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.