Quick Check In

So things are going very well with this new four of core sleep and two 30 min naps during the day (at 11am and 5pm).

This morning when I woke up I did really well at not dosing off, which is generally a problem for me in the first fifteen minutes of being awake.

I'm actually thinking I might like this schedule better than the Uberman (napping every four hours) just because I don't have the social awkwardness of having to excuse myself every four hours to go knock out in a corner somewhere.  Also I'm not sure I need all the extra time the Uberman gives me. The extra time I'm getting now is a pretty good amount.  I stay up til 2am and then I'm up at 6, which gives me enough time to eat a good breakfast and shower before work, however I don't have the horrible feeling I did when I was getting 6 hours of sleep a night, before I started all of this.  It's interesting that I can be getting less sleep and feel better.

I'll probably still cut down to 3 hours of core sleep and three naps and see how that goes. I feel like three naps is pretty reasonable because it's about once every six hours or so that I'm napping, which is often enough to get proper rest, but not often enough to be annoying.

Anyway! Let me know what you guys think!

oops... stupid alarm :(

So, I went to take my core sleep at 2 am last night and I couldn't find my iTouch to set my alarm.  After almost a half hour of searching I remembered that my girlfriend stole it from me and hadn't given it back yet.... So I decided to use my phone as my alarm instead.

Currently I am getting four hours of core sleep (2am-6am) and my phone already has an alarm on it for 6am it was just turned off. So, I turned it back on and went to sleep.

Next thing I knew it was 8am: two hours after I was supposed to wake up!! At that point for some reason in my zombie-like state I thought it would be a good idea to just fall back asleep.... When I next woke it was almost 11am.

Obviously, I was really frustrated with myself because I figured I had just slept through my alarm. However, I realized that the alarm set on my phone was set to only go off Monday through Friday... It's Sunday....

Anyway. Hopefully tonight things will go better and I will actually be able to really get this going.

Eventually I'll get this down and things will actually work with this schedule....

Trying something new

So I was reading something online that was suggesting that the reason most people (including myself) have such a hard time adjusting to the Uberman schedule is because they (like me) try to start cold turkey.  I was used to getting eight hours of sleep during the night and my body couldn't figure out what was going on when I decided not to sleep. This blog I was reading suggested adjusting to it over a two week period by gradually sleeping less and less by using other forms of polyphasic sleep.

It employs the sleep schedules known as the Everyman 1, 2 and 3.  These are variations of the Uberman but you have what is called Core Sleep which is a few hours of sleep (2-4) at night plus a few naps during the day.  The author suggests that you start with the Everyman 1 (4 hours of Core Sleep and two 30 min naps) then go to the Everyman 2 (3.5 hours of core sleep and three 20 min naps) then onto the Everyman 3 (3 hours of core sleep and three twenty minute naps).  The author suggests spending about four days on each schedule (enough time to get pretty used to it) before moving onto the next level. After you have spent several days, maybe even a week on the Everyman 3, then, and only then, does he suggest you attempt the Uberman (six 20 min naps through out the day).

I think I'm going to give this a try because it's basically what keeps happening to me anyway after a few days.  I keep crashing and over sleeping (like I did last night). So I may as well allow myself those few hours of Core Sleep and slowly allow my body to get used to this whole not sleeping thing.

Anyway, let me know what you guys think about this idea! Cheers!

Still Good!

So far so good!  I feel great, I'm awake and alive, and ready to keep going.

Last night I found a great way to stay awake: exercise.  When I was feeling really tired I just did some push-ups, sit-ups, squats and a few other simple exercises and it worked wonders.  After that I felt great and really awake.  I was able to stay focused on what I was doing and didn't have to concentrate really hard on staying awake.

Also something I'm going to try tonight is eating apples.  Apparently they work better than caffeine.  I guess I'll find out.  My only question is does it matter what kind of apples? Because all I have is Granny Smiths.

On a side note, this schedule is slightly inconvenient when you have a job.  I can't work more than four hours at a time before I have to clock out and take a nap.... Oh well. My boss is cool with it so far.

Back on it!

Alright. I've decided it's time--I'm going back on the Uberman Sleep Schedule.

I'll be posting again regularly to let you know how it goes. I learned quite a bit in just the few days I was on it last time, so hopefully this time I'll be able to do it better and actually get my body adjusted to it.

After my 2AM nap I'm going to walk to the grocery store to get some caffeine so I can keep myself awake between naps.  I've also got several good things to keep my brain occupied during the late hours of the night. If you guys have other suggestions on what I can do to keep my mind occupied please share. Currently for the first few days I'm planning to just play video games because homework is too dull and I know that I'll just fall asleep. Once I'm used to this though I'm planning to use the extra time to do homework and study. However, right now I need something more interactive to engage my brain and keep me awake, but I don't want to develop a habit of gaming all hours of the night. So if you have other suggestions I welcome them!

I Need Input

Hey everyone!  So I need some input from you guys. Here's the situation: I have not been following my sleep schedule the last two days, I was planning to get back onto it starting tonight.  However, a thought occurred to me: on the night of November 11th (11/11/11) my friends and I are doing an "adult sleep-over".  This consists of us pulling an all-nighter, watching the sunrise and then going and crashing at someone's apartment to sleep (note for all you concerned parents out there: this will be a clean activity nothing sketchy will take place at this party).

The point of the all-nighter and then the crashing together is that in this way we can still have a "sleep-over" and keep the rules that BYU has about visiting hours for students of the opposite gender. (No members of the opposite gender can be in your apartment after midnight).  However, if I am on my sleep schedule I will be the lame kid who has to sleep every four hours through out the night and then I'll be bored while everyone else sleeps.

