The spring school term began this week, so I've been rather busy and not thinking about polyphasic stuff too much.
The weekend prior, I decided to do some intense gaming to finish up some stuff I had been working on in an MMO and wanted to be done with before the semester started. As a result, I stayed up too late on several nights, not wanting to nap, and so went back to just sleeping when I was too tired to stay up. Of course, I can't keep a schedule with that and just slept whatever time my body felt like (which varied considerably, although I still always wake up around 8), and it's not very restful to do it several days in a row, but it's difficult to go back to sleeping normally again the next night.
It seems paradoxical, but when you stay up until you're exhausted, it's like you oversleep when you do rest, and find it difficult to sleep again the next night. I find that I don't feel 100% after sleeping the sleep of the dead, but I have a hard time going back to sleep at a regular time the next night because, although I'm tired, I'm just not sleepy. I've been freesleeping up until today this week, trying to feel more rested after the mental exhaustion of the weekend and this week, but still staying up late doing stuff online or reading because I was unable to fall asleep until the early morning hours.
Tonight, I'm going back to my designated schedule. My attempts to rest up and reset by freesleeping don't seem to be doing anything; sleeping without a schedule doesn't aid getting back into sleeping on a schedule, for me at least. If I'm unable to sleep at my preferred time again (before midnight), I will try staying up until my late-morning naptime (11:30-13:00), sleeping then, and then getting my 3-hour sleep that night.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Days 5 & 6
I was definitely leaning this way with my last post. I didn't want to give up my 3-nap schedule--which I liked so much in theory and believe could have had a chance if I'd had the time to have three equidistant naps and adapt to sleeping at each one--but it seems to be incompatible with my schedule. Looking back, very rarely did I actually take 3 naps. My schedule was such for days 5 and 6 that I was sure that I couldn't work in at least one of the naps, so I ended up taking a core sleep at night and hoping that I could get at least one nap. And since I'm feeling good with this so far (although two days certainly isn't enough to know if I'm adapting), I will continue.
My plan has now changed to sleeping 3 hours at night, getting a 1.5 hour nap in around lunchtime, and then taking a short nap when I get home at night as necessary. The most realistic times for me to sleep are 23:00 - 2:00, and 11:30 - 13:00. That gives me wake times of about 10 and 9.5 hours--very close to equidistant. The only hurdle to overcome will be falling asleep at 23:00, something that my body just doesn't want to do most days, unless I give it a couple of hours of cool-down time. Well, if it's the only way to get this schedule to work, then I will just do that.
I've been researching ways to deal with "delayed sleep phase," and it seems to be a difficult, but hopeful, situation. There are a few suggestions for how to get there without losing much sleep, but the basic goal is to just keep sleeping at the time I want to sleep and waking at the time I want to wake until my body adjusts--and it *probably* will. If gradual adjustment of this type doesn't work, the next step is to stay up until I'm good and tired, sleep at the desired time, and repeat as necessary. One can do this over a period of many days and gradually move the sleep time, or stay up 24+ hours and try to make the readjustment all at once. I've tried the latter before, actually, and I don't think it's very effective on just one repetition. The brain tends to go back to its desired sleeping schedule after its gotten sufficient rest. Perhaps many tries at it, coupled with having a supremely strict sleep schedule that includes time to prepare for sleep would work.
Since I *think* I finally have a schedule that nothing will interfere with greatly (and if it does, it shouldn't be by more than an hour on the average day, like maybe I'd move my noon nap to a bit earlier to go out for lunch or such), I'm going to give it my sincerest try, and hope that I will just adjust to it over time with nothing more than giving myself an hour or so to cool down before my evening sleep. I hope that, since I am sleeping at a time that I normally don't, and will be wide-awake when I'm normally sleepy, this will be enough to break me of wanting to sleep then, and I will get over it.
Too bad sleep experiments involve so much waiting to see what will work and what won't.
My plan has now changed to sleeping 3 hours at night, getting a 1.5 hour nap in around lunchtime, and then taking a short nap when I get home at night as necessary. The most realistic times for me to sleep are 23:00 - 2:00, and 11:30 - 13:00. That gives me wake times of about 10 and 9.5 hours--very close to equidistant. The only hurdle to overcome will be falling asleep at 23:00, something that my body just doesn't want to do most days, unless I give it a couple of hours of cool-down time. Well, if it's the only way to get this schedule to work, then I will just do that.
