Polyphasic sleep experiment day 1
10Some weeks ago I came across PureDoxyk’s book Ubersleep. Nap-Based Sleep Schedules and the Polyphasic Lifestyle, read in little more than a day, and decided on the spot that I had to try thris.
What is polyphasic sleep?
The book introduces polyphasic sleep cycles as an alternative to monophasic sleep that probably most of us are used to and in which you sleep one solid block of 7 to 8 hours each night. There are many different polycycles but the idea is always the same. Instead of one block you sleep multiple times a day for shorter periods. The basic idea is that this might just fit better for people who find the usual 8h sleep bothersome for whatever cause. Obviously monophasic 8h sleep has only come into habit since the industrial revolution. Roger Ekirch wrote an entire book about what people used to do between their first and second sleeps at night. People went to bed after dawn and got up again a couple hours later around midnight to attend to their animals, the fireplace, the security of the house etc. During that time they had what we in Germany call the Nachtmahl (“night meal”), they had sex, wrote letters etc. After a couple hours they went back to bed until sunset. Most of the time a small siesta or nap in the middle of the day would be costume.
Why?
I was attracted to this idea by three things. First, image the time you gain every week, month or year from only sleeping 4,5h a day (more on this later). In my case it is one solid day of wake time every week. That means I get an “additional day” every week, 51 days a year. This sounds wonderful to me because I never have enough time for the things I want to read or see and maybe that is going to relax my schedule a bit. Second, I have my troubles with the 8h sleep. I find it very hard to get up in the morning and I love to sleep in very late. Among other things that has evicted sunrises and dusk almost completely from my life. And I hate that most of all in summer because it is such a beautiful fresh time of the day that I almost miss. Finally, I just thought it might be a fun experience. I never actively influenced my sleep. It seemed to be something you just take as is. So I’m also doing this just for the sake of the experiment.
How?
I chose the so called everyman cycle. This means I will have a core nap of 3,5h every night and then three more 20min naps throughout the day. I set my core nap to be from 11pm to 2.30am and the other naps at 6.10am, 10.10am and 4.45pm. They say it might take some 10 to 14 days for your body to get used to that cycle. The most important thing is that you cannot move this schedule. Sleeps have to be the exact same time and duration every day, no extra sleeping. Once you have adapted slight changes and modifications can be made but the general idea is to stick to these times as closely as possible. Also alcohol and coffee should be banned since it heavily influences sleep and I guess a little less of both of them could be pretty good for my anyway.
Today
As of writing this I just woke up from my first core sleep. Falling asleep was ok but not super easy because 11pm is a very early time for me to go to bed. I was afraid getting up in the middle of the night would be super hard but the opposite was the case. When my radio alarm went off I literally jumped out of the bed and never went back. I felt a little bit like I would feel if getting up very early to travel. You feel tiredness but you are also very awake. Now my only goal is to make it to 6am when I get my first nap. It feels kind of strange to be awake in the middle of the night. Everything is quiet outside, people sleep, all windows across the street are dark. I feel kind of special, as if I got something all the others are missing. I just had a tea and a banana. Eating will be a little strange too in the beginning. When will I have all the traditional meals. I already read that I might need more food during the day to cover the extra wake time which makes total sense to me.
The naps during the day were ok but I did not have the feeling to be really sleeping. When I lay down thoughts about how quick I should get sleeping kept me awake. Hope that goes away. The longer the day went the worse my tiredness became and I almost counted the minutes of the last hour before the next core nap at 11pm. I even had thoughts about quitting after the first day. I would never have guessed how much tiredness is messing with my thoughts.
