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! :)
Friday, October 28, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
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....
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....
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
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 :)
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 :)
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