Dan's Polyphasic Blog: Everyman-in-Training

Summary: Things have been a bit rough for me in the past few days, but now that they’re looking to be improving again, I’m feeling up to writing an update again.

Since writing my last update (It feels like several weeks ago, but it hasn’t even been a full week. Crazy!), I’ve overslept my core a bunch of times. I would get up, turn off my alarm, waver for a little while, and then lie down in bed for just another minute or two. Which inevitably turned into another hour or two. Fortunately, I live close enough to work, and I normally get up early enough that this hasn’t led to me being super late for work.

Two days ago, I had had enough, so I got up for real, and did my morning stuff. However, once I was done everything that needed doing, I was still tired, and now bored to boot. So I went back to sleep for an hour. I felt really foolish after that. The next two mornings (yesterday and today) I got up on time, and didn’t go back to sleep afterward. I think I reported it before, but I’m still finding the morning to be the most difficult time of day. I’m tired and disoriented, and less in control of myself than at any other time of day.

I have found that even after a string of failures, it’s a lot easier to keep going on Everyman than on Uberman. I haven’t experienced any kind of spiraling out of control as I did on my first Uberman adaptation attempt (and I think the second one was heading there, too).

I’ve recently found that nights are even easier if you change what you’re doing frequently, even if it’s just toggling between two things. I’ve had nothing but trouble when trying to study a bunch of japanese characters, and I’ve dozed off numerous times while watching anime. However, a couple nights ago I tried a different approach, where I would watch about 45 minutes of anime, followed by about 10 minutes of studying, and I repeated that a bunch of times. It worked phenomenally well. I didn’t get tired at all, and I got to do 2 of the things I wanted to be doing during the night. That’s like three birds with one stone. I imagine many people have figured this out already, and it probably doesn’t work for everybody, but hopefully it will help someone who’s down on their polyphasic luck.

Summary: It seems that in my last post, when I described being pretty much over being sick, I was jumping the gun a little. I’m definitely better than I was when I was missing wok, but I’ve still got a cough, and I’m still more tired than I should be.

In the 4 nights since last time, I’ve ended up oversleeping my core by an hour twice. I did wake up, and turn off the alarm, but the prospect of getting up was just too unsavory at that point in time. This is not too different than what would happen on a typical morning of monophasic sleep for me. When put that way, it doesn’t sound so bad, but recently I’ve been finding it taking more effort to stay awake at night, and I think the longer core-sleep that I’ve had in many of the recent nights may be the cause.

So, I’m making the effort to break the cycle, and carry on with polyphasic sleep.

Summary: I overslept my core over the weekend both mornings. I attribute it to going to bed about 10 minutes too late (and getting over sickness probably didn’t help). Last night (Sunday->Monday), I fell asleep in my chair shortly before my nighttime nap, and slept most of the night there. I think getting sick has set me back a bit.

While sick, I decided that if I wanted to take some extra sleep, I would do it, since you don’t want to drag out an illness. That would be at least as bad for adaptation, I think. So, I don’t consider oversleeping my cores on the weekend to be a big deal. They probably helped, since I’m feeling almost as not-sick as you can get, and before the weekend I was missing work.

I have been keeping logs of when I go to sleep, and how I feel in the morning. I’ve felt anywhere from pretty good to barely good enough in the morning when I go to sleep 3:20 before my alarm, and when I go to bed only 3:10 before my alarm, that’s where oversleeping occurs. However, I don’t know how much of that is actually spent sleeping. After going to bed, I make a point of not looking at the clock, because it only contributes to stress that makes it hard to fall asleep. The 2 nights where I overslept my core, I had been staying up late playing the new StarCraft 2 beta release, and got to bed a few minutes later than the ideal time. I probably should have bumped up the alarm time a few minutes to compensate, but I didn’t. Oh well. I was sick. I probably needed the sleep.

