For the last three weeks, I’ve been deeply engaged in an experiment with a sleep pattern known as polyphasic sleep. What follows is an eclectic mix of my observations, hypotheses, and responses to questions about the adaptation.

The Last Week: I’ve slowly been discovering that my work schedule isn’t quite as fit for polynapping as I’d originally believed. This isn’t to say that I’m giving up the schedule; on the contrary, I’m trying even harder to make it work. (Did you honestly expect anything less? ) Rather than ducking out during lunch for a nap, I’ve been taking a two-hour nap from 3:30-5:30am, and otherwise following the schedule as normal (with the exception of a 6:30 nap right before work, during which I almost never actually sleep). The “core nap” appears to be pretty effective in allowing me to survive the workday - however, it may be short-lived. My supervisors have mentioned allowing me to dial in and work from home, which would probably allow me to return to the normal schedule, at least for a couple of days a week. I’ll post updates on this as I learn more.

Hydro-powered Alarms: I’ve received several questions about how exactly I’ve set up an alarm clock to dump water on my face. It’s really pretty straightforward; I use the Sonic Boom alarm clock with a vibrating disc. Instead of placing the disk under my pillow like the manufacturers would suggest, I like to place it above my head on the edge of a table, then attach a cup of water to the disc (and attach the disc cord to the table with a little slack, so the disc doesn’t smack me in the face). The alarm goes off, the disc vibrates and falls off of the table, and if I’m not quick enough to roll out of the way, then I’m reaching for a towel. If you try this at home, just know that you will spend a lot of time with wet sheets, even if you yourself avoid the torrent. It’s a fact of life. Get used to it.

Blog & Summary Updates (or lack thereof): From this point on, I will only post blog updates when something significant occurs, and I will no longer keep track of the days. To be honest, I’m not even sure what day I’m on now… 22? I stopped updating the summary page last week because I no longer feel that it’s helpful. I’m in a phase where I’m modifying the schedule almost every other day, so keeping track of my progress means little, because the definition of “progress” keeps changing. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the logs of the first two weeks; for now, they remain.

Does polyphasic sleep really work? A resounding YES! Only a few times over the last three weeks have I slept more than four hours in a 24-hour period, and I’m in no way feeling sleep-deprived. Once my schedule stabilizes, I’m confident that I’ll be able to reduce that time to three hours or less, and be a lot more consistent with it. I can’t comment yet on the cognitive benefits; I haven’t personally experienced them, but my adaptation has probably been more erratic than most people who have. Whether or not those benefits ever surface, the sheer amount of extra time I have is more than enough of a benefit to outweigh the drawbacks of sleeping polyphasically.

Have you noticed any physical weaknesses? None at all. One of my main concerns before adapting was whether I would be able to fight off all of the cold-season sickies, but so far, I haven’t had any problems (*knock on wood*). I’ve had cold symptoms off and on, but they haven’t been as severe or as long-lasting as I would expect. So either I’ve been fighting a cold pretty well, or the germs just haven’t been fighting back.

Would you recommend polyphasic sleep to me? That depends. Are you creative enough to make use of an extra six hours every day? Can you handle a zombification period of anywhere from 24 hours to 24 days? (Just kidding. It’s no more than a few days, usually.) Do you have a baby? If so, you’ll be sleeping just like it, only for shorter durations. Do you have a boss who will understand why you want to bring a pillow to work? In short, I would recommend polyphasic sleep to just about anyone who can manage it in their schedules. Actually, I’d recommend it to just about anyone, regardless of their schedules. The way I see it, there are very few conflicts that would be worth passing this up. Not that I’m biased.

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We’ve all heard that (in)famous phrase, “You learn something new every day!” For the most part, I agree with it. We watch the news. We pick up gossip. We discover that we’re out of toilet paper at just the wrong moment. Unfortunately, many of us seem to stop there. We become complacent living our lives in a way that (we think) makes us happy, and neglect to pick up knowledge at the speeds our minds are capable of.

Surely, no matter how stressful our lives are, most of us get bored on occasion. And what do we do in those cases? Flip on the TV, of course! (Or see who’s on AIM, read Cosmo, or go drinking.) The next time you’re bored, hold off that temptation, and instead just ask yourself a simple question. One question, that’s it; preferably one that you don’t know the answer to, about a topic that interests you. Here are some examples:

