Wednesday, September 23, 2009

On Stress

I want to start out by thanking my only reader for all of the helpful suggestions so far. The encouragement in doing what I want to do is very appreciated.

I got a reminder last night of my most important goal in this experiment: reducing stress.

I watched PBS with someone a little last night, and they had a program on about studying stress and its effects on humans and baboons. Very interesting program. One conclusion seemed to be that stress was cultural, as baboon troops existed that had very reduced stress because they did not have a competitive culture. But the most important conclusion: stress causes or contributes to just about all illnesses, and it is deadly.

A little bit of stress can be helpful, even enjoyable, but chronic, worrying stress is extremely harmful, and that can't be overstated. So, how do I reduce stress in my life? I've found that a lot of it has to do with attitude. I don't know what a good term for this phenomenon is, but if you make a conscious effort to believe something, sometimes it works out that way. I try to have the attitude that what I'm doing isn't a life-or-death situation and I don't have to be stressed about it, and things will often work out better that way. I'm less likely to procrastinate, make mistakes, etc. if I'm not stressed about what I'm doing.

Other than that, I don't really know how to reduce stress. I try not to attempt more than I can, but often end up doing this due to circumstances anyway, or because the stress of not being able to do what I want to is greater than the stress of already being overwhelmed with stuff I have to do. I try to avoid bringing in clutter and baggage and new stuff to handle, to attempt to prevent stress. I try not to put myself in situations that I feel like could lead to stressful outcomes, such as hanging out with drama-llamas. And above all, trying to consciously practice an easy-going attitude seems to help and really make things go easier.

Monophasic sleep was a big source of stress for me, because I wasn't regularly getting rested with it, I wasn't finding the time to do it, and so on. All things I've talked about in my "background" blogs. So, trying polyphasic sleep, although it may result in the short-term stress of sleep-deprivation (something I'd likely experienced anyway), was an attempt to cope with long-term stress. Perhaps that, and the fact of how deadly stress is, is more important to focus on than whether or not anyone has scientifically proven that polyphasic sleep is healthy. For me, in my circumstances, it might well be.

Sleeping update: I'm thinking of going back to regularly spaced short-naps, because I'm not feeling the "Everyman." The core sleep is very hard to wake up from, and when I awake, I'm often so sleepy that I don't care about anything and just want to go back to sleep. Last night, I woke up from my core, and took another long nap an hour later. That made me wake up feeling pretty bad about myself, as I had intended to use the time to study. One piece of advice I'm going to follow tonight is to not sleep in my bed. I will sleep in the dark, but just not in my bed. I'd rather get more out of my rest by being more comfortable while resting, but I'll accept that, until I get used to a polyphasic schedule, I'll get tired and wish to sleep too long if I use my bed.

Now to try to make up that time I missed and see if I can get everything done today & tonight. And try not to be stressed about it.

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