We're back.

I'm in India for a few months, and I decided on a whim to try polyphasic sleep again while I was here. Everyman3, with sleep scheduled at 4-7, 12, 18, and 23. I wrote a quick schedule here with how long I'll be awake each time so I can see how balanced it is, and an alternate schedule for a friend that works better for him, plus allows me to check up on him.

I got 6 hours of sleep last night in preparation. I was planning on 8 hours but I was kept awake by miliaria (heat rash), and due to my grogginess I think I woke up a bit early during N3 sleep in the morning.

First nap was great. I laid down and almost immediately felt the familiar twinge of losing consciousness. I still have it! I slept from approximately 12:08 to 12:15 (guessing, since I didn't take my eyemask off). I stayed there until the alarm went, and now I don't have the grogginess of this morning.

I'm not as sure about being committed to this attempt as the previous ones because I don't have pressing matters, so we'll see if I'm still enjoying it as much in 3 days. :P

Thu Oct 15 12:53:15 IST 2009

;hunter

Wheeee

Okay, that was about 10 weeks of mostly-successful everyman. I'm getting my motorcycle permit, and as much as I hate to admit it I'm not *always* fully rested and aware of my surroundings on this last polyphasic sleep, so I'm taking a break for a few weeks to get comfortable on the motorcycle. I pulled out a few days ago and have been sleeping 6 to 8 hours a night with no problems at all. I would say I was not lacking in sleep, and this shows that it doesn't build a sleep-debt.

Be back in a few weeks. Sorry Jorel, I guess I'm only "long term" in the sense that I'm not dying when I try it, and that only comes with practice.

;hunter

"I'm still alive"

(If you don't recognize the title then you MUST go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI )

Sorry, I was trying to update once a month to stay on Jorel314's list but forgot with midterms and everything.

I'm still going everyman, and it's great. In the average week I sleep normal naps at 9:40, 16:00, and 21:40, and try to do a 3-hour core starting at 3:00. I end up doing 4.5hr core two days/week and maybe a 6hr core one day/week, but gain about 15 to 25 hours (out of a max of 28) per week so I count that acceptable (I tend to sleep in if I don't have pressing matters). I think my "long sleep" is more like 80 or 85 minutes instead of 90, so I've been dialing it back a little to try and eliminate the super-groggy mornings. Maybe I'm one of the people who needs 6 REMs...

Back in a month, or see you on #polyphasers.

;hunter

Oops update

Relating to my last post, I did uberman from Dec 20th to 29th, and everyman from Dec 30th to Feb 4th, for a total of ~45 days. I stopped because of a poor weekend, poor napping conditions, and missed naps due to midterms. I started again on Mar 16th (as soon as I felt safe with finals) and it has been going acceptably well. I feel like I all of a sudden need less sleep, for no reasonable explination, even polyphasic.

I've found that keeping track of my sleep schedule and recording my actual sleep works much better in Google Calendar than blogging it. I sort of blog it in a way since I try to add a short note to every entry. You can see it at hunnur.com (it's the red blocks) and if you click the records you'll most likely get whatever I spewed right after the nap, or if I didn't record until later anything I could remember. I'll be updating there instead of here, but I'll still try to make posts here for jorel314's blog.

Polyphasic or bust!

;hunter

Pushpop

Short update, because there's not much to say. Everyman is going great, but I think my core cycles are more like 75-80 minutes long than 90 so I'll shorten my core a bit.

Lots more people in irc://irc.freenode.net/#polyphasers than last time, which is nice.

;hunter

Prepare to make the jump

Okay, time for an update. I did uberman from the 20th to the 29th, then began the transition to everyman on midnight of the 30th. My core is 2am to 5am, and three 20 minute naps at 10am, 3pm, and 10pm.

This uberman adaptation went so well that I can really see how messed up my original attempt was. I had the totally wrong mentality about getting my naps mostly on time vs. exactly on time, and where I was sleeping played a big role in it. This time I have gotten them all in bed and on time, and I feel much better. By the time I switched to everyman I was sleeping deeply for all of my naps, feeling rested most all of the time, and not oversleeping.

Everyman so far seems much more convenient than uberman because there is no 6pm nap, there is greater spacing between naps, and moving naps is much more flexible. I haven't moved them yet, but I can tell that uberman allows none of that, and people report everyman is more lenient.

I have had trouble getting up and staying up from my core (I start dozing off in my chair) but I have made it these three days with no major oversleeps and it's only getting easier. Switching from uberman meant that I start out being able to get sleep during the naps, but I think the core overdosed me on REMs and caused some vibrations for the rest of the sleep schedule, but they are receeding.

This next quarter I may have a problem with my physics class which runs TTH from 14:00 to 16:50, so I'll have to see how taking a 20 minute nap in the middle of class works. (I didn't have problems with it before in physics ;) )

I am only posting a little information here because most of the details get spewed into #polyphasers on irc.freenode.org. There are a lot (10 or more) people on there who are also doing polyphasic sleeping. It's been really nice to have people to talk to in real time who are also figuring this out.

;hunter

Neophasic

As mentioned, I have plans to do everyman. With further reading it appears that long-term (one month plus) überman sleeping patterns are near-unheard of, while there are many long term (and currently ongoing) everyman sleepers in excess of one year.

My wife was very much against me trying polyphasic and only let me because she could see it was something that I really wanted to do[...].

After a couple weeks on the schedule she got to be a huge fan of it and is now my best supporter, she gets very annoyed when I mess up my schedule and miss naps, etc. She has said many times that she has seen a complete change in me since I started polyphasic, I used to be useless in the evening but now I am alert at any time in the day and happier since I finally have time to work on my own stuff.

Also just so you know, I am a pretty long term polyphaser, I have been on the Everyman schedule for about a year and three months now. - Marcus Weidner

Rather than attempting to start everyman from scratch and endure the initial month of warmup, I decided to use my practice at uberman and transition to everyman after a short acclimation to uberman. I believe this will be simple to do as many oversleeps of the uberman schedule parallel everyman, and will shorten adaptation to only the length of uberman, which is about 10 days. I also only have about 14 days total before school starts again.

This time around I've decided to count days starting at midnight instead of 6am like in my previous posts. I've entered the 2nd 'day'. This point corresponds to nearing the 3rd day of my original attempt and just as I had hoped the second adaptation period is easier than the first. I haven't overslept yet (by this time I had a 3 hour over sleep originally) and I have made all of my naps comfortably in bed and on time (previously I had slightly sporadic naps and several were uncomfortable, like in a car).

Much of my excitement and textual output has been spent in irc://freenode.net/#polyphasers which is why I have not posted much information here. The polyphasic sleepers there with me are Loïc, Netopalis, Bobrobyn, and Kurou.

Note to other poly-sleepers: Dymaxion is not real! Don't bring it up if you can help it, and never paint it in a positive light. We need to work to get this 'deadman schedule' out of common usage because many newbies are attracted to it like flys to a flyzapper. They attempt it because it looks the most attractive. They fail and falsely assume that polyphasic sleeping is impossible.

;hunter