Last night was inexcusable, though. I was tired and uncomfortable in the chair I was sitting in with my netbook. So I moved to a more comfortable chair. That should have been a major red flag right there. Any time I do something to get more comfortable, I seem to end up falling asleep. It seems to be my body’s trump card. So, I ended up sleeping in that chair for most of the night (from about 10:30 – 6:00). When I awoke in the middle of my core, I moved to my bed to finish it. After being sick for a few days, I was just feeling tired and worn out, but I know that this sleep was avoidable. I wasn’t feeling sick any more at that point, so I can’t even make the same excuse I did for my core oversleeps.

Summary: Since my oversleep on Sunday evening, I haven’t had any unintentional deviations from my schedule, but I’ve made a few intentional ones since starting to feel a bit sick.

I don’t remember exactly when I started to notice symptoms of getting sick, but it was no later than this Monday. I decided to tough it out Monday night, since it was the night after my oversleep, and I wanted to get back on schedule. The next night (between Tuesday and Wednesday), I decided to go to sleep about 90 minutes early. I made that decision when it was already kind of late, but looking back on it now, I still think the reasoning was sound.

The night thereafter, I went to sleep at the normal time again, thinking that since things hadn’t gotten any worse, that I had successfully averted illness. Unfortunately not. On Thursday morning, I woke up with a lousy cough and a really sore throat. I felt bad enough to call in sick to work. (I also really didn’t want to spread the sickness more than it has been spread already. I wish more people at work were considerate about things like that.)

I felt pretty bad all morning. Then I decided to take a longer core sleep around my noontime nap. The idea was that this was something that would be much easier to untrain my body from, again. I felt a lot better in the afternoon. I’d signed up for a course that I was supposed to got to for the first time this evening, but I didn’t feel up to going. I hope I don’t miss anything too important.

I’m not sure what tomorrow will feel like, yet. It could go either way. I feel better than I did in the morning, but a few hours of sleep can change everything, I’ve learned (and not always for the better).

Summary: Since last time, I’ve had a few slip-ups. Included are details, and my plan for dealing with them.

I dozed lightly in my chair while studying at around 21:30 on Thursday, and snapped out of it about an hour later. This has happened to me for a few minutes at a time before (after which I usually would get up and do something else), but never for so long.

Also, one morning (I don’t remember which one, actually), I got up, and was going to use the shower, like I do right out of bed every day, but my roommate was in the shower, already. So, I waited on the couch. I don’t have any recollection of any sort of break in being conscious, but when he got out, and I went to take my shower, more time had passed than I thought should have passed.

Waking up after my core sleep is also tough. I haven’t crawled back into bed to sleep, but it’s always a difficult battle. One of these days, I won’t have the willpower to fight it anymore. I have been trying slightly different core lengths, and some mornings are better than others. But I haven’t been recording this information, so I don’t really know what the sweet spot is. So, starting tonight, I’m going to start recording when I go to sleep, and how good I feel in the morning. There will of course be some trial and error in this process, since when I lie down in bed is not the exact time I fall asleep, but it should be way better than guessing at random every time .

I think in PureDoxyk’s Ubersleep book, she recommends this technique, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. She even had a table you were supposed to photocopy, or rip out, or something .

Anyway, this weekend is going to be nice and boring. Lots of time to do not very much at all. I’ll just have to be careful to schedule stuff for my nights ahead of time. (Tonight, I’m going to work on my maille some more. Believe it!)

Between being more proactive in scheduling things for nighttime, and figuring out this core length thing, I think I can reduce the frequency at which these slip-ups occur. That’s the plan for now, anyway.

Summary: I think I’m well on my way to adaptation. The first few days of this attempt were pretty sketchy, so it’s probably closer to being approximately day 10 for me. I’m still getting pretty tired at times (it’s worse during the day, these days), but I haven’t screwed up very much in a while.

