A Personal Journey into the world of Polyphasic Sleep

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.

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.

Here we go again. One day I’m great. The next… I sleep 7 hours. Why? Big meal? BAH! I hurredly do some more checking on classes to take, as this is the first day of the quarter. I had intended to do it late-night, but the long sleep killed that possibility. I find an interesting stats class that no one in my department seems to have taken - it might be relatively new. That and a Human Behavioral Biology class means I have classes on Mon/Weds/Fri, 3 hours each day. Not too bad. I believe the afternoon lectures are broadcast on tv/network as well, so I can skip out friday afternoon if need be and not miss the class.

I get to campus, and get to work. Surprise, I’m not really tired for my noon nap, so I hold off until 12:30. I actually am tired by then, and have a strong nap. More work, and then a 4:30 nap as well. We’re having a researchome at 6:30 on the use of our department wiki, so I go there and have a slice of pizza, and then am “outed” on my polyphasic sleep schedule! I explain to the group (~15-20 people) what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and where they can get more information (like HERE). They of course think I am kookie, but I have to run before I can receive the brunt of their curiosity, as I have to get the 7:20 train back so that I can pick up a package at UPS, and my computer at Good Guys from being repaired after our power surge last month.

I try to take my 8:30 nap, but I can’t fall asleep So, I do some more work, and then go back down at 9:30. This time it works ok. I’m trying to decide if I need to shift my nap schedule, maybe a 1/5/9 would be better… I’m supposed to “listen” to my own sleep rhythm, to see if there are times when I fall asleep easier, but I haven’t been able to hear it very well. I cruise through until midnight, and go down for my nap at 12:30.

The hot tub is so pleasant, it is very hard to keep my eyes open. After about a half-hour I head back to the room, and get my camera for some long-exposure nighttime photopgraphy. They’ll be up on Flickr soon I imagine. At 4 AM everyone finally falls asleep, and I take my nap. I awaken, but am really sooooo relaxed from the hot tub and comfy in bed, I can’t convince myself to get up. It would have been difficult anyways, with the other 3 asleep in the same room, but that is just a convenient excuse as to why I stayed in bed for 3 hours It was quite enjoyable.

We all get up at 8 and hit breakfast, then some walking, my noon nap, over the see the seals, and then back to San Francisco. My 4 PM nap doesn’t happen til 6:00, and then dinner with a crowd for Seany’s birthday at Little Star pizza. They all go out to a bar after, but I beg off to go get my 8 PM nap. It goes well, and I am up and working from 8:30 until midnight. Not bad… hope my messed up schedule for the day hasn’t put me in a bad spot.

My midnight nap goes ok. I oversleep a bit - maybe 2 hours. This would worry me, but the headache I’ve had since my beer at the comedy club is slightly more annoying. I take some advil with more water, and hope for the best. I nap at 4 am again, but just briefly, probably due to the oversleep plus mild headache still. Then, things turn around. I get my first “Sam is up at all hours, so he won’t mind a late-night phone call”! Stephanie and Dina are home after Get Freaky and at 5 AM are still entertaining themselves when they call me for additional entertainment. After doing my best phone dance I head over there in my pajamas and document the hilarity. They have some air-brush tattoos and have pasted a big set of lips onto dina’s cell phone. I got some good pix and even a 1-minute video of some strange echoing cell-phone interactions. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5EESb_ftoE

By 8 am the kids have calmed down and I curl up for a nap on the couch. I don’t set an alarm, but luckily awaken 35 minutes later. After moving to the living room so as not to disturb S&D, I catch up on my blog a bit, and then make plans to meet Ann-Marie to go for a walk at Crissy Field. She wanted to go for a short run, but settles for the walk as I am not quite ready to push myself yet. It is overcast, but a pleasant enough day for a walk. We walk to the point under the Golden Gate Bridge and check out the surfers riding the waves in for a while, and then head back. We decide lunch is in order, and even though it pushes my noon nap back, we have a very tasty meal at the BlueJay Cafe on Divisadero. I make it home and nap at 1 PM. When I get up, Doug is preparing to watch the Final Four, which makes for good distractions while I catch up on some research. Lindsay almost makes it over to watch the first half with us, but as usual life intercedes.

I hit my 4 PM nap on the button, and wake up in time to see Florida pull away from upstarts George Mason in the last 10 minutes of the game. Then Mary comes to pick me up for our 24-hour getaway for Sean’s birthday. Sean, Lo, and Mary and myself head down to Costanoa, a sweet little cabin-camping site on the coast right by Año Nuevo where the elephant seals occupy the beaches. It’s a relaxing time for walks, banter, some board games, James Bond in the background, and a bit of hot-tubbing. My naps are somewhat crunched, with my 8 PM being pushed til 9+, and then my midnight also being a bit late. I take that nap on the couch in the gaming lodge, right before we head to the hot tub at 2 AM.