesterday and it was very restorative.

30 Day Trial

So today (April 10) I began my 30 day trial. The plan is to sleep from 1 am to 4 am, and then to take a 30 minute nap at 9 am, 2 pm and 8 pm. I will post updates of my progress and thoughts throughout the trial.

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