An update

August 19, 2009 – 05:49

Sorry I’ve been so lax lately.

For the same reasons as last time I’m delaying (temporarily!) any drastic change my sleeping pattern – this really isnt a good time to be feeling sub-optimal at school. The extra time awake – even if it came at the obvious price – last week was incredibly useful, particularly one time where I was required to complete 10 hours of mundane work in a night (couldn’t've seen it coming but it had to be done). But for the next couple of months I need my brain and myself in the same place at all times.

So my theories about all this (yes I have actually learned something, I think): it’s possible. As soon as I start entering REM sleep within 4 minutes, this works fine. I was probably going about it the wrong way though. Take the (relatively) commonly attempted uberman pattern, adaptation period is about a week, assuming perfect discipline. i.e. it takes a week of sleep deprivation to enter REM within 20 minutes. I therefore assume that entering REM in 4 would take about 10-14 days to achieve.

Going that long without decent sleep probably isn’t going to do you any favours: it makes stuffing everything up far more likely and, even assuming the best case scenario, the recovery peroid (the one in which you feel… not quite fantastic but getting better with each nap… kind of thing) is likely to be much longer. When I try this next I’ll have adapted to uberman first. Being already used to entering REM quickly should make this achievable.

As I found out in the last couple of days of my last attempt (see last post), it is definately possible to enter REM in 4 minutes, and that was enough to keep me energetic for nearly two hours. It only happened the one time, despite the fact that I didn’t oversleep afterwards (for the next couple of days) but that’s enough. I know it’s possible. “I’ve seen the light… And it was warm.” (First part misquoted, I know. I’m sorry.)

The following formula came rather out of the blue so it could be complete bullshit, but it’s consistent with my knowledge of sleep (however limited) and I’m yet to find anything wrong with it). Nap length required for an equiphasic pattern (this excludes everyman) is determined by:

t(s) = 60K / n^[log(4,6)+1]

where t(s) is the time in minutes per sleep, n is the number of sleeps per 24 hours and K is what I call the “slackness factor” – purely by coincidence (*cough*) it happens to be exactly equal to the number of hours one would ideally sleep if they were monophasic. This also assumes that the person is actually adapted to whatever pattern they’re on. I hope that it’s readable, however badly laid out it is. The log function is read as “log of 4 to base 6″, ie log4 / log6, and is roughly equal to 0.7737. (Just mentioned that since I’ve no idea how to write logs without a subscript and I probably got something wrong.)

For those who hate maths the approximation (well actually they’re both approximations since we don’t really know what the actual relationship is) is:

t(s) =  60K / N^1.7737

By the way… this means that, in terms of efficiency, the ideal sleeping pattern is an infinite number of infinitesimal naps. Total nap time there being 0! So I can’t see any reason to stop at 16.

I still find all this very interesting so if I have any interesting (id est insane) ideas in the meantime I’ll be sure to post them. There’s a 95% chance I’ll get impatient and start this in the middle of november (I have nothing important on from that time onwards), but my current intention is to adapt to uberman starting dec 12. I’ll be interrupted about 5 times over the following weeks, but a start is a start and I’ll get there.

Now, to quote a friend of mine to finish off:

“You’re insane

“I’d say you’re a bloody loon

“You’re more insane than I am

“…this person is insane”

He’s clinically insane, so I’m so very proud!

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (0)

Day 1.5ish (Hour 38). Very interesting.

August 12, 2009 – 19:31

The last 18 hours have been rather tiring but perfectly bearable overall. Alertness has ranged between fully awake and alert, to, at one point, falling asleep while talking. (sorry!). these fluctuations in alertness, I’m assuming have everything to do with the quality of stimulation at the time: almost always felt fully alert when talking to someone.

Last nap (1830) was fascinating. “Life got in the way”, so I skipped naps 1350,1520,1700. So to compensate I just overslept (accidently) for 1 minute, but woke up incredibly refreshed. Well below “well rested”, it was the kind of feeling that you get when youve just done a lot of exercise or something, go to bed, wake up the next morning and think “Oh fuck is it morning already?”: in pain but feeling like you will actually be able to get through the day. However short, the 5 min nap seemed to do a lot.

The naps are getting longer, too. Clock always says 4 minutes but they’re starting to feel like 10-60 minutes now. I do hope this is not a temporary thing, it’s a wonderful feeling. First time I’ve enjoyed sleeping in ages.

Now a huge plus of this pattern (not that it’s yet been demonstrated to work at all): yes, you have to go to bed 16-20 times a day, but the naps are really unobtrusive. My dad just asked me “So are you going to have a nap?” or something to that effect, to which I replied: “I just did”. The point being they can fit in the tiniest of gaps in the day.

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (1)

Ever napped in your sleep?

August 12, 2009 – 02:53

As crazy as it may sound I’m fairly sure I’ve just done so. I decided to have a nap – WHILE ALREADY ASLEEP.

I was listening to some music last night, and the last thing I remember I was half-way through track 6 of an album and then that was it. I assume I fell asleep. (By the way that would confirm the advice of many that I’ve been foolish to ignore: distract yourself from fatigue, keep moving, etc.) But my mp3 player was paused at the start of track 9! Can’t have been an accident as a result of pressing a random button as I rolled over; the keypad was locked.

