Week Three

Tonight is 3 weeks on 3 hours of sleep a night + 3 naps.

It's 11:30 and I am tired, trying to work through the details of a programming tutorial. Trying to force my brain to do disciplined work at an hour when the Monophasics are sleeping is still difficult. I think I may be building up some tolerance to the weariness, and sometimes it is no where in sight, but in the very late or very early hours it is still obvious. But again, it's only been 3 weeks.

The purpose of sleep is still a mystery to me. Everyone seems pre-occupied with the loss of sleep on the body, but my body seems fine--still able to work out, run, ride my bike, swim, day after day. It is my brain that seems to need the sleep, for what reason... to re-organize memories, Vikash thinks it's a hormonal shift, but perhaps the part of our brains that spend all day listening to us pratter simply need us to shut up for a little while, and that is the root of the need for sleep. What if we mastered the thoughts running through our heads, and instead of filling the day with repetitious emotional recalls, we are simply present, maybe then we will have left sleep behind.

And I have managed, of course, to be incredibly busy all day long. It was an act of will to leave work at 7pm, when I knew that if I stayed I would have nothing but space to work on my projects. I chose to come home, with the goal of continuing to work in a more comfortable but distractable environment. The early evening shift was spent talking and eating, and I didn't settle down to do any work until 10pm, where I was OK to read the news (first chance to get to it in many days) but almost conked out while trying to read about programming. I will try to write some code, rather than read about how to do it, and see where that takes me. Previous to this I have been staying at work until 10pm easily.

I have so many projects and goals, that it is too easy to not even notice I have several more hours in the day. The intensity with which I monitor my time is almost the same. Clearly, I need to change some way of going about all this. I have figured out that the workload of my job is infinite, and giving up personal time to get work-stuff finished is not ultimately a fulfilling decision.

So I have gotten an incredible amount done in the last 3 weeks. It is clear that going with so little sleep is possible, sometimes surprisingly so. However, I have certainly dealt with sleepiness, and it continues still at times.

For instance, I was riding home from work, trying to figure out if today was Wednesday or Thursday. Finally I figured out that tomorrow is Friday, and what I would normally use the weekend for when feeling like this is for catching up on sleep, but for me, now, the weekend will not bring rest, it will bring the need for continued discipline. And the hope for a mindset that is not in a rush. And also some time to my self.

Week Two

I don't know what day I'm on anymore, but I'm well past the one-week mark. I have been extraordinarily busy, and have not made updating this a priority. A person could have 100 hours in a day and still be too busy, until one prioritizes.

I am coming to realize that my workload is next to infinite, and any illusions I have of 'finishing' something are just endlessly leading me down a dead end. So today, Saturday, instead of spending 12 hours in the lab speeding along procedures/experiments, I am here using the computers, and I have spent about a 1/2 hour working with Petri dishes.

I am definitely getting more adjusted to this schedule, but jet-lag persists. I was remarkably sleepy yesterday all morning, and didn't fully wake up until stimulated by some interactions with co-workers. It's much harder to be awake when it's just me, but the reason I want to be up is to do things that I do alone. I am finding that with some will, I can read and study on the computer despite being tired (up to a point).

The 4am rising is getting a little more tolerable. I felt OK 2 out of the last 3 mornings, where I wasn't sleep walking on my feet until the sun rose. And last night, I actually ventured out to see a move at 10pm, but forgot my wallet, and had to return home. Instead, I went for a walk on the beach and then rented Lord of the Rings, but my companion nearly passed out after 5 minutes of the movie--which we started at 12:15am. So we had to call it quits.

This morning, I shot archery at about 6am (first light) and then dashed off to the pool at 8am, not to swim so much as to soak in the hot tub. I did my first weight-training workout yesterday and am sore. I slept in my truck in the parking lot and my first polyphasic-truck-nap went very well.

I also informed my employer of my experiment, and he didn't seem to have a problem with it, apparently he gets about 4-5 hours of sleep a night and naps during the day also. So things are moving smoothly with regard to incorporating this into my life.

I am not fully awake most of the day, though. Well enough to get through the day, but not well enough to crawl in bed with a book, or well enough to debug a program or tackle a new project. I am fine at hours but not at others, most prominently the ones I am accustomed to sleeping during. I am guessing that after I acclimatize, that will change, and I will be able to be more productive.

Night Four

It's 8:30pm, Sunday night, and I've been at work for a few hours. I feel comfortable awake, delighted that I get to stay up until 1am. I interrupted myself before beginning a new task as I have to take a nap at 9pm and didn't want to rush my project. Now that I'm here, the idea of sleeping here while it's dark out and there's no one around is a little creepy, but I'll be behind 2 locked doors, so I'll probably be fine.

Again, I feel like I could stay up and keep going, but even with as little experience as I have with this, I know better. I can tell when I start getting burned out/hazy/headachy. All signs of exhaustion--mostly mentally. I only push myself when those feelings come on when I know there is a nap coming soon.

