perjantai 20. toukokuuta 2011

Attempt Comes to an Abrupt End

The third strike and I'm out - at least it was what I would call an oversleep. 11 hours 20 minutes straight without waking up. I think it could have been avoidable though. I don't remember whether I have my cellphone alarm on, at least when you reset it, the time is the time I was supposed to wake up, so I guess it was set.

However my surefire Immortal alarm, as in my computer, was not set, or it was, but I was watching hockey in the middle of the night so I had headphones on, therefore rendering the alarm too silent when I fell asleep.

Also the nap was slightly too long. I fell asleep accidentally around 5.25 instead of after 5.30.

All in all this wasn't a very good attempt from a seasoned polyphasic adjustment veteran that I am supposed to be. Three oversleeps in just five days, that's just poor. Stupid mistakes, mistakes I've made too many times in the past. I will be re-attempting in early June - that attempt will shift to SPAMAYL if needed. Or it could be just SPAMAYLish uberman just like Steve Pavlina did - as in, putting extra naps every now and then.

I hope to be better prepared as well then, with myself properly trained to get up to alarm and a lots of stuff to do the fill the time - that wasn't the problem this time either, I had stuff to do all the time.

Shame about this, but now that I failed so badly I think it's best to call it quits. The timing is ankward also, in early June I'll be completely free in terms of schedule.

Now what... Well, I'm feeling sleepy, I guess I'll try to sleep even more and clear the debts before continuing my monophasic hell. Then again, I could try some weird biphasic program with naps every now and then - the kind that I won't go in the sleep debt but would still gain some time and be polyphasic. Kind of that's easy to come in an out of. Steve Pavlina is doing 4,5/1,5 biphasic at the moment. I did also that last summer for a few weeks, perhaps I should do that again. Anyway, it wouldn't be full on biphasic as I need to sleep a couple of full nights soon.

Day Five

Amazing that we are already at the fifth day. Just shame about the oversleeps and missed naps, I could be on the brink of adaptation but as it is, I'm still long way to go.

After missing the last nap of yesterday I didn't get that midnight peak moment in alertness, instead now after the first nap of the new day I feel very tired. It was a solid nap with a fine 16 minutes of deep sleep in it. I just transitioned instantly to the deep sleep from awake, the graph looks pretty crazy in Zeo.

Still, I'm tired now. It's nothing a little of the old "keep yourself busy"-metntality wouldn't fix. Once again I'm playing it safe by shifting the alarm around the clock. If I happen to fall asleep, fine. I've got reaction already planned. In fact, it's better for me not to write anymore, or I'm going just end up with that weird shit. My head is a bit messed up at the moment. I'll be back in some hours.

Then the attempt ended, but more that on the new post

torstai 19. toukokuuta 2011

Day 4

Day four, let's see if I can finally get some momentum going on.

It's now 6 am, and I feel fine, if not in fact great. I woke up from my last nap after 13 minutes completely refreshed. No REM, or there was four minutes but I don't any dreams so it might have been just some transition stage that Zeo interpreted as REM. But yeah, I've felt great all night, so far the easiest night, but it could be telling just about the fact that the tough moments are shifting later to the day.

I ate some (a lot) chocolate earlier and plan on consuming some in a moment more. This is the first time really that I've ate some sugar-heavy during this effort. I doubt that really has any major significance, just thought to mention it.

Alright, everything was fine up until the third nap of the day. In fact, I woke up from it fine, but due to my stupidity and seeing one of our kittens sleeping near my feet I turned around and started petting it while laying besides it. You see where this is going at? Yeah, I sort of dozed off. Luckily One by One started blasting after couple of minutes so the oversleep was averted. I just scolded myself for such a stupid mistake and thanked my luck.

Then I went outside to play soccer. Normally this wakes me up, but now the combination of sleep-deprivation and not eating or drinking enough meant that I ended up playing Zombie soccer instead of the ordinary one. Seriously my pace was slower than what 100-year-olds have when they play chess.

Now I'm in zombie mode. Not full-on luckily, but semi-zombie anyway. I'm really just staring at the clock, wishing the time would pass quicker - there's still nearly three hours until the next nap! I've taken precautions in case I happen to fall asleep. I keep setting the alarms again every hour to nearest even hour, so that if I indeed fall asleep that'll at least limit the sleep to a hopefully unharmful amount - in other words, to a half an hour or less. Of course if I just drop to sleep after re-setting the alarm I'll sleep nearly an hour and that would probably hit me back to the proverbial stone ages, uberman-wise.

Rest of my gameplan now is just to keep myself occupied by low-brainpower needing grinding activities. If I just can keep the mind occupied and off the tiredness, it probably won't be so bad. Besides, there's a lot tougher times ahead no doubt. I shouldn't think of that yet though.

That tiredness subsided pretty quickly and the rest of the day was fairly easy. However my schedule got a little awry and I ended up doing the last nap late - and then missing it. I've lately had my peak state during midnight, we'll see if that happens today as well even with the missed nap and all.