However, it seems too much of a coincidence that, had I kept listening to the album continously as I’d intended to – without falling asleep – it would have been naptime at the start of track 9. My conclusion is that, despite already being asleep, I decided that it was time for a nap at that point. Interesting, I thought.

Alas, I don’t know if I was capable of setting alarms while already in (probably) deep sleep, but if I did I slept right through them. But that wasn’t really the point of this post. Actually, looking through the records of when my alarm track was last played, it seems that I probably did set my alarm and slept through it. Ouch, my ears!! although I don’t remember a thing, if my alarm track had indeed been playing it can’tve done my ears any good (I relied much on volume for the alarm to work.)

As mentioned at some point before, as of tonight I shouldn’t have any excuses not to stick to the aforeproposed (probably not a word but who cares) schedule so the posts from now on will actually mean something, whether I fail horribly or not.

I technically call this the end of day 0, now, of my adaptation ( in the light of my 5-hour sleepfest last night) as I’ve been up 21 hours. I hope I’m both making sense and not defying any conventions for naming days, but day 1 starts when I’ve already been up 24 hours, etc.

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (0)

Nap schedule

August 10, 2009 – 22:26

I forgot about this. I previously mentioned (I think and hope) that I’d be taking naps “as required” but it seems better to keep it structured, as per any other successful polyphasic adaptation. Nap schedule: 0600.0800.0930.1030.1150.1350.1520.1700.1830.2000.2130.2300.0000.0100.0200.0300.0400.0500

Yes, I know that’s too many. I’ll be playing around with different times/quantities of naps for a while, I think. First thing I would change is make the night-time naps all 90 minutes apart, [...2300.0030.0130.0300.0430.0600] but I cant really change the day time ones; the times mentioned are the only chance I’m likely to get between classes. And I’m travelling/eating 0600-0800. I hope to stay on this for a few days and see which naps are the most redundant

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (0)

An update.

August 10, 2009 – 18:09

I don’t have much to say but for the purposes of keeping an accurate log:

Currently sleeping 4 hours monophasically with 1 or 2 randomly placed naps throughout the day if I get the time and can be bothered. (It’s interesting that I can cope like this – given the choice I sleep 12 hours a night on weekends, and during the week usually feel mildly sleep deprived on 6. And little to no ill effects to speak of now. Confirming that sleep is indeed a waste of time)

A combination of laziness and things getting in the way have kept me from staying on the schedule any longer than a day (24 hours), as of tomorrow night I have nothing planned for a bit over a week so that should be the actual adaptation period for hexadecaphasic.

So as of tomorrow I will have no excuses, either I will die for science or will adapt to a sleeping schedule utterly bizarre… :)

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (0)

New Schedule: Hexadecaphasic

August 7, 2009 – 18:02

I’ve not posted anything here lately since my discipline in the last few days was terrible and I haven’t really had anything interesting to add. Just a cycle of “oversleep; get up angry, go to school, skip a couple of naps, go home, oversleep, and repeat”. My getting sick didnt really help things; it probably caused most of my troubles. Yesterday I decided that 8 naps was not a sufficiently stupid idea to be worth trying, so I’ve changed it to 16 per day. Also, “hexadecaphasic” sounds much cooler than “octaphasic”. (4 mintutes each). I may have to structure them a bit better later on if this is to work, but for now I’m just taking 4 minute naps “as required”, though with not less than 56 minutes separating each in order to avoid excessive sloth during the night. At the moment I seem to have inadvertently arrived on a rather strange everyman pattern of a 4hr core (2-6 am) and 4×4 min naps. (all in the afternoon). I cant complain since I get a little extra time and I don’t feel sleep deprived, but I still plan on adapting to the 16×4 min pattern. And the accidental core naps are getting shorter, which is good.

I suspect the next few posts will just be random ramblings, but hopefully they’ll provide a reasonably accurate perspective of what this is like for someone as slack as myself and cant be f***ed getting up at 2 in the morning. When I’m done with this I’ll hopefully condense the thing so it’s a little less long-winded, and repetitive; and so it may even be of scientific merit.

Last night seemed to be going well, I was sleeping well and waking up fine. After my 0200 nap I even felt reasonably alert mentally, but slightly lethargic so I thought I might press the snooze button. Oops. I’ll just have to keep refining the art of waking up.

One last note about the naps: by some miracle I’ve actually been getting to sleep. Usually for the full 4 minutes. Interestingly, after waking up from these it doesnt feel like I’ve been asleep any less  than it did waking up from an Uberman nap.

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (1)

Day 1

August 2, 2009 – 10:34

Well I feel like crap but I can confidently say that my brain is working as well as it ever does, judging by the maths I was just doing.

I think I overslept this morning… maybe an hour or so? I can’t remember anything that happened between 9 and 10. But as long as I dont make a habit of that I don’t expect it’ll make a great deal of difference.

Last 5 naps have been excellent, falling asleep straight away and waking up within 1 second of the alarm: probably the reason why my cognition hasnt suffered. Yet :P

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (1)

Day 1 and Day 0 Take 2.