I've been researching ways to deal with "delayed sleep phase," and it seems to be a difficult, but hopeful, situation. There are a few suggestions for how to get there without losing much sleep, but the basic goal is to just keep sleeping at the time I want to sleep and waking at the time I want to wake until my body adjusts--and it *probably* will. If gradual adjustment of this type doesn't work, the next step is to stay up until I'm good and tired, sleep at the desired time, and repeat as necessary. One can do this over a period of many days and gradually move the sleep time, or stay up 24+ hours and try to make the readjustment all at once. I've tried the latter before, actually, and I don't think it's very effective on just one repetition. The brain tends to go back to its desired sleeping schedule after its gotten sufficient rest. Perhaps many tries at it, coupled with having a supremely strict sleep schedule that includes time to prepare for sleep would work.
Since I *think* I finally have a schedule that nothing will interfere with greatly (and if it does, it shouldn't be by more than an hour on the average day, like maybe I'd move my noon nap to a bit earlier to go out for lunch or such), I'm going to give it my sincerest try, and hope that I will just adjust to it over time with nothing more than giving myself an hour or so to cool down before my evening sleep. I hope that, since I am sleeping at a time that I normally don't, and will be wide-awake when I'm normally sleepy, this will be enough to break me of wanting to sleep then, and I will get over it.
Too bad sleep experiments involve so much waiting to see what will work and what won't.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Day 4
Even if I don't sleep for all of my naps, I appreciate having time throughout the day to meditate/doze. It's mentally and physically restorative for me. I usually get up feeling awake and like my mind's been cleared. It gives me quiet time to think, and I often get up at the end of the nap time with a plan for what I'd like to do for the rest of the day, where I did not have a clear idea before. Perhaps this thinking/planning and anticipation of doing something later is part of the reason I don't sleep much during the nap (sort of like how I sometimes had a hard time sleeping due to dreading something I needed to do when I got up, or being anxious about a deadline), but it still has a positive effect for me.
I didn't sleep during my afternoon nap today, and I pushed my evening nap back to the point where there was no sense in taking it. Instead, I opted to sleep from 2:00-5:00, which I quite liked and will definitely be doing in the future if I decide to go with 2 naps instead of 3, due to my continued failure in scheduling them well. I woke up feeling awake and good... until I started feeling tired and kind of down at about 6:00, and laid down and dozed off and on until after 8. Someone else in my household has the flu, and I hope I'm not catching it. Other than feeling bad then, I've largely felt good and healthy while adapting. I was disappointed in myself for doing that, and I felt kind of lethargic for a bit afterwards.
It seems that getting a lot of sleep or a little sleep does not make a big difference in my energy level (at least in the short-term), something that I've observed before. It's more about sleeping well (good quality of rest, such as from sleeping in bed and minimizing background noise), sleeping intelligently (sleeping before I get exhausted, planning sleeps for the correct amount of time and at the right times), and being positive about sleep (resting with the thought in my mind that I am doing it to have more energy for later). When I dread sleep and put it off until I'm exhausted, this makes it worse. And sometimes I don't intentionally do this, I end up doing it because I can't fall asleep and wake up when I want to and I get frustrated with this. That's what I'm trying to remedy. Keeping the positive attitude in mind, that this is a part of health-maintenance that I'm doing so that I'll continue to feel good, helps me to sleep better. That's why my blog is "Sleep to Wake."
Anyway, I skipped the noon nap today, I really don't need it after that. I will try to take at least a short nap this evening. I think there are two ways that I can proceed while keeping my desired schedule. I can either A) keep the schedule of 3x 90 minute naps that I have been trying (however poorly) to adapt to, or B) accept that the evening nap is difficult to keep, and instead opt for sleeping 3 hours + 90 minutes + another 30 minute nap if necessary. In the latter case, I would sleep 2-5 am, have my 90 minute nap after working in the morning and before school, from 11:30 13:00, and then, if I'm tired, take a 30 minute nap when I get home at about 19:30. I still don't have confidence in the shorter naps, but I realize it is something that I should consider, because it is difficult to work in longer naps, even when they are fewer. I think it's hard to adapt to a sleep schedule in which one is taking naps with the intent that the sleep-cycle lengths of them will be different. In other words, if I sleep on 90 minute cycles for a core sleep and then take 20 minute naps, I'm expecting my brain to do different things at different times. That is the hardest thing to adapt to, and for this reason, I've kept away from doing Everyman.
Whatever I end up doing, it's just going to be difficult to work in an evening, post-school nap, because my classes go until so late. Maybe I'll be so tired on those days that I'll have no problem with taking a 90 minute nap and won't feel like doing anything else. I don't know. Or maybe I'll finally get lucky with trying to fight the "delayed sleep phase" and fight the sleepiness in the morning, and be able to move my night sleep back to a time where it is easier to take only two naps a day, because they're evenly spaced. If I were to go to just two naps, it would be ideal if they could be from 22:00 - 1:00, and then 11:30 - 13:00. In the mean-time, I'll keep trying my 3 nap schedule. It might actually be a good way to gradually move to sleeping earlier in the night.
