December 28, 2009

I heard about polyphasic sleep (namely, the Uberman’s Sleep Schedule) on some forum (in a “life hacks” thread). I instantly became extremely interested. I have read the everything2 article, the Wikipedia article, polyphasicsleep.info, and then bought and read PureDoxyk’s book Ubersleep: Nap-Based Sleep Schedules and the Polyphasic Lifestyle.

PureDoxyk’s book has a chapter called “The Big Question: Should You Be Polyphasic?”. The chapter enumerates a few questions one should ask themselves before deciding:

1. Why do you want it? – Polyphasic sleep is very appealing to me because I am a skilled programmer with tons of project ideas, but having enough time to implement only a small part of them. I could greatly benefit from the additional time.
2. Do you have a reason other than wanting to try it out? – Yes, see above.
3. Does self-discipline come naturally to you? – I’m not very punctual. Transition to polyphasic sleep may be a challenge for me.
4. How are you with physical discomfort? – I often have a very varying sleep schedule. I often force myself to stay awake for over 24 hours so I could get back into a night-time sleep schedule (due to upcoming university lessons, for example).
5. How are you with mental discomfort? – Again, sleep deprivation is nothing new to me. I found that one of the easiest ways to cope with sleep deprivation is playing video games, and I’ve been saving Dragon Age just for this occasion.
6. How are you with people thinking you’re a weirdo? – I’m not sure how my parents will take it. My very conservative relatives will probably get quite mad at me. I don’t hang around much in “meatspace” for anything else to significantly matter. As for the interwebs, well, there are already jokingly rumors that I’m not a human being but an advanced AI program (mostly due to the fact that I’m always “online” because I never turn off my computer), so this will only “confirm” those rumors
7. How much do you need company? – As long as I’m online, I don’t.
8. Are you punctual? – Not really (see above). However, I feel that interrupting my work for a nap knowing that I’ll be back on it in only 20 minutes doesn’t sound nearly as bad as knowing I have to get up now if I want to be somewhere in 40 minutes. (My punctuality problems stem from procrastination, whereas there shouldn’t be any problems in this situation.)

And the contraindications:

1. Do people depend on you? – No, but my mom likes to barge into my room time to time no matter what I’m doing. I’ll just have to hope it won’t happen during my naps.
2. Do people boss you? – No, I work online.
3. Do you like to party? – Not really.
4. Are you on a very strict diet? – Nope.
5. Are you ill? – Nope.
6. Are you uninterruptible? – Nope.
7. Are you crazy busy…enough? – Like I said, yes.
8. Are you loud? – Nope.

So, aside from the non-punctuality and some minor issues, it looks like I’m the perfect candidate for Uberman’s Sleep Schedule. I will probably start with a napping schedule at the hours 2, 6 and 10 AM/PM, to be as far away from midnight as possible (since I’ll probably celebrate the turn of the decade with my family). I found that I can trivially set my cell phone to ring at multiple hours every day, to remind me of my naps, and I could easily write a program to do the same for my computer (where I [will] spend most of my time). I may have to rotate my schedule back or forth by 1-2 hours to adjust for university lessons, once they begin later in January. Today is as good a day to begin as any other day, so here goes.

18:30 – First nap

So, I set up my cell phone’s reminder to nag me about naps, and wrote a program for my PC to loop a loud alarm sound 20 minutes after I run it, until I get up and dismiss a message box. My first nap came up just as I was finishing the program. Since I was already somewhat tired from having slept in the sofa tonight, I almost fell asleep, but my mom had to barge in and yell at me. Oh well.

December 29, 2009 (day 2) – 18:40

So far so good. I asked a friend to write me a simple J2ME program which waits 20 minutes and either makes the cell phone beep or vibrate, so I can nap away from my computer. I’m feeling tired, but not quite as zombie-like as with more intense sleep-deprivation. I fall asleep faster and faster with each nap, too.