August 1, 2009 – 17:01

The last few days seemed to go both very well and very badly: at the end of day 1 I decided to go back to monophasic sleep (temporarily). Reason being that excessive anger seemed to be a side-effect of a weeks worth of heavily disturbed sleep, and I didn’t particularly want to be taking my grumpiness out on anyone I gave a crap about. So the plan was to wait until the school holidays.

But with all this extra sleep, even after a few days I’m not feeling better in any way, and a lot less time to get through all the crap that needs to be done, figuratively speaking. So if it doesn’t kill me, I will actually adapt this time.

The last few naps before I temporarily gave up (end of day 1, I’d been up about 50 hours) were interesting. I still felt horrible but they were becoming increasingly refreshing and it was taking about 1.5 seconds to fall asleep. So contrary to my initial doubts, I actually expect this to work this time.

Now, off to my 1700 nap.

Oh and an interesting note about my memory at the moment. I sat down this afternoon today to do a week’s maths work, only to open my folder and find that I’d already done it. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember doing it at all (conclusion is that I did it a couple of days ago, when my fatigue was at its greatest). It was a wonderful feeling: to my perception, my work was literally doing itself.

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (0)

Day 0

July 29, 2009 – 04:29

Okay, despite having slept, on average, a couple of hours a night for the last 5 (having been half-heartedly attempting Uberman, skipping every third nap or so), I’m calling this day 0. I overslept enough that I doubt it the last few days will be of great help now. Also, just to clarify, in the following posts I’m arbirtrarily declaring the day to start at 0600.

So far nothing particularly eventful has happened; during the naps I’ve had so far I’ve just laid down, set a timer, heard an alarm and got up. No troubles getting up yet, which is excellent. Originally I had thought that so early on in the adaptation I wouldn’t have a hope of getting to sleep in 8 minutes. (Sleeping monophasically it takes me 30-120 minutes depending on how late I stay up.) I have absolutely no idea whether I’ve slept during the naps so far, I can’t really remember, and since it was such a short period that elapsed, a chunk missing from my memory doesn’t assure me I slept.

However, the bastard of a headache I had 7 hours ago has all but disappeared, and the naps were enjoyable and relaxing, regardless of whether I actually slept.

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (1)

Octaphasic Sleep Adaptation Log

July 28, 2009 – 10:09

This is a blog about polyphasic sleep.

Octaphasic sleep: Eight naps per 24 hours, each 8 minutes in duration.

Oh, how I will miss the first few days of trying to adapt to Uberman: those lengthy naps were truly a luxury.

As to the name of this blog, I had no idea so I chose the least creative one possible. I should probably come up with a real name for it, but right now that seems beyond my capabilities.

I intend updating the blog daily; this will probably work out to be 5 days a week.

Some history and why I amd doing this: I first attempted an uberman schedule three weeks ago, which seemed to get off to a good start but I was subsequently forced to resume sleeping like a normal person due to relatives coming to visit. Four days ago I started again, delighted that I had actually found a schedule that would, in theory, fit in with my school day, but come nap time it seemed like a much better idea to socialise now, and sleep later when there is nothing better to do. That being a typical monophasic argument so it seemed that uberman wasn’t going to get me very far. Perhaps what annoyed me the most (besides the fact that all I ever wanted to do was sleep) was the fact that a twenty-minute time slot in which to doze off during the day  is extraordinarily hard to find, yet a 10-minute space seems to crop up every ten minutes. Hence the utterly crazed schedule proposed here; finding a time for sleep becomes relatively easier. It’s interesting to note that things like showering, making a cup of tea or even going to the toilet take longer.

In the event that this should succeed, I look forward to work getting done without cutting into my sleeping time (given my way I’ll happily sleep for about 10 hours a day, and if, as always, I have any homework or pressing leisure activities to do this gets reduced to about 4) , and probably more importantly I get to enjoy my two favourite times of day: 0230 (seems to be about the darkest time of night so the stars are amazing around then) and dawn.

For interest’s sake, my schedule is as follows. 8-minute naps at:

0200, 0400, 0600, 0830, 1130, 1400, 1700, 2000, 2300

The 0400 nap will be dispensed with today or tomorrow, I’m just enjoying the luxury while I can; the 4-hour gap between naps will not be pleasant, and rearranging the naps is difficult since my evening schedule tends to be cluttered (so the 0200 nap has to stay) and there’s no way I’m giving up the 0600 one (theres something special about waking at dawn).

There are a number of reasons that this shouldn’t work; in fact I don’t expect it to, but hopefully in defeat I’ll learn something. Reasons:

  • I came up with the schedule 4 days into sleep deprivation from uberman so something is bound to be wrong with it
  • something to do with the physiology of sleep… an 8 minute sleep is inefficient because most of it is spent dozing off, or something like that. I may have made that up; now is not the time for making logical arguments.
  • I hypothesise that this schedule must be absolutely rigid to work – mistimed naps being more detrimental than on uberman, for instance, since naps are so short there’s no room to move.

Let us find out.

By gill | Posted in Hexadecaphasic Sleep | Comments (0)