I didn't sleep during my afternoon nap today, and I pushed my evening nap back to the point where there was no sense in taking it. Instead, I opted to sleep from 2:00-5:00, which I quite liked and will definitely be doing in the future if I decide to go with 2 naps instead of 3, due to my continued failure in scheduling them well. I woke up feeling awake and good... until I started feeling tired and kind of down at about 6:00, and laid down and dozed off and on until after 8. Someone else in my household has the flu, and I hope I'm not catching it. Other than feeling bad then, I've largely felt good and healthy while adapting. I was disappointed in myself for doing that, and I felt kind of lethargic for a bit afterwards.
It seems that getting a lot of sleep or a little sleep does not make a big difference in my energy level (at least in the short-term), something that I've observed before. It's more about sleeping well (good quality of rest, such as from sleeping in bed and minimizing background noise), sleeping intelligently (sleeping before I get exhausted, planning sleeps for the correct amount of time and at the right times), and being positive about sleep (resting with the thought in my mind that I am doing it to have more energy for later). When I dread sleep and put it off until I'm exhausted, this makes it worse. And sometimes I don't intentionally do this, I end up doing it because I can't fall asleep and wake up when I want to and I get frustrated with this. That's what I'm trying to remedy. Keeping the positive attitude in mind, that this is a part of health-maintenance that I'm doing so that I'll continue to feel good, helps me to sleep better. That's why my blog is "Sleep to Wake."
Anyway, I skipped the noon nap today, I really don't need it after that. I will try to take at least a short nap this evening. I think there are two ways that I can proceed while keeping my desired schedule. I can either A) keep the schedule of 3x 90 minute naps that I have been trying (however poorly) to adapt to, or B) accept that the evening nap is difficult to keep, and instead opt for sleeping 3 hours + 90 minutes + another 30 minute nap if necessary. In the latter case, I would sleep 2-5 am, have my 90 minute nap after working in the morning and before school, from 11:30 13:00, and then, if I'm tired, take a 30 minute nap when I get home at about 19:30. I still don't have confidence in the shorter naps, but I realize it is something that I should consider, because it is difficult to work in longer naps, even when they are fewer. I think it's hard to adapt to a sleep schedule in which one is taking naps with the intent that the sleep-cycle lengths of them will be different. In other words, if I sleep on 90 minute cycles for a core sleep and then take 20 minute naps, I'm expecting my brain to do different things at different times. That is the hardest thing to adapt to, and for this reason, I've kept away from doing Everyman.
Whatever I end up doing, it's just going to be difficult to work in an evening, post-school nap, because my classes go until so late. Maybe I'll be so tired on those days that I'll have no problem with taking a 90 minute nap and won't feel like doing anything else. I don't know. Or maybe I'll finally get lucky with trying to fight the "delayed sleep phase" and fight the sleepiness in the morning, and be able to move my night sleep back to a time where it is easier to take only two naps a day, because they're evenly spaced. If I were to go to just two naps, it would be ideal if they could be from 22:00 - 1:00, and then 11:30 - 13:00. In the mean-time, I'll keep trying my 3 nap schedule. It might actually be a good way to gradually move to sleeping earlier in the night.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Day 3.5: the rest of the day
The regular nap times (even the ones that I barely doze off for) seem to be having the expected effects on my memory and energy levels. Although I have felt tired and sleepy sometimes, there has not been a period when I felt tired and sleep-deprived for hours at a time. I've had only a couple of times that I can remember being mentally exhausted and having difficulty functioning at a normal level. I've been doing mental activities such as reading and writing without any difficulty, even during my late night awake period. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any trouble with my memory. I'm remembering each waking period well, and remembering what I've learned in that time. I've been reading texts in anticipation of going back to school in about a week. Soon, I'm going to start studying language again. I've just been waiting until I really felt strongly about doing it, but I ought to just go ahead and start.
I went out for a long period around lunch-time, and as a result, didn't get to do a nap until 15:30. I was actually sleepy then, and had no trouble sleeping. I slept about 80 minutes and woke up naturally. Sleep was normal and I experienced REM. Too bad not all of my daytime naps are like that. However, I didn't feel like sleeping again until rather late in the evening.
