A Personal Journey into the world of Polyphasic Sleep

I have been gone a while, but thought I should wrap up this sleep blog. I just got back from a month in Europe, but before I left I started winding down the polyphasic sleep schedule. Vigorous regular exercise, coupled with a social life that made it difficult to nap at exact times around the clock, left me tired most of the time, even with some core sleep. I do believe that the hexaphasic schedule can work for some people, but I think it would require a significant lifestyle change for it to work for me. I’m too deep a sleeper in general, and, for now, too socially inclined

Like the kids on South Park, I think I’ve learned something today. Or over the course of the past few months. I learned more about my own sleep, my moods and moodiness. I’m glad I tried this, and there’s always the chance of giving it a go in the future. I’ve come to appreciate daytime naps even more than I already did, and can see myself napping when the chance arises. But, for now, the napping regimin is over. I’d be happy to answer any questions, give lame advice, wax philosophical about this whole (or)deal if you want, but this blog won’t be the forum.

Yours Monophasically,

Sam

Well, having the video game worked! I didn’t oversleep, and I played quite a bit of World of Warcraft. Not a permanent solution, of course, but one that worked for me that night.

So, I have now created another PAGE (as opposed to a chronological POST like this one), that has my “Current State of Affairs” as far as sleep goes. It’ll be on the right side of the page, and I’ll update it when I’ve changed patterns, come up with new ideas or whatnot. I will still try to add posts every couple of days, but I feel it is getting slightly repetitive, detailing each nap and how it went.

I decided not to keep playing the video game, as it was a borrowed account so I couldn’t keep that character permanently. As I didn’t want to put that much effort into something that could disappear at the whim of the owner, I decided to order my own copy, and I shall resume playing if I have time, when that arrives.

More significantly, over the course of the week with my parents in town, I implemented a 3-hour core sleep. This has really helped cut back on the oversleeps. Sleeping 11PM-2AM or thereabouts and then napping the rest of the day has been a good jumping-off point for many people who weren’t able to go directly into the 6-naps schedule. As I have been unable to maintain that, I thought the core sleep might help. And it has, for about 5 days.

On Saturday, April 15, I napped, went to Stephanie’s birthday bash - a GRAND time with cool collage making, cookie decorating (I declined, as the strain of decorating tasty cookies that I couldn’t eat b/c of Passover was just too much), bbq’n, and picture snappin’. I went home and napped again after, and then started on a party circuit with Orange. First party was a Sol System shin-dig. We got there way early, danced a bit, O said he to her rock star pals, and then we headed to a birthday party for a friend of hers in Oakland. Since I was slightly nap-deprived at this point, and intended to stay out most of the night, I decided to throw in a random extended nap/core sleep, so while she went in to the party, I slept for 90 mins plus in the car! It was quite refreshing. I was groggy upon waking at 1:30 AM, but soon was back in full outside-the-house mode We went to the cracktory for PandaMoanEum XXXVIII, or whatever it was. Music was veeerrry niiiiice. Alxndr spun a sweet set, and I stayed til about 4:30 AM before cabbing home. I had planned to sleep in late after this kinda night, and did so. Woke up feeling good, and spent Sunday working at home.

My napping-with-core-sleep has continued this week, working well each time. The only odd day was last night, Wednesday night. I ran yesterday morning for the first time in almost a month. It felt really good to get out and exercise! And I ran at 7 AM in order to have the whole day to have some restorative naps without real danger of oversleeping. But I knew that my first time back exercising might incur some sleep consequences. I got my core sleep from midnight until 3 AM on Wednesday night. But when I woke up my body still felt physically drained. I tried to shake it off, but my arms, body, legs all felt weighted down. So I gave in and set the alarm for another 3 hours and slept until 6. Then I felt great! 6 hours of sleep after my first time running in a month isn’t so bad.

I napped at 11 and 3:30 today, and then headed back to SF for my first coed soccer game of the season. This will be another physical and logistical challenge - the 3:30 nap probably set me up ok for the 6 PM game, but then there is the bar afterwards, and the tail end of Thursday dinner with Sara, Orange and Dan cookin’. I brought a pillow, planning to get my nap in at 8 PM after our game, just before the bar, likely in my car. We’ll see how this works, though I _could_ go home and nap there…

Ok, so I slept until 7 AM. The last 2 nights. And 12 hours in one day in LA. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on this thing! Do you take me for some flighty monophasic grad student posing as a polyphasic man of the world?! But I admit, it is daunting to think about getting back on the schedule. The only was to do this is … Full Force. I’m calling out the big guns!

After getting to campus at 9:30, I hit my 10 AM class, and then nap at noon. After that, I enlist the aid of my fellow grad students, and borrow a copy of Blizzard’s “Worlds of Warcraft” (Wow), a first-person role-playing adventure game for the PC/Mac. I need something to make me get out of bed after my midnight, and 4 AM naps. So far just the desire to be polyphasic hasn’t been enough, especially after this past weekend. Hopefully having a character in the game ready to go, in the middle of high adventure will be the crutch I need to jam myself back onto this schedule. I install the game, and play it for an hour on the train ride home. This gets my character going, so that I will have something to continue when I wake up late-night.

Tonight we are at the Soap Factory for a Passover seder put on by Stephen. It starts at 7:30, and I quietly disappear at 8:30 for my nap, just after dinner. It’s a mediocre nap, but a sleep nonetheless. I come back out and the seder finishes up in grand fashion. We finish up socializing, and I get home at 10:30. I watch TV and start playing some WoW. At midnight I set my alarm in the dining room, and leave the lights on in there, and sleep on the couch with the lights off in the living room. Hopefully this will allow me to sleep well, but be woken up by the alarm in the next room and the lights on in there will help keep me from re-sleeping. Plus, I will have my game on my laptop screen, waiting for me to continue!