I think I’m starting to understand why most people who do Everyman don’t blog every day. First of all, it’s not nearly as difficult, which, frankly, makes the experience a lot more boring. This isn’t really a bad tradeoff, though. It’s just less bloggable. Also, you don’t have as much free time that needs to get wasted when you’re on Everyman. This is slightly related to the first one. Since you’re doing better, you don’t have as much “dead time” where you cannot do anything productive. I found blogging to be a great way to get through the first hard part of the night, when I was on Uberman. There has never been a time, recently, where I haven’t been awake enough to do something else that I really want to do.

So, that being said, my adaptation seems to be coming along pretty well. I’m still tired a lot (especially at work, where I sit in a chair for hours at a time), but I have been getting up after my core without issue (the real test will be on the weekend, I fear), and I haven’t fallen asleep unintentionally since my last post on the weekend. I did move a nap by about 3 hours one day (yikes!).

Some interesting things that have happened:
On Sunday, my parents invited me out for lunch. I was playing a game, and made note of the time, so that I didn’t miss lunch. When I finished up with the game to get ready to go, I realized that I needed to take a nap yet, too, and I hadn’t accounted for that! So, I went for lunch without the nap. I was okay until about 14:00, after which I started feeling a lot more tired. I spent the afternoon hanging out with my family, again, but as soon as we got to their house, I took a nap (at around 15:30, I think). We played a lot more of that Wii Sports Resort game. It’s actually a lot of fun (recommended, if you enjoyed Wii Sports at all). I took another nap at my regularly scheduled 17:30-ish, and I felt reasonably good after that. I don’t know if this has had any subsequent effects; I didn’t extend my core the next night as some people sometimes suggest, and I took all of the other naps following it at the right times. However, I’ve been feeling tired for most of this week, and I don’t know if the moved nap contributed to this feeling, or if it’s just regular adaptation woes.

On Monday and Tuesday nights, Jeremy and I went out for coffee until 03:30. On Monday, Jen joined us, as well. The people working the graveyard shift are getting used to seeing us there . Going out for coffee is a lot of fun late at night. You get quick service, because no one else is around. Also, for some reason, the place we go to does a lot of their baking early in the morning/late at night, so they have a shelf full of muffins, scones and other baked goods for the choosing .

I’ve spent a bunch of time in the last few weeks playing games on my computer at night, but in the last day or two, I’ve done some reading at night with some success. Reading is something that I’ve meant to do more of, and I want to lose the gaming habit (yeah, right!), so I’m going to try to do more reading at night. The reading I had been doing previously had all been non-fiction, useful stuff. This is the stuff that makes you tired. The stuff that’s been working well has been fiction, which is much more exciting, and does not make you tired. Eventually I’ll read the useful stuff, too, but reading fiction sounds a lot better to me than playing the same tired games all night.

Summary: The last couple days have been mostly good, except for a 2.5 hour oversleep of my core this last morning. I don’t know how it happened.

I hate the weekends. Not having anything important to get up for at the usual time can only serve to promote not getting up. I figure that’s how I ended up not getting up for my alarm this morning. It’s a shame, because as far as I know, things were going pretty good. It had been pretty near the 4 day mark since the last mess-up. Of course this isn’t so much discouraging, as it is an opportunity to do better. I managed 4 days this time, guys! I haven’t had that kind of a record since back in December.

On Friday, in the office I had another day of mixed goodness. In the morning, there was a short meeting that I was a part of, and I had a hard time not yawning, closing my eyes, and letting my head droop. I think its because in these meetings, I generally need to give little input, and a good chunk of it is stuff isn’t within my field of expertise, and so I don’t understand it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that I’m fighting sleep. My mind is hardly being engaged at all. How can I overcome this? Is it inevitable, until I am properly adapted?

The rest of the morning went great. By the afternoon, all that was left to do was some vaguely defined work of the sort that I really dislike doing, and it was really hard to get working on it. I got a start on it, but I know I could have done more if I wasn’t as unmotivated as I can get when I am sleep deprived.