• Where did that phrase, “You learn something new every day” originate?
• How much do American students really learn compared to students in other countries? Why the differences?
• How do people in other countries perceive America?
• How do Americans perceive people in other countries?
• Just how serious is global warming?
• Are we ever going back to the Moon?
• How fast would college students, not held back by government bureaucracy, be able to plan a mission to Mars?
• It can’t be that hard to build a space shuttle… right?
• Seriously, why are most buildings square and boring? Don’t we have more creative architects?
• How often do square buildings collapse compared to, say, spherical ones? (Rolling away doesn’t count.)
• If a spherical building rolled away, would the people inside be able to run around like hamsters?
• How many calories would you burn by running in a hamster ball for one hour? How many more would it be if you were chased by an extremely large and hungry cat?
• Okay, I want a final verdict on caffeine: Healthy, unhealthy, or neutral?
• What’s all the hype about green tea?
• What’s the best way to sleep less and feel better? (By now, I think you all know the answer to this…)
• Why do we need sleep, anyway?
• What happens when a computer hibernates?
• What is this thing called Linux, and why is it ten million times better than Windows? (Sorry, just an opinion. From a Computer Engineering major. )
• Why is Windows Vista such a disappointment? (Okay, I’ll stop with the opinions. But they’re true, ya know.)
• What is DRM, and why are all the entertainment companies touting it while the tech gurus denounce it?
• How can I get a blog as cool as this one?

As you can see, there are basically no restrictions on the type of questions you could ask. If you’re in a silly mood, ask a silly question - it’s that simple. Then try to answer it! If your question was good, you shouldn’t be able to answer it immediately and will have to do a little digging, hence stirring up your curiosity, and (*gasp*) causing you to learn something new! You’ll be amazed at how deep you can dig on a topic that really interests you. I can’t tell you how many times a simple inquiry has lead me to do hours of research (polyphasic sleep is a prime example). Yes, it’s pretty nerdy, but I believe that by challenging ourselves and developing ourselves mentally when we aren’t obligated to, we’ll be much more prepared to use our noggins when it really counts.

So what are you waiting for? Go learn something!

It hasn’t been easy or convenient to find time to nap during my lunch break at work, but so far, I’ve managed to catch myself “microsleeping” on several occasions while sitting at my desk. In my last post, I mentioned having a lot of problems with falling asleep for several hours in the middle of the day. Obviously, I’m no longer doing that, but I’ve instead pushed this “core sleep” back until immediately after I get off of work, around 4:00pm. The good news is that I’ve been able to shorten it to about three hours… the bad news is that I haven’t gotten rid of it (yet)!

My goal as far as the core sleep is to get it to at least a controllable level. Right now, the most common scenario is that I’ll spontaneously decide, after waking up from a 25-minute nap, that I want another nap. I will set my alarms (usually only the auditory ones, not the water) another 25 minutes ahead… and inevitably sleep through them. I want to be assured that I can set an alarm and not sleep through it, whether it’s 25 minutes ahead or two hours ahead. This will probably become easier once I figure out how to slip in a nap during work. Until then, I may have to live with this core sleep, but I’m definitely going to attempt to shorten it. The most positive sign of adaptation I’ve seen is that, regardless of how exhausted I am when I lie down or how long I’m out, I almost always wake up feeling that I slept for a long time. There’s never that thought of, “But I just got into bed!” My brain has undoubtedly adapted to the general pattern of polyphasic sleep; the difficulties will now lie in controlling that pattern and reducing the time I’m asleep.

In other news, I’ve also decided to discontinue the Brain Power test until I’m fully adapted. I fear that the reason my performance has improved is not because of the adaptation, but simply because I’ve gotten used to the test itself. If, after returning to the test, my scores are still in the 140’s (or higher), we could probably guess that the adaptation has had some positive effect. Until then, you’ll just have to deal with my sleep-deprivation-spawned drivel.

Yikes! I think I’m regressing. Today was the fourth consecutive day that I’ve been in and out of naps for four to five hours in the middle of the day.

Day 9: I was suffering some pretty bad insomnia up until around 7:30am, at which time my brain decided to go on strike, and never really came back to work until that afternoon. To make matters worse, some things came up and I had to delay my 3:30 nap by two hours. Thankfully, my naps that evening were pretty helpful.

Day 10: Lying down for my 7:30am nap, I felt pretty great. Waking up at 12:30pm, I felt pretty great. So great, in fact, that I almost didn’t realize I’d been sleeping for five hours. I still don’t know how I managed to sleep two alarms (I slept on the couch and didn’t use the water, which probably wasn’t the best idea). At this point, I knew that something had really gone wrong with my adaptation. The rest of the day, of course, I slept well.

Day 11: I took an extra nap at 5:30am in hopes of preventing the inevitable midday grogginess, but it was to no avail. I spent much of the morning lying down for naps, waking up from naps, and immediately deciding that I wanted another nap. My brain finally snapped out of it at roughly 1-something.

So, what happened? I was doing so well there for awhile. Why the regression? I have no answers - only speculation. (It’s times like this when keeping detailed logs really comes in handy.)