In anticipation of possibly being gone for the day and missing my afternoon nap and delaying my evening one, I decided last night to just lay down when I'm tired and sleep until 5 am. I thought it was important to get an adequate store of energy before-hand, because I cannot anticipate taking any naps. I got tired at about midnight, and woke up at 5:00, during an REM phase, feeling really well rested. I sat in bed and listened to the radio for a while as I didn't feel like reading, and dozed off again shortly at about 6:30. I felt lazy for doing that, and will be sure to stay out of bed at this time until I'm more adjusted to waking up so early.
http://www.glenrhodes.com/?p=132 -- Here is an interesting article on sleep that confirms that someone else has had success with doing something similar to what I am doing. If 3 naps fails to work out for me, I think I will go for the 3 hours + 90 minutes biphasic schedule. It seems I can definitely do a 2:00-5:00 core, although if I only take one daytime nap, it'd be more ideal for my core to be earlier, maybe 1:00-4:00. The only problem I have with that at this time is scheduling it around my classes, which are in a solid chunk during the afternoon.
If I could move my sleep to earlier in the night, it wouldn't be a problem. I've had difficulty with trying to schedule a core sleep in the past, and sometimes wake up groggy from it, but that could be a failure to time it well. I didn't do well with Everyman, and I'm not sure why, because I've often slept just a few hours at night in the past, so I should be used to it. I'm thinking it was probably the 20 minute naps that disagreed with me, I'd need a lot of time to adjust to those, and they are still difficult to schedule. Also, having my sleepiest period come early in the morning rather than during the night does not help with good scheduling.
I could try napping from 2-5 as I said, and then having another nap when I get home in the evening, but one of my aims so far has been to not interrupt the evening hours that I'd normally spend with the people who are important to me. The "delayed sleep" problem definitely needs to be fixed for me to ever have a schedule that I find acceptable. If I could have a really early core sleep, like 1-4 am or midnight-3:00, that would be perfect. However, that would also be less naps per day, so I wouldn't be serving my purpose of having sleep spread out throughout the day to promote wakefulness and memory retention. I have faith that one can adapt to more frequent naps, but so far, I seem to just be sleeping for two a day, and I keep having my evening nap really close to my morning nap. I don't know if having those two so close together does any good, maybe it would be better to just have one. Anyway, this gives me something else to think about.
I went out for a long period around lunch-time, and as a result, didn't get to do a nap until 15:30. I was actually sleepy then, and had no trouble sleeping. I slept about 80 minutes and woke up naturally. Sleep was normal and I experienced REM. Too bad not all of my daytime naps are like that. However, I didn't feel like sleeping again until rather late in the evening.
In anticipation of possibly being gone for the day and missing my afternoon nap and delaying my evening one, I decided last night to just lay down when I'm tired and sleep until 5 am. I thought it was important to get an adequate store of energy before-hand, because I cannot anticipate taking any naps. I got tired at about midnight, and woke up at 5:00, during an REM phase, feeling really well rested. I sat in bed and listened to the radio for a while as I didn't feel like reading, and dozed off again shortly at about 6:30. I felt lazy for doing that, and will be sure to stay out of bed at this time until I'm more adjusted to waking up so early.
http://www.glenrhodes.com/?p=132 -- Here is an interesting article on sleep that confirms that someone else has had success with doing something similar to what I am doing. If 3 naps fails to work out for me, I think I will go for the 3 hours + 90 minutes biphasic schedule. It seems I can definitely do a 2:00-5:00 core, although if I only take one daytime nap, it'd be more ideal for my core to be earlier, maybe 1:00-4:00. The only problem I have with that at this time is scheduling it around my classes, which are in a solid chunk during the afternoon.
If I could move my sleep to earlier in the night, it wouldn't be a problem. I've had difficulty with trying to schedule a core sleep in the past, and sometimes wake up groggy from it, but that could be a failure to time it well. I didn't do well with Everyman, and I'm not sure why, because I've often slept just a few hours at night in the past, so I should be used to it. I'm thinking it was probably the 20 minute naps that disagreed with me, I'd need a lot of time to adjust to those, and they are still difficult to schedule. Also, having my sleepiest period come early in the morning rather than during the night does not help with good scheduling.