December 30, 2009 (day 3) – 23:15

I overslept this morning. Since I didn’t want my mother to suspect anything yet, I took my 6:00 nap in my bed. I overslept for the same reason I’ve overslept several times in the past: when I wake up, being half-asleep I frantically start to make up reasons why I can sleep longer. This time it was some lie (which my half-asleep conscience gladly accepted) about how I shouldn’t force myself too much and should adapt gradually; of course, that’s utter nonsense since the point of the strict schedule is to make the brain realize that it is a strict schedule, and force it to adapt to it. I’ve slept a few more hours at my sister’s today due to the reason explained below, effectively ruining any schedule insofar. I intend to repeat the experiment after the New Year’s.

This wasn’t the end of it, though – when I got up at 9:30, my eyes hurt a lot, and the mirror confirmed it – they were quite red. I’m not sure if this is due to oversleeping, but perhaps over 20 hours per day in front of the computer isn’t such a good idea. When I got an eye examination in November, the doctor recommended me some eye drops for people who sit a lot in front of computers. I should check them out.

Update. The discussion of the entry above led me to realize one possible cause for my sore eyes: I was playing with the lights off. The contrast of the monitor might have caused my eyes to tire quickly.

January 4, 2010 (take 2, day 2) – 04:15

I began my second attempt yesterday. After over-sleeping my yesterday’s 2PM nap (found cell phone with “card error” on floor), I successfully napped at 6PM and 10PM. I didn’t feel tired for my 2AM nap, so I delayed it until about 3:15. It took some time for me to fall asleep, so the alarm rang soon after I fell asleep – I got up and “rewound” it for another 20 minutes.

When the alarm rang a second time, I woke up in an unfamiliar state. It physically felt as if I was asleep, except that I was sitting at my computer and staring at the screen. The sensation was different from any other I’ve had during previous sleep deprivation periods – I didn’t feel tired or sleepy, and my eyes weren’t closing by themselves. It was similar to when you’re just about to finally fall asleep – movement and conscious thoughts feel unpleasant, as if they jolt you awake. (I have been studying the process of falling asleep, with the goal of learning to fall asleep as fast as possible.) Interestingly, I had to remember to blink manually – probably because normally I would have my eyes closed in that state of mind. My IRC notes during the event.

January 6, 2010 (take 2, day 4) – 18:30

Well, so far I’ve been unable to maintain a strict Uberman schedule for more than 24 hours. At the end of each cycle (somewhere between 10 AM and 2 PM) I just fall asleep somewhere. The last two days it was right in my armchair, in front of my computer. I need to adopt some new strategies if I want to turn this pseudo-Everyman into a real Uberman. (It’s not that bad now either – getting a 2-4 “core” nap per day still gives me 4-6 extra hours per day, but I don’t want to get stuck in-between.)

My mom confronted me about my sleeping habits today. I said that I interested some of my friends into my research project, which is no lie but not the real reason of course. I currently don’t have any work (work work and Uni work) to do, but I will soon, so I might as well use all my time to work on my project while I can.

18:50

I think I have elaborated a good method for falling asleep quickly, and wanted to write it down. This is entirely from personal experience, don’t be surprised if this doesn’t work for you.

• Step 1: lie down comfortably. (This is pretty obvious, but sometimes I’d jump over this step and get a cramp somewhere around step 4.)
• Step 2: relax all muscles, most importantly your face muscles. I find that falling asleep while not frowning was much easier, but I actually have to remember to not frown. Yeah, I’m pretty serious.
• Step 3: relax your mind. Maybe this sounds silly, but I found that relaxing your mind removes some tension that is otherwise is always there. Come to think of it, it feels like I have a constant head-ache, but I don’t even notice it any more until I do this.
• Step 4: try not to think about anything. Again, fairly obvious – don’t let your mind wander. If you actually concentrate on not thinking about anything, random things start popping into your head – that’s a good sign.
• Step 5: sometimes, you can feel a warm and fuzzy, or lulling sensation. Try to chase it, without thinking about it too much.