On the morning of Day 6, I had an eight-hour oversleep. I seemed to recover well, so at the time, I dismissed it as a negligible mistake. On Day 7, I had a one-hour oversleep between 8:00 and 9:00 that morning. On Day 8, I experienced some grogginess and extra napping beginning around 8:30… and it’s been downhill since then. My theory is that the Day 6 oversleep caused me to kind of “reset” my cycle so that my brain considers 4:30-12:30 as “nighttime”. If you’re experienced in pulling all-nighters (as many college students are), you know that it’s relatively easy to stay up an hour or two past your “bedtime”, even though you may feel a bit sleepy. As the night carries on, though, it becomes more and more difficult to keep your eyes open (unless, of course, you’re drinking caffeine ) - and if you make the mistake of lying down for a “quick nap”, you may not wake up until lunchtime. Considering my recent patterns, this makes perfect sense. Even the insomnia bit can be understood if we realize that, being an “Owl”, I’m at my peak in the evening hours (say, midnight-4am on my current schedule).

The only way I can see to fix this is to essentially restart the adaptation, going through the sleep deprivation of Days 2 and 3 all over again. My body is already used to napping around the clock, so I don’t anticipate any difficulty (except, of course, with the all-of-the-willpower-has-been-drained-from-my-body-at-7:30am part ). I start working on Monday, which I could see working to either my benefit or detriment. If I start falling asleep on the job, we’ll have to make changes, but until then… Carry on!

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been having trouble sleeping during the evening, and I think that’s been causing some extra drowsiness during the early morning hours. Today, I intentionally took several short naps, spaced one hour apart, in a failed effort to dissipate this. I eventually decided to nap for over 90 minutes (the exact times are foggy in my mind), which seemed to do the trick. I think part of the reason for my insomnia was that, once I passed the “zombification” period, I just wasn’t tired enough to find the floor comfortable enough to sleep on. It worked well in preventing myself from oversleeping during Days 2 and 3, but during those days, I could have slept just about anywhere. The couch is inviting enough to put me to sleep even when I’m not exhausted, but not so cozy that I sleep through the alarms. So today, I officially upgraded to it, and the three naps I’ve taken since then have been extremely effective.

Unless something significant occurs (or I just feel like blabbing), this is going to be my last polynapping update for at least a few days. I’ll still keep updating the summary page, and I’ll probably write a descriptive summary at the end of each week, but there’s just not enough happening to warrant daily posts on this topic anymore. (Yes, that means you’ll get real content starting tomorrow. ;)) I feel I’m well past the physical adaptation; the next few weeks will be spent just getting used to the idea of actually living like this. I start a full-time job on Monday, so the real test will come then.

All in all, I don’t have much to report about the polynapping experiment for today. Unfortunately for you, I’m still alive. I’ve been experiencing a lot of grogginess in the morning hours recently, and I’m hoping that will subside. I’m also starting to notice a slight correlation between how well I sleep in a nap and how well I score on the Brain Test preceding it. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason as to why some naps are more beneficial than others, though.

I’m starting to see signs that this morning’s “disaster” actually had a positive effect - or at the very least, no effect at all. The first nap I took since then was at 2:30, during which I slept barely at all and scored a fairly mediocre result (compared to the past few days) on the Brain Power test. My next nap was not until 8:30 (since I had to put it off due to a meeting) and I did get some amount of sleep, but my score still wasn’t quite par. I took a third nap at 11:30 which seemed to finally awaken my brain from it’s slumber…

Performance: 137.78
Reaction Time: 494
Accuracy: 93
Concentration Level: 86

At first brush, you might think this a coincidence, but consider that on a monophasic schedule, many people (sometimes known as “Owls”, as opposed to morning people, who are “Larks”) don’t feel at their peak until late in the day, perhaps late afternoon or sometime in the evening. These people experience a dip in cognitive functioning during the morning hours. I am very much an “Owl”, so it makes sense that my brain would take several hours to get back up to speed after an eight-hour hibernation.

Of course, none of this is hard science. I could just be full of it and end up crashing by the time all of you wake up tomorrow, but it’s an educated guess, right?

As a random aside, due to my upcoming work schedule, I’ve shifted my nap times to 3:30-7:30-11:30. Yes, you’re all going to see me prove (or die trying) that polyphasic sleep is feasible even with a full-time job. Won’t that be fun?