I could try napping from 2-5 as I said, and then having another nap when I get home in the evening, but one of my aims so far has been to not interrupt the evening hours that I'd normally spend with the people who are important to me. The "delayed sleep" problem definitely needs to be fixed for me to ever have a schedule that I find acceptable. If I could have a really early core sleep, like 1-4 am or midnight-3:00, that would be perfect. However, that would also be less naps per day, so I wouldn't be serving my purpose of having sleep spread out throughout the day to promote wakefulness and memory retention. I have faith that one can adapt to more frequent naps, but so far, I seem to just be sleeping for two a day, and I keep having my evening nap really close to my morning nap. I don't know if having those two so close together does any good, maybe it would be better to just have one. Anyway, this gives me something else to think about.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Day 2.5, Day 3
Day 2.5, 1:39 am
As I go on with my adaptation, the mental component of sleeping self-discipline becomes more apparent to me. It's amazing, the different that attitude makes in my success or lack thereof. Although I can't hypnotize myself into going to sleep, thinking that I am sleepy or should be sleepy seems to have some affect, and same goes for feeling awake. I took my evening nap a little early tonight, at about 20:30. I hardly slept at all, and that's probably due to setting the nap at a time that I have very rarely ever gone to bed at. However, I did sleep a short while toward the end of the nap. I was a bit sleepy when I woke up, but I resisted the urge to go back to sleep by telling myself that, even though it was night, I was awake and it was time to get up, and I'd feel much better about myself if I got up now and napped again at 3:30. I did get up, and felt awake and very alert within a few minutes. And now, it is 1:39, and I am feeling quite relaxed, but also very awake. I find myself occasionally thinking, "I should be tired at this time after so little sleep," and marveling at the fact that I'm not. I don't think that controlled thinking or a positive attitude bears the full responsibility for a successful adaptation, but it could make the difference in whether or not you oversleep. When I tried to adapt back in September and October to my Dymaxion-like schedule (I tried to do Dymaxion, but allowing myself 1-hour naps to try to assure that I had adequate time to fall asleep), my state of severe stress and my doubts about whether Dymaxion worked and whether I could do it probably made a difference in my lack of success in falling asleep and getting up on time. Now, I just need to figure out a way to relax more quickly to sleep. I think doing quiet activities directly before a nap often has an impact. One way I've been able to put myself to sleep at night in the past was to peacefully read something that wasn't too exciting. This seemed to make me sleepy if I was already tired, although it sometimes took an hour or two. Anyway, I'm going to spend at least an hour prior to my nap this morning reading a textbook or such to try to make it easier.
I hardly slept for my afternoon nap either. I took it rather late, after 13:00, due to being busy earlier. I'm going to say the failure to sleep was a combination of taking it too late and being disturbed during it.
Day 3, 8:07 am
I had no problems falling asleep at 3:30--except that I had an odd series of lucid dreams, and woke myself up in the middle of the nap. Lucid dreaming is not new for me, but waking up during a nap is. One of the dreams, the one I most clearly remember, was just a very vivid still life scene that I was experiencing. It somehow seemed more vibrant than just seeing it normally. I could see minute textures on everything. It was a closet that had some of my clothes in it that I was seeing, from an odd upward angle, but I don't think it was my closet. Very odd. I realized it was a dream and tried to change the scene so that I could see something else like this, and tried to picture a familiar forest, but it didn't work and I moved and woke myself up. I've had weird lucid dreams before, although not quite like that. It was rather like an image that I had seen during the day was stuck in my mind (although it wasn't exactly like reality). Prior to the dream, I had been trying to move, and I think dreaming that I was moving, but finding it difficult due to sleep paralysis and getting annoyed at this. I know I didn't move because I woke up in the same position I had fallen asleep in. I think that stories of astral projection are the result of lucid dreaming. I've had such dreams of getting up and moving around before, and actually one dream of finding that my body was paralyzed from sleep, so I left it and tried to go somewhere, but found that everything looked strange and it was hard to find my way, so I went back to bed. Many lucid dreams tend to be of real life things, so that may be where one could imagine it actually happened.
I slept from 3:30 to 5:00 without a problem, except the short awakening. I was very sleepy when I woke up at 5 and found it hard to get up. I set my nap alarm for 20 minutes and took another short nap, thinking this would lessen the sleepiness, but I was wrong. It did nothing. I won't be doing that again any time soon, and will instead just be strict about getting up at 5:00 and going on. After I did force myself to get up, I quickly felt less tired and had no trouble functioning.
It seems that my sleeping problems seem to be due to me being geared to sleep in the mid-afternoon and the early morning. I already suspected this, but the fact that I should be tired for my evening nap after a day of not sleeping much, and even then I never am, seems to confirm my suspicion. I'd say that I'm producing melatonin from about 2:00 - 8:00. I start getting tired around 2:00, I'm asleep within 5 minutes when I lay down at 3:30, and I find it hard to wake at 5:00 and will continue to feel sleepy off and on until about 8:00. When I free slept the day before, I naturally woke up at about 8. Now I know what difficulty I need to tackle if I am to ever be good at waking up early and taking naps at other times.
I realized that I've been always writing these blog posts in the morning, so they don't really cover the day listed in the title, just the day before. I'll try to remedy that by posting in the evening or during the night in the future. This one is already long enough, so I will publish it, and write 3.5 covering the rest of the day later.