For today's 2pm nap, I felt like I kept getting woken up by sounds from outside, and just decided to focus and relax, even though I didn't think I could fall back asleep. That happened 3 times before I decided to give up, thinking my 20 minutes was up. I checked my clock, it was only 7 minutes into the nap period. It felt like much, much longer. I laughed and fell back asleep, woken up by my alarm an elongated 13 minutes later, relaxed and refreshed. It is almost unbelievable how refreshing 20 minutes feels.

We shot archery again this morning. I was on the computer after my walk, waiting for the sun to come up. I did not want to go outside where it looked cold, and felt like I could easily concentrate on the screen, but I went and had probably the best shoot I've ever had, no target but many bales. After the 9am nap, I went swimming and then out for a burger, just enjoying the day. I didn't leave for work until 6pm or so, and plan on getting a jump start on the week by staying here fairly late.

I bypassed a movie tonight to get this work done, but I'm hoping everyone is still up when I'm home because I'd really like to vacuum under the bed. I wonder if I can get by on minimal sleep like this for the rest of my life... I wonder if I'm being delusional. I feel like the beginnings of a superhero.

NIght Three

I've been very busy. We got up at 4 this morning and as soon as it got light we went and shot some archery (blindfolded). I decided we had definitely crossed the line of being officially weird. I hit the target, though, and 2 bales, and we were back home in time for the 9am nap. I was definately tired today, kind of zoned out at times. I went to work and got a little done, but decided to go back home and rearrange the furniture instead. I told myself that it WAS Saturday, and I could always work Sunday if I chose. So we hung hooks for all the bikes and cleaned up the living room so I could have some space for my desk. I figured that since I would be up when other people were not, I could use the living room as a more personal space. Anyway, that's done now and I'm getting ready to watch the Seinfeld episode where Kramer tries polyphasic sleeping. It's called the Friar's Club. And then to the core sleep.

NIght Two, part 1

It is midnight, and I am able to concentrate enough to work on the computer and begin compiling a list of things to do. I could probably fall asleep at any moment, but am interested in what I'm doing enough to prefer staying awake.

I am finding that having more hours in the day also allows for more opportunities to be distracted in the day, but I won't dwell on that.

The 9pm nap was OK. I was reluctant to quit working online when it came up, but also looked forward to it. I was certainly not desperate for it, and even wondered if I would be able to fall asleep. Of course, I did. I was woken up a couple of times by noise (apparently, it is Friday night out there in the monophasic world), and am sort of marveling at how long 20 minutes can be. I was rested at the end of the nap, but it was also 9:30 at night, and so being awake is still different than during the day. There has been enough activity in the house this evening to distract me from my work, but I am finding myself able to accomplish it in between the commotions.

I have an hour to go before the core sleep. I was planning on heading out to Walgreen's or something. Actually, I found out that a nearby Home Depot stays open until midnight. However, since I am able to stay up and concentrate, I decided to do that instead.

Is this real? Can it be possible to gain all these extra hours every day? It seems like a dream come true.

Day One Afternoon

I didn't feel that I needed a nap at 2pm, but I took it anyway. I fell asleep quickly, and woke up thinking my alarm hadn't gone off. It felt like I'd been asleep for about 45 minutes. I checked my clock--only 15 minutes had gone by. I didn't feel the need to go back to sleep, and ended up laying still for another several minutes, looking out the window and enjoying feeling rested.

Several years ago, I had hurt my back so badly that I was unable to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time for about four weeks. When I finally was well enough to sleep through the night, I remember the physical and emotional relief I felt, as if an insidious burden was finally lifted from me. The way I felt when I woke up from my nap this afternoon reminded me of that. Wherever the outcome of this 'experimental sleep pattern' lead is unknown, but I am realizing that the sleep pattern I had before, called monophasic, or normal, or whatever, was not working for me.

But perhaps I'm simply being delusional. Always a possibility.

So I'm cruising through the end of my workday, my body is still tired and aching from yesterday's workout. I am a little tired, but also quite relaxed. I feel focused. There are some troubleshooting tasks that I am not interested in taking on this afternoon, though that may be psychological in nature. I just was not planning on expecting much out of myself today. But I have put in a decent, focused day of work, and I am planning on doing some more tomorrow, despite it being the weekend (though that is normal for me).

Day One Morning

I feel great. My nap was surprisingly restful, and I feel awake, which I thought was a feeling that was going to elude me for several days. It's possible that I'll go through several dips in energy level, but right now I am alert, relaxed, and on task. I actually have more energy than on many days when I got much more sleep. And I've been a little hungrier, as well.

And my muscle soreness from yesterday's workout is developing steadily this morning. I first noticed it after I sat down at my desk for a couple of hours after my bike commute to work. And now every time I get up it is more noticeable. It was an act of will to stand up straight when walking down the hall. That is an interesting mystery in itself.