Day overall
Succesful naps: 5
Oversleeps: 0
Total time slept 1:47
Total REM 0:26
Total deep sleep 0:24
Streak: 0
State during the day: 4-4-3-4-4-4, average 3.83

The least sleep, but the best day. Tomorrow should be tough.

keskiviikko 18. toukokuuta 2011

Day 3

It starts going a little tough. The night was once again relatively easy, but once I woke up from my second nap of the day, I was sure as tired as yesterday. I even hit the same symptom of not doing anything for some time which is always dangerous. Luckily I snapped out of it this time early enough, so I guess I'm learning something.

I went out and practiced soccer. I was really sluggish and lacked any desire to do that, but anything to weather through the rough patches. Remembering last year it has not yet even gotten tough. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after that will be the toughest, if I get through to them without oversleeps. My naps have been decent, not really that refreshing, but numbers look promising, once again nearly half-REM each of them, I mean those that actually last about 20 minutes. I still have some naps where I just about get to sleep before alarm goes off.

I've not yet at least needed any of the back-up alarms, I've always just gotten up to the normal alarm. I'm still suffering from coldness, but the temperature should be rising outside these days, so hopefully my symptoms of feeling cold go away. I've not eaten much since the start of this effort, no wonder I always lose so much of weight while on polyphasic schedules. I've eaten mostly healthy food, fruits, vegetables and such. Little meat, in fact I'm not sure if at all during these past three days, but I know I've eaten some eggs. I don't know what role the diet plays in adaptation, Steve Pavlina suggested that a lot, and maybe that's true, but I wouldn't know. All I'm trying to do is to eat my usual way - stay away from clearly unhealthy food and try to rack up a decent amount of calories. But overall I wouldn't call my diet healthy, even if a bit healthier than average.

Well, there it came - strike two. I don't have any clue how it happened - or I do, but I don't remember it. I remember waking up well from the two o'clock nap, but I have no recall how I fell asleep. I probably just failed to get up and passed out quickly. Another reiteration of an old lesson, you better move fast once you wake up. Not barely shut down the alarms and doze off again. Luckily I only slep an hour extra, but hey, that's enough as it is to ruin my progress so far.

I can still afford one mistake before I call it quits. Change from now on will be the fact that I'll get up quicker on the alarms and will go out right away upon waking up.

Day overall
Succesful naps: 4
Oversleeps: 1
Total time slept 2:52
Total REM 0:19 (at least, no data on oversleep)
Total deep sleep 0:28 (Same here)
Streak: 1
State during the day: 3-2-3-5-4-5, average 3.67

Everything after the oversleep was really easy. I'm having my peak mental state consistently right after midnight up until into the nap - that's why I've been struggling with getting enough sleep with the first naps.

tiistai 17. toukokuuta 2011

Rest of Day 2

Let's ditch that damn typing test. It just too much to occupy my head, especially when I'm totally messed up. I still do it whenever I feel like it.

As for the rest of the day, there's really not much to say. I felt pretty damn good the whole day and there was some restful naps along the way with decent REM-numbers. However, I take them with a grain of salt, the oversleep of course helps and also before the naps are over 75 % of REM I won't call them real REM-naps.

But god damn I'm cold. I guess the weather is a little chill, but I still suspect some kind of slowdown in my metabolism or something, because I never felt this cold in winter etc!

Day overall
Succesful naps: 4
Oversleeps: 1
Total time slept 5:02
Total REM 0:49 (at least, no data on oversleep)
Total deep sleep 0:06 (Same here, probably over an hour)
Streak: 3
State during the day: 3-2-3-4-5-4, average 3.5

The Oversleep - What Happened & Self-Loathing

I remember being awake in 6:40 and just being zoning out. I can't believe I did nothing. My mind was all messed up when I awoke, all this stuff about ice hockey came in from my dreams and I was trying to make sense of it in context of real life. Of course once the mind fog cleared I realized that I had just been disoriented. Still, despite all these messed up mental images I managed to keep concentration and tried to have the ten o'clock nap. I didn't get any sleep on it after the oversleep.

I'm not home free if I survive past the night. I so often survive through it only to mess up in the morning. That isn't acceptable any more. After my 6 o'clock nap I am to go play soccer right away every morning to wake myself up properly. After that some fast-paced action game on the computer and closely monitoring my mental state. I guess the biggest challenge is to keep tabs on yourself without losing conciousness.

But yeah, I don't want to see any oversleeps like this any more. If I sleep through the alarms, I can accept that, but no more falling asleep out of schedule.

Day 2

Nap 1
Finnish - words - 355
Finnish - sentences - 346
English - words - 294
English - sentences - 303
Phase rating: 3

Well, Finnish was a little slower than usual, but English actually faster than normally. Weird as I'm very tired.

Nap 2
Finnish - words
Finnish - sentences
English - words
English - sentences
Phase rating: 2

Didn't do any as I presumably passed out.