As I go on with my adaptation, the mental component of sleeping self-discipline becomes more apparent to me. It's amazing, the different that attitude makes in my success or lack thereof. Although I can't hypnotize myself into going to sleep, thinking that I am sleepy or should be sleepy seems to have some affect, and same goes for feeling awake. I took my evening nap a little early tonight, at about 20:30. I hardly slept at all, and that's probably due to setting the nap at a time that I have very rarely ever gone to bed at. However, I did sleep a short while toward the end of the nap. I was a bit sleepy when I woke up, but I resisted the urge to go back to sleep by telling myself that, even though it was night, I was awake and it was time to get up, and I'd feel much better about myself if I got up now and napped again at 3:30. I did get up, and felt awake and very alert within a few minutes. And now, it is 1:39, and I am feeling quite relaxed, but also very awake. I find myself occasionally thinking, "I should be tired at this time after so little sleep," and marveling at the fact that I'm not. I don't think that controlled thinking or a positive attitude bears the full responsibility for a successful adaptation, but it could make the difference in whether or not you oversleep. When I tried to adapt back in September and October to my Dymaxion-like schedule (I tried to do Dymaxion, but allowing myself 1-hour naps to try to assure that I had adequate time to fall asleep), my state of severe stress and my doubts about whether Dymaxion worked and whether I could do it probably made a difference in my lack of success in falling asleep and getting up on time. Now, I just need to figure out a way to relax more quickly to sleep. I think doing quiet activities directly before a nap often has an impact. One way I've been able to put myself to sleep at night in the past was to peacefully read something that wasn't too exciting. This seemed to make me sleepy if I was already tired, although it sometimes took an hour or two. Anyway, I'm going to spend at least an hour prior to my nap this morning reading a textbook or such to try to make it easier.
I hardly slept for my afternoon nap either. I took it rather late, after 13:00, due to being busy earlier. I'm going to say the failure to sleep was a combination of taking it too late and being disturbed during it.
Day 3, 8:07 am
I had no problems falling asleep at 3:30--except that I had an odd series of lucid dreams, and woke myself up in the middle of the nap. Lucid dreaming is not new for me, but waking up during a nap is. One of the dreams, the one I most clearly remember, was just a very vivid still life scene that I was experiencing. It somehow seemed more vibrant than just seeing it normally. I could see minute textures on everything. It was a closet that had some of my clothes in it that I was seeing, from an odd upward angle, but I don't think it was my closet. Very odd. I realized it was a dream and tried to change the scene so that I could see something else like this, and tried to picture a familiar forest, but it didn't work and I moved and woke myself up. I've had weird lucid dreams before, although not quite like that. It was rather like an image that I had seen during the day was stuck in my mind (although it wasn't exactly like reality). Prior to the dream, I had been trying to move, and I think dreaming that I was moving, but finding it difficult due to sleep paralysis and getting annoyed at this. I know I didn't move because I woke up in the same position I had fallen asleep in. I think that stories of astral projection are the result of lucid dreaming. I've had such dreams of getting up and moving around before, and actually one dream of finding that my body was paralyzed from sleep, so I left it and tried to go somewhere, but found that everything looked strange and it was hard to find my way, so I went back to bed. Many lucid dreams tend to be of real life things, so that may be where one could imagine it actually happened.
I slept from 3:30 to 5:00 without a problem, except the short awakening. I was very sleepy when I woke up at 5 and found it hard to get up. I set my nap alarm for 20 minutes and took another short nap, thinking this would lessen the sleepiness, but I was wrong. It did nothing. I won't be doing that again any time soon, and will instead just be strict about getting up at 5:00 and going on. After I did force myself to get up, I quickly felt less tired and had no trouble functioning.
It seems that my sleeping problems seem to be due to me being geared to sleep in the mid-afternoon and the early morning. I already suspected this, but the fact that I should be tired for my evening nap after a day of not sleeping much, and even then I never am, seems to confirm my suspicion. I'd say that I'm producing melatonin from about 2:00 - 8:00. I start getting tired around 2:00, I'm asleep within 5 minutes when I lay down at 3:30, and I find it hard to wake at 5:00 and will continue to feel sleepy off and on until about 8:00. When I free slept the day before, I naturally woke up at about 8. Now I know what difficulty I need to tackle if I am to ever be good at waking up early and taking naps at other times.
I realized that I've been always writing these blog posts in the morning, so they don't really cover the day listed in the title, just the day before. I'll try to remedy that by posting in the evening or during the night in the future. This one is already long enough, so I will publish it, and write 3.5 covering the rest of the day later.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Day 2
I now also have a blog at http://xialuote.trypolyphasic.com. For now, these two blogs are duplicates of each other. Trypolyphasic.com is a very nice community for information on the subject, and I like the community of bloggers that is developing there.
