Sleepless Knights

It is really quite hard to stick to a rigid schedule. My first few days were frustrating and lead to oversleeps at night (near monophasic). I took away some good lessons from the rigid schedule experiment but have strayed from it.

On the one hand, I really like the idea (and challenge) of sticking to a no questions asked schedule. But, for example, last night I spontaneously decided to work on the ‘Next/Prev’ blog navigation and unread markers. I could have forced myself to stick to the schedule, but a spontaneous project can be extremely energizing.

So, all that being said, I am feeling like I’m in a decent spot at the moment. I have been consistently getting some pretty significant naps in recently. I actually haven’t experienced such good naps in a long time. I attribute this to a few things:

1. I feel pretty confident about my alarm system. I have my iPod calmly waking me up, then shrieking if I dont get up. If I take my ear phones off the polyphaser’s alarm will go off a few minutes later. Knowing I have a good alarm setup allows me to relax and sleep much better.

2. I started repeating the mantra, “Om namah shivaya” in my head as I lay napping. I have no idea what this really means but it was in a book a read last year and I liked the sound of it. It came back to me as I was trying to sleep recently and I’ve found it pretty damn effective.

The other trouble I have is ‘resting my muscles for a few minutes’ which generally leads to me passed out on my bed. So, I now blockade my bed with bins so it’s just not possible to pass out without really deciding to. In the past, I would forget to reset the bins after naps if I was really tired. So the past few days I’ve been putting the bins blocking my way to the alarm while I’m napping – there’s really no option but to set them back up as soon as I wake up.

Lastly, I’ve been doing my best to commit to knitting as soon as I wake after every nap. It’s the kind of thing that I can do forever no matter how tired I am and if I just keep going, it usually pulls me out of that terrible sleep-hole.

So, despite some issues, I am feeling pretty good at the moment. Ready for a long night.

Going into my 12am nap, I felt pretty wonderful. Coming out of it, I felt pretty horrible. It lead off a night of being in and out of short dozes. I don’t like this.

So, I am reviewing things and trying to understand what major changes could be made to get my brain in a new mode come night-time. This has lead me to two key thoughts:

1. I need to unhinge ‘what I feel like doing’ from ‘what I actually do’. If it is 3:10, I feel terrible and I don’t feel like playing darts even though it may help wake me up, I should just fucking play darts. I need to totally remove ‘what I feel like doing’ from consideration.

2. Awareness and proactivety are crucial and I need to have a more focused effort on this. For example, when I am just starting to get tired, I always rest my cheek on my desk and start typing from this very relaxed position. That is a huge warning sign that things are about to get rough. I need to be able to instantly recognize those signs, have responses to them figured out before hand  and have practiced them so the response is a nearly subconscious one.

This is inline with practicing getting up. I think it makes just as much sense to practice responding to common signs of tiredness.

Scheduling

To help with issue number one, I am adopting a rigid day to day schedule. To emphasize the fact that ‘what I feel right now is irrelevant’, I will plan my days’ phases out after my midnight nap each day. This way, I will be doing what I want to be doing from a general perspective, rather than simply what I feel like doing at a given moment.

If my assigned things to do for a phase are making me tired, then I have a list of specific things that are fine to do anytime of day if I’m feeling out of it. Just for good measure, these will be in order. If one doesn’t do the trick, move on to the next. So the order is:

1. If there are any dishes to do, do them

2. Knit

3. Play piano

4. Darts

5. Juggle

6. Sand desk

7. Play Starcraft/Xbox

I have always hated schedules. But, since this is a schedule that is 100% up to me, I think it could be an interesting experience. I’m going to do my best to follow it as closely as possible.

Hopefully that + isolating signs of tiredness and preparing for them will make very noticeable changes for me.  If any one has any thoughts, I’d love to hear them!

Last night went quite well. No chair, just exercise ball. I frequently found myself getting up to play some piano, spent some time knitting standing up (had my mom teach me when I was back home because it seemed like a good thing to do to stay up). For awhile, I was in one of those “I don’t want to do anyyyyything” moods. So, I just walked around my desk in circles for an hour or so until my nap.

A problem I am definitely encountering is over-stressing my eyes. Right now, they are stinging and tearing. They were worse last night which is why I really had to find some things to do off my computer. I have a few books on eye health that I’ve been reading but so far I can’t really pin point anything that handles the situation. The best I think I can do is try to put together a list of activities that go easy on the eyes. Does anyone have any suggestions? Things like listening to audiobooks, going for a walk outside, etc. I think if polyphasic sleep is detrimental to our health in anyway, it’s to our eyes.

So, the night was definitely posing some challenges, but I made it through with no slip-ups. The morning, on the other hand… I vaguely remember convincing myself some reason why it was totally cool for me to hop into my bed. Luckily I was only out for 45 minutes or so.

Part of me is a tiny bit relieved that I’ve been having minor oversleeps. In the past, I either made it through 7 perfect days or would totally cave in through out the way. It’s nice to know that some part of me now has some control to get out of these situations.

The eye thing is really the worst though. It makes me just want to close my eyes and lay down. Boo.

Hey guys! It really feels likes it’s about time for me to join in on all the blogging fun. I’ve made quite a few polyphasic attempts, but never actually blogged through it. hopefully this will be a good way to stay focused.

Oddly enough, I’ve wanted to start writing here for awhile. I started writing ‘My History with Polyphasic Sleep’ over a month ago and I think it kinda depressed me to really go through how long I’ve been trying to get polyphasic. I haven’t quite finished that article and have been telling myself I’d start writing here once I finished it. Now I’m thinking it makes more sense to do it the other way around.

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So, I’m just entering Day 3 right now. Last night was suprsingly rough after 4:00 am and I realized I had a few doze sessions in my chair. On the one hand, this sucks. On the other hand, I’m glad I didn’t find myself waking up face down on a couch and that I never actually was out for an extended period of time.

The stupid thing is that these types of dozes are so preventable. I experienced worse levels of tiredness last night but was able to get moving into an activity and in minutes I was feeling fine again.

I also should have been on my exercise ball, not my office chair. After several hours on the ball, though, I usually get uncomfortable and switch it out for awhile. I need to be a bit more mindful of always being on the ball once it’s night-time.

Anyway, consider me in the fray!