Sunday, February 4, 2007

Day Zero...Again.

A couple of months ago i randomly discovered (thank you, StumbleUpon!) Steve Pavlina's interesting site, and, subsequently, a post on polyphasic sleeping.
For those of you who are panicked and screaming MY GOD WOMAN DON'T USE BIG WORDS, AND ALSO I LACK THE ABILITY TO CLICK ON LINKS, i'll go ahead and tell you just what the fuck polyphasic sleeping is.
Poly-many
phasic-phases. duh.
sleeping-......
Basically polyphasic sleeping (more specifically, the Uberman schedule) is when Truly Badass People sleep in 20-minute chunks (consisting, after the initial adjustment period of a week or so, of pure REM) six times a day, four hours apart. Besides the obvious benefit of 22-hour days in which to do whatever the fuck you want, other advantages reported by the few people who managed to survive the first week include more energy, more vivid dreams, even more lucid dreams. To avoid being redundant, i suggest checking out Steve's Pavlina's successful polyphasic experiment, as well as this guy's and Uberman's Sleep Schedule on Everything2.com. They have tons of information and i just don't feel the need to re-post all of it.
I actually began my own polyphasic sleep experiment exactly one week ago, with mixed results. The first few days i was lucky if i could catch even one nap a day--i've always had a hard time falling asleep. But despite an amount of sleep that most people would consider "Not Nearly Enough," i found i had plenty of energy--except, funnily enough, when i overslept. I overslept every other day, from one hour, to three hours, to six hours, and last night...thirteen hours. Even when i did oversleep, i kept my nap schedule, napping at 2AM, 6AM, 10AM, 2PM, 6PM, and 10PM, even if all i did was lay quietly in the dark. Even today, when i woke up around 3 or 4 PM, i took my regular 6pm "nap" (obviously not sleeping) and will restart my experiment without a break in my nap schedule.
Instead of being upset, sad, disappointed or frustrated about my oversleepings, I've found that every slip-up has made me more determined to do this right. One factor involved in the oversleepings was the loss of my cell phone (and it's trusty, trusty alarm) and my watch (and it's trusty, trusty alarm), when i had to start relying on my really-not-so-trustworthy alarm clock and ipod alarm. So, tomorrow morning before classes, i plan to head down to the T-Mobile store and get a new SIM card for the extra cell phone my sister gave me, and buy a new watch.
During the first successful days of last week's attempt, i found i had more energy than ever (which was somewhat intense for those around me sometimes). I began eating smaller, more frequent meals of healthier foods, and found I was far more willing to fulfill un-fun obligations because i knew i had more than enough time to do those along with everything else i could possibly want to do.
I love this schedule because i'm able to begin/return to activities i'd gotten too lazy to make time for, such as: reading the news and keeping up on current events, going to early-morning yoga classes, doing sudoku, reading non-fiction, reading novels (i read 2 last week alone) and writing in my journal.
In this cycle, i get to be a night-owl as well as a morning-person, and i love being awake those times of day while the rest of the world is asleep. I started to see time differently--as flowing continuously rather than ending at night and beginning in the morning. And, as i've always had a difficult time falling asleep or even being tired (i'd often find myself glancing at the clock at 2-4 in the morning and thinking "oh,i should probably go to bed now." ...and then being unable to fall asleep), the polyphasic schedule is perfect for remedying this--i began, before my last, big slip-up, to start falling asleep within five minutes, and i never, EVER woke up tired--i'd always leap out of bed, so awake that i was actually unsure of whether or not i'd even slept!
I'm curious if this week's Re-Adjustment period will be easier or more difficult than last week's attempt. In a sense, i can see it being easier because my body is already mostly accustomed to the naps. But, it also got used to sleeping-in, and for longer and longer periods.
So my birthday present to myself has been to this experiment--I'm always looking for ways to be better in every way, and the polyphasic sleep schedule is undeniably conducive to that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Miss you.

Love you.

~Ally