Here's a link relevant to the subject of taking 90 minute naps:
http://www.saramednick.com/htmls/pdfs/Mednick-NN03[8].pdf. To summarize, this is a study done on how taking naps that include both slow wave sleep (SWS) and REM was found to promote learning. Participants also slept an average of about 7.5 hours at night. However, those who included a nap between training sessions did significantly better than those who only slept at night. This lends support to my belief that breaking your day up with naps will promote better learning. I don't think the amount of sleep matters as much as the frequency of sleep. In other words, sleeping every few hours for up to 90 minutes is better than taking your sleep in one go. Of course, one also needs to not be sleep-deprived for this to be most effective, so that is the caveat. My purpose is to see whether I can successfully adapt to 90 minute naps spaced throughout the day without feeling sleep deprived in between.
Nap report: Yesterday, I was late getting to my 11:30 nap, but I still enforced the 13:00 wake up time, as that isn't really negotiable in my schedule. I woke up then feeling like I could sleep more, but feeling alright otherwise. However, I delayed my evening nap more than I wanted to, and didn't take it until 23:00. I was tired when I woke up from it, in part because I had a hard time getting to sleep. Last night was one of the coldest so far this season. I used an electric blanket to warm up, and initially had a hard time getting warm enough to sleep, but then woke up during the nap feeling a bit hot. From about 00:30 to 3:30, I did some reading on the computer, and then played a game for a bit, which is different than my usual nightly routine of sitting down and reading a book or something else quiet. I got to my next nap a little after 3:30, and could not fall asleep for it. Again, I was cold. I used the heating blanket, but didn't turn the temperature up so high on it, and it was rather slow to get me warm. By the time I was comfortable and drowsy, it was 5:00. I was feeling really sleepy at this point and knew I needed the rest, so I just laid back down and went to sleep without setting an alarm. I didn't really like doing this as I want to be strict with my 5:00 wake time as well, but I also didn't want to get too tired and crash later, so I felt like it was necessary. I slept for about 3 1/2 hours, at which time I woke up on my own.
I'm starting to wake up tired from my naps, so I feel that the hard part of the adaptation is coming up already, meaning I need to be strict with waking times, and do what I can to fall asleep within 10 minutes during my naps. I need to review tricks that I used to use to fall asleep to help me with that. Something I'll be doing tonight is pre-warming the bed with the heating blanket before getting into it, and not leaving the blanket on during the nap, which just makes it too hot. I also need to review some relaxation techniques, and definitely be on time for naps today. I have plenty of time between naps, so there's no reason to be late getting to them again. Perhaps being tired between them will help me sleep for tonight's.
Here's a link relevant to the subject of taking 90 minute naps:
http://www.saramednick.com/htmls/pdfs/Mednick-NN03[8].pdf. To summarize, this is a study done on how taking naps that include both slow wave sleep (SWS) and REM was found to promote learning. Participants also slept an average of about 7.5 hours at night. However, those who included a nap between training sessions did significantly better than those who only slept at night. This lends support to my belief that breaking your day up with naps will promote better learning. I don't think the amount of sleep matters as much as the frequency of sleep. In other words, sleeping every few hours for up to 90 minutes is better than taking your sleep in one go. Of course, one also needs to not be sleep-deprived for this to be most effective, so that is the caveat. My purpose is to see whether I can successfully adapt to 90 minute naps spaced throughout the day without feeling sleep deprived in between.
Nap report: Yesterday, I was late getting to my 11:30 nap, but I still enforced the 13:00 wake up time, as that isn't really negotiable in my schedule. I woke up then feeling like I could sleep more, but feeling alright otherwise. However, I delayed my evening nap more than I wanted to, and didn't take it until 23:00. I was tired when I woke up from it, in part because I had a hard time getting to sleep. Last night was one of the coldest so far this season. I used an electric blanket to warm up, and initially had a hard time getting warm enough to sleep, but then woke up during the nap feeling a bit hot. From about 00:30 to 3:30, I did some reading on the computer, and then played a game for a bit, which is different than my usual nightly routine of sitting down and reading a book or something else quiet. I got to my next nap a little after 3:30, and could not fall asleep for it. Again, I was cold. I used the heating blanket, but didn't turn the temperature up so high on it, and it was rather slow to get me warm. By the time I was comfortable and drowsy, it was 5:00. I was feeling really sleepy at this point and knew I needed the rest, so I just laid back down and went to sleep without setting an alarm. I didn't really like doing this as I want to be strict with my 5:00 wake time as well, but I also didn't want to get too tired and crash later, so I felt like it was necessary. I slept for about 3 1/2 hours, at which time I woke up on my own.