I spent the evening out with my dad. We did dinner and a movie, and then talked in a coffee shop for hours. When I got home, I did some correspondence before taking my nap. After that, I spent a few hours studying Japanese kanji. It was a lot slower than doing it during the day, and I’m sure my mind was in limbo for some of the time (as much as 20 minutes, I expect), but I promised myself I’d keep up the study every day for the next 30 days. Do I break my promises to myself, or do I do what’s best for polyphasic sleep? Doesn’t breaking a promise to myself send the wrong message to a body that’s trying to do something that takes this kind of willpower, though? Hmmm…

So, I got into my bed at 3:40, and I was planning on sleeping until 7:00, my usual wake-up time. Somehow, I don’t remember waking up until 9:35, though. I guess I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep, in a short enough time frame that I have no recollection of it at all. I think that unlikely, but I cannot offer a better explanation.

I spent the day at my family’s place. I went shopping with my mom, and played games with my sister. My mom and I also played a little bit of the New Super Mario Bros. Wii title. I don’t think she’s played a Mario game in over a decade. It was a lot of fun.

Late in the evening, I got back home, and took my nap to kick off the night. After that, I spent a bit over an hour studying kanji again. It went a lot better this time; It didn’t take as long, and I don’t think I really dozed off at all. And that’s where I am at now.

So, I haven’t got a plan for how I’m going to deal with getting up properly in the morning, yet, but I’m not up for thinking about stuff like that in the middle of the night, anyway. Maybe tomorrow. I think I have to consider it sooner or later though, to prevent similar mishaps in the future.

Summary: So, since I posted last time, I’ve had 2 and a half competely compliant days. Hooray!

The last couple of days have gone very well, and I attribute a lot of my success to the “golden rule” idea that some people on this site seem to be following. From what I understand, everyone’s rule is a little bit different, but the idea is to enforce certain behaviour when you’re not up to the challenge of thinking straight. One person on the forum said that his golden rule was to not make any decisions between 22:00 and 10:00.

This sounds great to me, so I adopted it as well as added that I would not play DS games or work on my laptop during that time, since those are the two things that cause me to get comfortable on a chair or couch, put my feet up, and fall asleep. So no more of that, except during the day (minus the falling asleep part, of course). It’s prety freeing, when you’ve marked certain things as clearly off-limits. Also, it means that if I decide that I want to do something during the night (like, say, bake banana bread), then unless I decide not to before 22:00, it’s got to happen. It’s a great productivity booster.

Today was a bit of a challenge, though. I think my body is still expecting my 08:00 nap, shortly before heading off to work. Every morning, even after being up for over an hour, I feel really tired, and going to sleep sounds like a really good idea. I’ve managed to avoid that, though.

Today I felt a bit tired in the morning, but the afternoon was really tough. I thought I had a decent noon nap, but when I got back to work, I felt really bad. Maybe it was the piece of birthday cake I had at work. It was way too sugary, and gave me the “I really shouldn’t have just eaten that” feeling. For several hours during the afternoon, I felt like calling it quits for the day and going home to sleep. I had zero motivation to get anything done, and I wasn’t very good at what I did do. At times, I felt sick to my stomach, but this usually passed fairly quickly. I did work in short bursts, and got the important stuff done. Nearer to the end of the workday, this terrible feeling started to wear off, and I was able to finish my work up before going home.

After taking an average 17:30 nap, I felt alright, but not great. I had work to do on my laptop, so I did it, and I was able to stay focused on it pretty well. So, I’m wondering if what happened this afternoon was just one symptom of sleep deprivation, or if I’m actually starting to get sick. I did work the previous evening at a soup kitchen, where there were hundreds of people off the street, but they kept the place pretty clean, so I wouldn’t expect to have caught anything there.

I think tonight will be a bit of a challenge, but I think I’m up for it, armed with my new-found golden rule. I will assume that it’s just slep dep, and that I’m not getting sick. If it’s bad tomorrow, I might take a longer core sleep, and see if I get an better from that.