Well, it has been quite a ride since arriving in LA, so I will try to bring it all together without too much fanfare. I was able to take a couple of naps on Saturday, amongst running around helping set up for the party. I had already decided I wasn’t going to try to nap during or after the party, so these were half-hearted “farewell” naps Knowing that I was going to be up most of the night dancing and carrying on, I decided that in this case socializing would have to take precedence over polyphasicity.

We got to the party around 10 PM, and while I won’t go into too much detail as this is really meant to be a Polyphasic Sleep blog, the party was awesome. A solid contingent came down from San Francisco to show their love for Jean, Lucas and Chloe on their collective birthdays, and Ben Chun spun a sweet set that had us dancing for hours. We didn’t get back to Venice until after 5 AM, and it wasn’t until 6 AM that we were all asleep. What followed was an impressive display of unconsciousness. I managed to sleep for 12 of the next 13 hours - that’s 4 days worth of polyphasic sleep (by metric volume)! I woke up briefly at about 1 PM for almost an hour, but then slept again til 7 PM, when it was time to go to Cal Tech for Sunday dinner. It felt GREAT! I’m not sure what it means for getting back on a hexaphasic schedule, but it made me realize I sure did miss being in bed for long periods of time, at least a little bit.

Dinner was fun at Cal Tech - DIY mexican food, messing with the hot tub, a nap actually (it was semi-interrupted, but still counts), and good company as usual. I spent a good bit of time helping a blitz-heating of the hot tub effort with Robb. Always fun to mix engineering with dinner. I decided to drive back with Jef rather than fly, and we stayed until about 2 AM and then took off north. Jef drove almost the whole way, and I managed to stay awake as we went, except for 1 half-hour nap. We switched in San Jose and I drove the last half-hour onto campus at 7:30 AM.

My naps at 8, noon, and 4 were great! I fell asleep quickly, had dreams - it was all good. I took the train back to SF and get picked up by my parents, who are in town for 9 days for Passover. We went to KFC for dinner (my dad and I both had a hankering), and I got home at 9:30. I took a nap at 10, as my 8 PM nap was kinda half-assed on the train, and then went down again back on schedule at midnight. I barely remember waking, and slept until 6 AM! Hmmm, first night back, foiled.

To cut to the chase, Tuesday was almost a mirror image of Monday - I had great naps during the day, and my 8 PM nap was so-so… I wonder if that is a consequence of going off the pattern, or of oversleeping - my earlier naps are good by my 8 PM nap is troubled, which leads to more trouble later on. After a wonderful dinner with my parents, Jef, and Kim and Doug, I headed home to try and nap again, and again had trouble. I finally went down again at midnight, but not surprisingly, again awoke at 7 AM. Double trouble.

Wow, 4 WEEKS down! So, I decide to do 3 hours of core sleep. I am tired of the oversleeping/good night oscillations, and want to get on a path to fully hexaphasic napping. I link my 12:30 nap fairly soon after with a 3-hour core sleep. I feel pretty good when I get up, and finish packing for LA, shower, and take off for the train. The 8:49 train is the last that gets me to campus before my 10 AM class. I make it just in time, and only by sprinting a very loooong block with my laptop and suitcase in hand. I haven’t run like that in a while! It is 5 minutes before i can catch my breath on the train.

When I do, I realize that Thuy Le is also in the same car, so we catch up for the whole ride down to Palo Alto. I get off, and lug my suitcase on my bike over to lab. I drop the suitcase off there, then head over to class. After class I head over to the bookstore, pick up 3 books for the quarter, and then back to lab, where I have 20 minutes before I head to the train again and down to San Jose. No nap time!!

I get to the airport an hour before my flight, and after breezing through security I manage to get maybe 15 minutes of napping in on the floor of the airport before our plane starts to board. Once on the plane though, I nap HARD, sleeping for almost an hour. Not ideal, but ok considering the long period without a nap. I get to LA, and Jean picks me up. I nap a small amount in the car on the way to Ben Acker’s show at 7:30. The show is funny, and we go back to Bede and Oceana’s place afterward. There, Jean and I both nap for about 45 minutes in the guest room before re-joining the group. We all play a fun game of telephone, but with drawings and descriptions. Then Jef calls - he has driving down from San Francisco, and is at Jean’s. We finish up the game, and then drive back to Venice to meet Jef at 2 AM.

Predictably, the missed/delayed nap with being woken in the middle of that nap led to a big oversleep - a solid 6 hours worth. Hmm, it is very frustrating, oversleeping like this. Even though every-other-night I am up all night so that I am still getting a few extra hours awake per day on average, it doesn’t feel good yet. Should be more consistent.

In reading blogs, and from postings on the “Uberman” yahoo group, it seems the large majority of people fail on their first attempt. Oversleeps are the big culprit. Some who succeed have used 1.5 or 3 hours of “core” sleep in the late-night hours to avoid this oversleep. That might be something I need to check in to. Some people start with 3 hours core sleep. Then go to 1.5. Then eliminate it entirely. If I can’t get fully on program cold-turkey, this might be a good way to go. Maybe this weekend in LA, we’ll see.

I shower, get to the train, but find out that trains are more than 1 hour delayed due to someone being hit by the train down in Mountain View. So, I decide to just drive to campus. I park in the ‘C’ permit lot, and walk over to my lab. The day passes relatively quickly - I work until 8 PM, with naps at noon and 4. I should have napped at 8 before driving back to SF, but need to get to Thursday night dinner, hosted by Andrea and Tammy. So I decide to head there and say some brief hellos before heading back home. 10:30 arrives before I can get my 8 PM nap in. . But, I manage to get up just fine, and do some more work until 12:30 AM.