I'm starting to wake up tired from my naps, so I feel that the hard part of the adaptation is coming up already, meaning I need to be strict with waking times, and do what I can to fall asleep within 10 minutes during my naps. I need to review tricks that I used to use to fall asleep to help me with that. Something I'll be doing tonight is pre-warming the bed with the heating blanket before getting into it, and not leaving the blanket on during the nap, which just makes it too hot. I also need to review some relaxation techniques, and definitely be on time for naps today. I have plenty of time between naps, so there's no reason to be late getting to them again. Perhaps being tired between them will help me sleep for tonight's.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Day 1
I'm surprised that I'm not tired... but I'm not. I was unable to really sleep for my afternoon and evening naps yesterday -- I was just too awake and wired, although I did still lay down and rest for a few minutes each time to try to stave off mental exhaustion -- so I just stayed up until it was time for the morning nap, figuring I would sleep extra good for it and the next afternoon nap. I went for my nap a little early, about 3:15 (instead of 3:30), went to sleep quickly, and woke up at about 5:11. Amusing that my alarm worked, but it still took me a while to wake up. And I'm glad that my alarm still isn't bothering anyone.
Since it's probably been a while since I covered this, I'll explain: I discovered that I wake up to the sound my cellphone makes when it vibrates while setting on a hard surface, such as my desk, or even sitting it on a book somewhere works well. The advantage of this is that this is a gentler sound and I wake up without being startled by the blaring of an alarm (I hate the sound of one of my alarm clocks so much that I seem to have a conditioned response to turn it off as quickly as possible and sometimes do so in my sleep without fully waking), and it seems to be a sound that someone in the next room can't hear (unlike my alarm clock). I've yet to get any complaints about it.
Anyway, I woke up very tired, probably more tired than I went to sleep, so I decided to take another nap for the one I missed during the night. It was hard to stay awake and I wasn't in the mood to fight it, knowing that I needed the rest, so I took another nap from about 6 - 7:30. However, I found it kind of hard to stay asleep, and I kept waking up and dozing off again. I guess I had it in my mind that I was determined to be awake during the morning and I had some fear of oversleeping, so I did sleep and have REM, but I didn't sleep well. Perhaps I was also just too tired to sleep deeply, something bizarre that does occur with me, and something that I think precluded my adaptation to Uberman (which was probably doomed anyway because I wasn't a firm believer in the efficacy of the strict schedule). The too-tired-to-sleep thing can sometimes happen to me after working on a project over night, or even with extreme physical activity (although it's difficult to say in that case whether I'm too tired or too "pumped" to sleep), such as on days where I spent the whole day hiking.
I was feeling a little disoriented when I got up at the end of the nap period, and I simply rested a while, but I felt much better about an hour later. I am definitely taking my afternoon and evening naps if I can make myself do so. I think I'm doing good, but I need the rest to recover from not being able to sleep much yesterday, so it is important that I try to get it to avoid crashing.
Since it's probably been a while since I covered this, I'll explain: I discovered that I wake up to the sound my cellphone makes when it vibrates while setting on a hard surface, such as my desk, or even sitting it on a book somewhere works well. The advantage of this is that this is a gentler sound and I wake up without being startled by the blaring of an alarm (I hate the sound of one of my alarm clocks so much that I seem to have a conditioned response to turn it off as quickly as possible and sometimes do so in my sleep without fully waking), and it seems to be a sound that someone in the next room can't hear (unlike my alarm clock). I've yet to get any complaints about it.
Anyway, I woke up very tired, probably more tired than I went to sleep, so I decided to take another nap for the one I missed during the night. It was hard to stay awake and I wasn't in the mood to fight it, knowing that I needed the rest, so I took another nap from about 6 - 7:30. However, I found it kind of hard to stay asleep, and I kept waking up and dozing off again. I guess I had it in my mind that I was determined to be awake during the morning and I had some fear of oversleeping, so I did sleep and have REM, but I didn't sleep well. Perhaps I was also just too tired to sleep deeply, something bizarre that does occur with me, and something that I think precluded my adaptation to Uberman (which was probably doomed anyway because I wasn't a firm believer in the efficacy of the strict schedule). The too-tired-to-sleep thing can sometimes happen to me after working on a project over night, or even with extreme physical activity (although it's difficult to say in that case whether I'm too tired or too "pumped" to sleep), such as on days where I spent the whole day hiking.
I was feeling a little disoriented when I got up at the end of the nap period, and I simply rested a while, but I felt much better about an hour later. I am definitely taking my afternoon and evening naps if I can make myself do so. I think I'm doing good, but I need the rest to recover from not being able to sleep much yesterday, so it is important that I try to get it to avoid crashing.
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