Okay, everything worked out great today! I did not have any problem during the 1-5am period, besides feeling a bit drowsy. Overall there was not too much to say about today, just the usual.

5pm nap:

Well crap, I somehow slept through all of my alarms on this nap. That was totally unexpected. I slept until 7:30pm. Not good. Oh well, I’m only human. On the other hand, I have a funny story! I was sort of getting up and doing a few things..and at about 7:55 I get a call from my mom. At this point I totally freaked out because (for some reason) I thought it was 7:55am instead of pm. The reason this would normally be a problem is that I usually take my sisters to school in the morning, and so I figured my mom was calling to figure out why they weren’t up yet. I ran into my sisters room and flicked on the light. WTF! SHES NOT HERE! So now I am freaking out because my sisters aren’t home. I don’t know what is going on! Oh hell, I realize it’s just 7:55pm. Haha, the days and nights just meld together now.

Anyway, I am slowly feeling more normal. Hopefully I don’t sleep through on any of the next few days. Also I still haven’t really felt the whole “rejuvenated” feeling yet that some people report having after a nap. Every time I wake up it takes me a couple of minutes to get adjusted. I usually get up and stretch and jump around a little bit to get myself fully awake.

1:30 – 5:00 am:

This had to be an absolute nightmare. I could not stay awake no matter how hard I tried. I took 3 extra 30 min naps here just so I could pass the time…even the time I was awake was almost painful, I tried moving around but I was so tired that my head hurts. This sucks bad. I tried to just sit in a chair and veg for a while but my head ended up falling over and I slept for about 10 minutes in a very painful position now my neck hurts. I wonder if I am just not getting any REM at all during this time. I don’t recall having dreams at all.

Rest of the day:

Well the rest of the day was fine. I felt pretty much normal. I also had a dream during my 5pm nap, although before I could write it down I had already forgot it. *shrug*

Final note:

Okay, time to get prepared. I am about to go into the hellacious 1 – 5am stretch. Can I make it? Omg I hope I am more adapted this time, I don’t want to go through another stretch like this morning. Well, I’ll just have to keep myself active and away from the computer if it happens again. I’ll try doing some exercising and I’ll jot down thoughts on my whiteboard until it is over with.

1:30 am:

I am feeling quite a lot better than the previous day. I have no strong pull to crash out, and I in fact feel a bit motivated to get going with various ideas and projects. Currently my mind is still feeling quite heavy…or cloudy…or foggy…something like that. Hard to explain really but its slightly unpleasant. I am certainly ready to be rid of that, but I am sure it will dissipate as soon as I get more and more adapted.

7:30 am:

Uh oh, bit of a setback. After waking up from my 5:30am nap I for some reason decided to take a 2nd one (while still sleepy from waking up) and I actually fell sleep WHILE setting the alarm, so I ended up oversleeping that nap by an hour and a half. Currently after awaken from 2 hours of straight sleep I am feeling as horrible as I did yesterday again. I keep nodding off while just sitting up. In fact I just nodded off for a minute while writing this…hah. Well, hopefully that doesn’t prolong my adaptation too much. We will see.

9:30 am:

The 9am nap brought me back to feeling like I did before the 5am nap. This is so weird lol. It’s like flipping a switch saying okay for the next 4 hours you will feel like doo doo and then next nap its like “okay, you can take a break and not feel so bad this time.” Sorry for the rambling, I’m pretty much out of it. At this point I just can’t wait to get over this whole thing. I’m glad I am motivated, otherwise I can see how at this point most people would quit and beat themselves up. Not me! NO SIR! Rahhhh…heh, okay.

1:30 pm:

Alright, I am seeing definite signs of improvement here now. I woke up 5 minutes before my alarm would have gone off (which is good because I forgot to set it haha), and I feel pretty good. My mind doesn’t feel so heavy and groggy anymore, although there is still a slight notion there that I am not to my full capacity yet. Overall I have good energy and alertness. I am not constantly falling asleep while just sitting here…which is good lol. I will finally begin doing some productive work again now.

5:30 pm:

I woke up to the alarm. Feeling okay. A bit less sharp than the last nap but not by much. One thing I haven’t experienced yet is any real vivid dreams…in fact I can not even remember having had dreams except for 2 this entire 6 days. I am sure I will eventually start to experience them in more detail though.

1:30 am:

I am extremely tired right now. As I sit here I am literally falling asleep while sitting up. I’m just trying to play video games to pass the time until the next nap. I can’t wait for it to get here. I think I will put in a nap at 3am just to help out a bit.

Today is truly a way. I am fighting off just passing out completely every second. It’s hard to even play any games right now. If everyone wasn’t sleeping I’d turn on some loud music and try to clean up some parts of the house or something like that.