The solution I am considering to this problem is that I wait until the 12th to start my sleep schedule again.  However, I'm worried that I might just be being a wimp and trying to put this off. I'm also worried that if I wait that long I will loose my motivation.  I would really like your guys' input on this matter, please comment and let me know what you think!

Also on a side note this sort of problem would be a reoccurring problem because my friends and I like to go camping.  However, it probably wont be a problem for a while since it is getting cold.

Please let me know if you have questions and please let me know what you think!

Update

So, here's the update.  On the night of the 28th things didn't go so well.  I ended up falling asleep around 3:30AM and didn't wake up until the around 7AM.  The next night I got sick and threw up.  My current theory is that it was because I skipped two naps and hadn't really eaten anything healthy that day, so my body just couldn't handle the inconstancy.  That night I got a good eight hours of sleep after I threw up.

Since that night I have stuck with it more or less.  The key to staying awake at night is having things for my mind to do. Last night was really easy because I was with a friend all night so I had someone to keep me company.  However, that obviously wont work every night.  I'm thinking of doing homework at night to try to keep me awake.  The problem with that is that it can sometimes be very boring and might make it even harder to stay awake.  My other thought of how to stay awake is to use caffeine until my body can get used to this schedule.  I just need to find some way to entertain my mind during the dark hours at night.

I've also considered getting a "happy light". Which is just a light that emits UV rays at about the same frequency as the sun so that your body will think it is daytime and will stay awake. The problem with that is that I've heard that they can have weird effects on your body and mind.  We'll see.

Made it!

So, I made it through all of yesterday and last night. I was a little worried that I wouldn't.  Between about 4:30 and 5:30AM was particularly difficult this morning.  I was really fighting to stay awake.  However, once I made it to my 6 o'clock nap I was fine.

Surprisingly, I feel great! My eyes still have that tired feeling, but mentally and physically I feel great!  I've been getting tired about a half-hour before it's time for me to sleep and so it works out perfectly.

Also, my naps feel really long. I just woke up from my 10 o'clock nap (the time stamp thing on my posts is an hour off) and when I woke up I was sure I had overslept; but it turned out I was right on time: courtesy of my alarm clock.  The same thing happened with my 2AM and 6AM naps last night.  I woke up around 6:12 and I felt like I had slept for several hours so I panicked.  As it turned out I still had eight minutes left to sleep.  After the eight minutes were up I had a similar feeling because it felt as though I had been asleep for at least an hour, maybe two.  When I woke up from my 10 o'clock nap about  a half hour ago I felt really well rested and like I had been asleep for a long time.

I'm hoping this means my body is already adjusting to this schedule.  It could just be that I'm delusional, but for now I'm cautiously optimistic about the fact that I feel this great.

Realistically though, I imagine that tonight and tomorrow will be very, very hard to get through.  I wish I had someone else doing this with me or something that would keep 100% of my attention at night and would keep my brain active.  I think that's why I had so much trouble last night around 5AM: I didn't have something to keep my brain active.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about this. I'm a little sleepy, but overall I feel pretty dang good! :)

Day 1

(1:24AM) So, I'm on day one. I'm about a half hour away from taking my second nap. Right now I'm actually pretty tired. I got up around 7:15AM so I'm to the point where it would normally be way past my bedtime.

FYI it's already pretty hard to think clearly. I think I'm going to pause typing this and resume after I've taken my nap.

(7:27AM) So... I've discovered I shouldn't sleep in my bed. At least at first. I think my body is too used to sleeping through the night when I'm in my bed.  I went to take my 2AM nap and then next thing I knew it was morning.... I set an alarm clock but I have no memory of it going off. I obviously need to figure out a new way of doing this....

Hello! Welcome to my Blog!

Well hello there! Nice of you to take the time to visit my blog!

My name is Josh, I'm a 19-year-old college student, and this is my blog about my experiment with "sleeplessness".  What I'm actually going to be doing is what's called Polyphasic sleep (commonly known as the Uberman sleep schedule). It's a sleep schedule where you sleep for 20 minutes every four hours round the clock.  I will be sleeping at 2am, 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm and 10pm.  This gives you a total of two hours of sleep everyday.

Now, at this point you're probably thinking "Josh! You're crazy!" However, allow me to explain the reasoning behind this sleep schedule. A normal person sleeps eight to ten hours every 24 hours; during the time spent asleep a person goes through five or six "sleep cycles".  Each cycle takes about 90 minutes and about 15 of those minutes are spent in REM sleep. (When you are in REM sleep is when you are actually getting rest, the other 75 minutes is spent going into and out of REM sleep).  An average person gets about about 1.5 hours of REM sleep in an eight to ten hour period.  However when you are sleep deprived your body will enter REM sleep much more quickly.  So, when you are only sleeping twenty minutes at a time, your body will drop into REM sleep almost immediately, meaning that all two hours of the time I spend asleep will be spent in REM sleep.  (You experience this sort of sleep all the time actually, it's called a power-nap).

So, a normal person gets 1.5 hours of REM sleep; when on the the Uberman sleep schedule, you get 2 hours of REM sleep. So, in reality you're getting more rest than you would if you were sleeping eight to ten hours a night.

So yeah. Thats the theory behind it. We'll see if it actually works in practice.

What I'm going to be doing with this blog is giving you daily (don't hold me to that) updates on how it's going. I apologize if at first my post are very annoying and hard to read. Apparently the first week or two is absolutely miserable while your body adjusts.

Please let me know your opinions on this. However, please don't try to talk me out of it. I've been thinking about this for several years and have made up my mind :)