For some inexplicable reason, I couldn’t sleep at all during my 2:30am nap, nor did I get much rest during the subsequently added 3:30 nap. Being that I was now on Day 6 of polynapping, and fairly well-adjusted, I thought, “Hey, why not just sleep in my own bed at 4:30? I should be able to wake up just fine, and I’m likely to sleep better, too.” (I’ve been sleeping on either the couch or a makeshift bed on the floor, so that I don’t sleep too deeply.) I was only half right - unfortunately, the latter half was the correct one. I woke up shortly before 1:00, having slept over 8 hours, with no recollection whatsoever of any alarms going off. (I didn’t get to use the water, or that may have been different.)

At first, you may be inclined to think that I’ve completely screwed up the experiment, that I’ll have to start all over again from Day 0. You may be correct, but I’m actually holding out hope that this 8-hour “nap” has simply boosted my recovery period. I just took the Brain Power Test again, less than 30 minutes after waking up…

Performance: 141.54
Reaction Time: 527
Accuracy: 100
Concentration Level: 82

This is my highest score yet, with 100% accuracy to boot. While I was monophasic, 30 minutes after waking up would be about when I started to open my eyes. A study done by Claudio Stampi (I think it’s in his book Why We Nap) showed that polyphasic sleepers, after experiencing one night of monophasic sleep, perform better on mental tests - and keep performing better, even after returning to polynapping. Bloggers have reported similar findings. From Steve Pavlina, Days 12-18: “At 10:30pm that day, I was getting up from a regular nap … Instead of getting up immediately, I remained on the couch for a bit and unintentially[sic] drifted back to sleep (without having set an alarm). I didn’t wake up until 4am the next day, and it felt like I was in a deep, dreamless sleep … I woke up feeling normal, no better or worse than at any other time, and I was able to return to the polyphasic pattern after going back to a more proper nap schedule.”

In short, this oversleeping incident could go either way. I’m going to continue my regular nap schedule starting at 2:30, as if nothing happened, and will continue taking the Brain Power test every four hours thereafter. If my performance remains in the upper 130’s-140’s range (and I don’t oversleep again), then I’ll be ready to declare victory.

When you’re awake for 22 hours out of every 24, the days don’t exactly fly by. My calendar claims that I’ve been polynapping for five full days, but I think it’s lying - it must be at least seven. This “no-break-between-days” pattern definitely requires getting used to. But, on the whole, I feel like a million bucks, and I think that’s only going to improve. I love polyphasic sleep, and I’m never going back to the world of nightly hibernation. Get used to it.

Several major “breakthroughs” occurred today, the most significant one being that I remember having dreams during at least three naps today (out of nine so far). This means that I’m falling directly into REM sleep rather than going through the 90-minute NREM cycle which normally precedes it. I keep being awoken by the alarms during these dreams, which means I may need to set them a bit later to get the full amount of REM. (One of those dreams was pretty cool, too; I almost wanted to go back to sleep so I could finish it!) As far as napping every two hours, I’ve decided against it, so I’ll be going back to the four-hour interval from now on. I think the multitude of naps this morning may have done its part in speeding up my recovery, but I ended up feeling pretty groggy for much of the morning, and I’m not sure why. At this point, it’s not worth the risk of oversleeping, so I’m going to take the recovery period at a steady pace. Also, I’ve begun taking the Brain Power Test after every nap, and I’m interested to see how my performance will change post-adaptation.

I’m going to write another page with more details on polynapping facts/myths, how to survive the adaptation period, and my own personal experiences once I’m “off the ground”.

Note: I’m aware that this website has recently turned into mostly a polyphasic sleep site with a few other random articles scattered around. Let me assure you that this is not my intent, and I’ll begin writing non-polynap content (in addition to these updates) very soon. Polyphasic sleep just happened to be the first major “project” I’ve undertaken since launching the site… there will be others.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only just finished the fourth day on this sleep schedule. Time is moving at an ever-slowing pace, and I’ve yet to experience any severe setbacks (*knock on wood*).

Both this morning and tonight, I’ve had the “opportunity” to switch up my nap schedule and see how much my brain gets thrown off; so far, it doesn’t seem to have been fooled. Early this morning, I was brilliant enough during my 2:30 nap to stretch out and knock the cup of water from the table onto my face. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep during that nap, so for the first time, I essentially pushed a nap back an hour, without any ill effects. Tonight, I was unable to make my 6:30 nap due to a social gathering, so I didn’t sleep at all until just after 10:30. Surprisingly, I was awake enough to drive home in the rain (but I don’t think I’ll try that again the next time I skip a nap).

At this point, I think I’m in the recovery period - the period of time where the worst is over, but I still have to recover from the sleep debt I’ve accumulated before I can really function well. Because of this combined with the missed 6:30 nap, I think I’m going to take one nap every two hours for at least the next twelve hours or so (or until I stop sleeping during naps, whichever comes first). This will, of course, be reflected on the summary page.