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.

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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.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s… The Fog™! The Fog™ will eat your brain, causing you to lose consciousness and not remember a single thing! Were you sleeping? Were you staring into space? Were you robbing a 7-11? You may never know! Bwahahahaha…

On a more serious note, yes, I experienced roughly four hours of “The Fog™” this morning, scattered between 3:00 and 10:30. For several periods during those hours, I simply have no recollection of anything that occurred. No dreams, either. Obviously, I have to assume that I was asleep for at least part of those four hours, but the interesting thing is that I don’t recall falling asleep, or even waking up. In my memory, it’s literally as if I was at this place, doing this thing at this time, and the next thing I know, I’m at a different place, doing something different, with the clock reading two hours later. My memory almost seems to temporarily “shut off”. I imagine it has something to do with microsleeps, but either having many of them in succession or even just blacking out entirely. Very strange, and not something I’ve known to occur with polynapping. (I almost blamed Friday the 13th, then realized that today was the 12th. Doh!)

Strangely enough, this brain fog doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on my sleeping patterns. I didn’t oversleep my 2:30, 6:30 or 10:30 nap, and I did sleep well during all three of them. (Actually, I haven’t overslept or skipped any naps yet, which is a miracle in itself!) My 10:30 nap was incredibly restorative, but dreamless, which suggests that my body is still adapting. Either my 2:30 and 6:30 naps weren’t restorative (causing the fog), or they simply couldn’t overcome the raw sleep pressure due to being awake in the early morning hours. Regardless, I can’t see any negative short-term effects. I wouldn’t be surprised if my adaptation was delayed by a day or two, but right now, I don’t even see signs of that.

In conclusion, I’ve definitely run over a speed bump, but I’ve yet to determine how damaging it was (if at all). At first glance, it seems that the brain is more resilient to screwups than most people realize - but it’s really too early to tell. According to some records of successful polynappers, I should be approaching the low point very soon. Hopefully, this morning was it.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned… I have done the most blashphemous thing a polynapper can do by lying down in bed when I should not have been! Fortunately, the resulting slip was only an hour, but I’m still kicking myself because it could have been much worse. I’ll have to be more careful about that…

On a positive note, at least part of that hour was filled with vivid dreams (implying REM sleep), which is said to be a sign that the adaptation is taking hold.

Otherwise, things are going extremely well. I’m obviously suffering some drowsiness, but it doesn’t seem nearly as bad as it could be; I think the ambient blue light actually does help! I’ve also become better at waking up to an alarm. Isn’t it amazing how the threat of being drenched can do that to a person? (When my cell phone goes off after a nap, I have 60 seconds to get out of bed before the second alarm dumps water on my face.) Amazingly, I’ve only been soaked twice so far.

So far, so good. I’ve fallen asleep during every nap I’ve taken today, though I can’t say that they’ve been very refreshing yet. No oversleeps (*knocks on wood*)! In my previous experiments, Day 2 has usually been the killer, but I’m confident that I’ll be able to pull through this time. There isn’t much to report right now; I’m feeling pretty much like anyone who just pulled an all-nighter would feel - pretty tired, a little out of touch, but nothing unmanageable.

I’ve been taking the Brain Power test once every 12 hours so. Though I only have three scores so far, the results aren’t what I’d have expected. While my accuracy and overall performance are decreasing, my reaction time and concentration level are actually improving… I’m probably just getting impatient.

In other news, I read an article awhile back about blue light and its effects on alertness. The lights in my apartment are now covered with blue tissue paper.

At 6:30 this evening, I took (or in this case, attempted to take) my first polyphasic nap. I didn’t sleep at all, but that’s not a major concern at this point - falling asleep will become too easy soon enough. I’ve decided to follow a standard 2:30-6:30-10:30 Uberman schedule, with no intermittent naps unless absolutely necessary.

To measure my progress and give this whole thing some hint of being scientific, I will be taking this online test at least once per day. My baseline result, gathered about 4:30 today, was 116.52. (Apparently, I’m faster than most, because the average third-run score is 93.59. :D) At that time I was alert, healthy, and otherwise “normal”, so I expect that my score will continually decrease over the next week. When it returns to that baseline (and hopefully exceeds it), I will consider the adaptation a success.

I’ll also be recording some other objective measures, but in lieu of writing a post after every nap, I’m going to create a permanent page for all of this data. Look to that for the less wordy updates.

The Polyphasic Sleep intro has been posted for your perusal. You may find it by looking under “Pages” on the right sidebar (or by clicking here if you’re lazy).

It’s unfinished as of yet, but it should give you a good primer on what to expect. Yes, I’m going to try it… if you haven’t figured that out yet.