5:30 am:

I had another dream during this nap. Again, more notification that I am moving closer to being adapted, which is encouraging…I just hope this zombielike state does not last for long, I am on the very edge of functionality.

I decided to take two extra naps in between my usual ones at 9am and 1am and 1am - 5am. They didn’t really help but they allowed me to get through with the day quicker which is all I really want to do right now…just be done with it and get to the good stuff!

5:30 pm:

Alright, after this nap I am not so dysfunctional, however I still don’t feel like I can do much more than veg out anyways. One of the things I have researched is that diet has a huge impact on how sleep works. I am currently trying to work myself towards more of a vegetarian diet, with just a small amount of meat here and there such as some bits of turkey on my salad…that sort of thing. I am currently eating lots of bananas, grapes, nuts, granola / flax, and apples. Also I eat a salad consisting of spinach leaves / turkey / olive oil about once a day.

I know I will be getting over this extremely unproductive stage pretty soon, so I think I will begin to formulate a TODO list of things I would like to accomplish with all of my extra time that I now have.

Alright it is day 4 of Polyphasic sleep.  So far it hasn’t been too hard to stay awake. During some naps I tend to wake up around 15 minutes after I lay down. I wake up with a jerk. I felt good when I woke, but decided I should go ahead and lay back down anyway just to make sure.

Also, unexpectedly  I just recalled having a very vivid dream after my 9am nap. You know what that means, my body is beginning to enter REM sleep. Although that should rejuvenate me afterwards, I actually feel extremely tired right now. More so than any other time I’ve awoken from a nap. I tried to squeeze in an extra small nap at 10:30 however I don’t feel any different and do not remember any nap from that dream either.

I In fact was so tired I was practically falling asleep while sitting upright by just resting my head on my hands and closing my eyes lol. I had to just play some video games until my next nap.

The rest of the day didn’t really go much better either, still just basically zombified and I was not able to work on anything productive.

Okay, so 3 days ago I decided to attempt a technique called Polyphasic sleep. Over the last 2 months I have done a lot of research on sleep, and ways to manipulate it, how it works, etc. Anyway, with Polyphasic sleep, what I will be doing is basically taking 6 short 20-30 minute naps every 4 hours, for a total of about 2 hours of sleep. (you have to subtract the time it takes for me to fall asleep)

Now, most people would think, “Omg, you are crazy…you are going to die.” Hah, well yes I understand that notion, HOWEVER…I have done quite a bit of research into it and have found that there is actually no real scientific research done on the subject of whether it is unsafe long term or not. As far as short term, everybody has reported AMAZING results…things such as:

• Increased energy
• Overall happier
• Obviously…MANY more hours
• A feeling of being in a higher creative state of mind, (otherwise known as Theta or Beta brain waves I believe)

As far as disadvantages : everything that I read was mainly related to the social aspect of it. Due to the fact that the world at large sticks to a Monophasic sleep cycle, it makes it difficult for some people to stick to the schedule restrictions of Polyphasic sleep. People report hitting a wall if they try and stay up more than 5-6 hours at a time, and say that they absolutely have to take a nap or they are just about dysfunctional. Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com switched back to Monophasic sleep after 5 1/2 months because of the fact that he goes to a lot of meetings and stuff, which makes it difficult to adjust to the sleep schedule. Buckminster Fuller switched back to Monophasic after a few years because of basically the same reason: business meetings etc…

Anyway, as far as I can tell from my own personal research…Polyphasic sleep is extremely beneficial for ANYONE who can get it to work with their schedule. Even people who cannot, may actually benefit in the long term by at least working themselves through the adaptation period…at least according the results pointed out by Steve Pavlina, where he stated that he is still able to take a 15 minute nap and come out COMPLETELY refreshed, since he is now able to switch into REM sleep mode almost immediately. (The sleep cycle which rejuvenates us)

Alright, so that’s a bit of a quick rundown for anybody who is curious. Obviously if you want to know more, search on Wikipedia and Google for more information. Also, you can view another log of Polyphasic sleep on Steve Pavlina’s website.

Now real quickly, I want to wrap up by giving an account of how it has gone thus far. Day 1 and 2 weren’t too bad, however I did have trouble during my 1am sleep phase, as I slept straight through my alarm. So, in reality I’d like to say that I am more like…at day 1.5. Now that I know where my area of greatest downtime is, (between 1-5) I will compensate by adding extra alarms during that time.

Currently, I feel a BIT foggy in the head…although not as bad as my almost zombie like state between around 11-5am.

Well, that is all for today. I will keep adding additional information about sleep in general, as well as information on my current adaptation of Polyphasic sleep over the next few days.

Since my website is brand new and most of the things I have planned are not yet implemented I thought it would be useful to keep this up so everyone (including myself) could see what IS done and what to expect to see soon. Read the rest of this entry »