Nap 3
Finnish - words
Finnish - sentences
English - words
English - sentences
Phase rating:

Day overall
Succesful naps: 2
Oversleeps: 1
Total time slept 4:30
Total REM ?
Total deep sleep ?
Streak: -

I was a little worried about the night, but the tough nights don't start just yet. I was able to watch some stuff on the computer without getting super drowsy. You might remember me complaining on many instances about how watching something passively makes you tired. So I'm not yet that tired. After spending two hours just watching stuff I headed out for my first nightly walk. I meant to make only short walk as I had only 1½ hours until the nap, but I felt like running so I ended up going around the village in an hour, partly walking, partly running.

The reason I felt the need the run was partly because it was cold and I just never put any more clothes on than what I have because I'm lazy, so I was under-clothed. But also my joints and muscles just craved for some more free movement. For some reason towards the end of the walk I got very sentimental. Sleep-deprivation might have some part in it, but also the situation of taking a walk for first time in many months got me going.

I didn't feel at all tired when I got back. It was a crazy feeling, just lie there on you bed with not the slightest of urge to sleep despite only having an hour in last 40 hours. Or something around that range.

However once I woke up from the second nap, I never really got going and I'm pretty sure I overslept for couple of hours. I have no idea what happened in that spot and my keylogger has obviously failed me. Frustrating, but easily avoidable mistake. That said, it's shouldn't be too serious. It made me miss the third nap though. I'm very dissapointed in myself. I can't conjure up a coherent thought at the moment as you can see.

That was the strike one - remember, three strikes and you're out. I won't allow any more mistakes like that, I let that happen too easily.

In fact, I'll stop writing this one no, do a little debriefing and then continue from clear table.

maanantai 16. toukokuuta 2011

Day 1 - Uberman 2011

Time to start cranking out those typera.tk tests. I already got my first nap - no sleep, as expected. I got tired though. Kind of sad.

Nap 1
Finnish - words - 372
Finnish - sentences - 379
English - words - 273
English - sentences - 258
Phase rating: 3

Typing Finnish was at normal level, English a little slow.

Nap 2
Finnish - words - 377
Finnish - sentences - 353
English - words - 286
English - sentences - 300
Phase rating: 5

Nothing significant going on with these, except that my English is starting to pick up the pace.

Nap 3
Finnish - words - 320
Finnish - sentences - 367
English - words - 256
English - sentences - 273
Phase rating: 3

I guess the slight drop in my alertness and overall state can be read from the results.

Nap 4
Finnish - words - 374
Finnish - sentences
English - words
English - sentences
Phase rating: 4

I couldn't do other tests as my internet connection failed, but anyway, that was normal.

Nap 5
Finnish - words - 363
Finnish - sentences - 349
English - words - 267
English - sentences - 267
Phase rating: 3

Pace took a slight hit, but that's to be expected, I'm tired. In fact, I would have expected worse chunk off the pace.

Nap 6
Finnish - words
Finnish - sentences
English - words
English - sentences
Phase rating: 4

Didn't have time to do this. Wrote a lot though, and pace was normal.

Day overall
Succesful naps: 4
Oversleeps: 0
Total time slept 0:53
Total REM 0:04
Total deep sleep 0:17
Streak: 4

Alright, day one is finally over and I feel... Pretty good at the end of the night. But it hasn't been all sunshine for the day, I've struggled with slight tiredness during the day, but nothing really challenging has yet come up.

Obviously I missed the first couple of naps as you might have expected, but surprisingly I've gottten at least some minutes of sleep on every four that followed. Still the overall sleep numbers are really low and I didn't even get any REM. My first nap dipped straight into deep sleep, which is kind of weird, but kind of good, at least got some sleep that actually has some effect.

I kept myself wide awake in the morning by light soccer practice and some sprints. I'm not planning to do any heavy training during this adaptation, another advantage I have over last year's attempts.

I don't remember anything particular worth mentioning from the other naps. I didn't have much appetite today, but then again I rarely have. I was more tired than in the evening that I was at any other point, but like I said, that last nap cleared that up quite well.

Go!

Hi guys, I'm 30 minutes away from my first nap, just thought I'd post a little report on how I feel.

I didn't wake up exactly 10 am in the morning or whatever I said I would, I could have, but I didn't see it very important really so I kept sleeping. So it is likely that I won't be able to sleep for the first nap. But I guess that holds true for most of my first couple of days of naps.

I'll be revisiting the old classics, PureDoxyk's Ubersleep and Steve Pavlina's blog during the early hours of the night and all along the first days of the effort.

The way I do my daily reporting has changed, I'll be using the old 1-5 rating scale for my feel in every phase. Here's the definitions for it, in case you don't remember. I've posted it couple of times in this blog, but I'm too pressed to find it right now.
5 = I feel normal and there was no tiredness during this phase.
4 = I don't feel outright tired, but I'm not at my freshest either.
3 = There was some moments of slight tiredness.
2 = Multiple moments of fatigue and very little productivity.
1 = I felt extremely tired and started nodding or the whole phase was slight struggle with tiredness.

That was designed for Everyman purposes, but in the end I rarely had to use 1 rating for any phase. I can get even more extreme than that, but I'll report it in writing if there's anything worth mentioning.

I've gotten a keylogger for my new computer so if I happen to pass out amidst of using my computer, I know exactly how much I fucked up. Hopefully that won't be needed, but it is there just in case.

Also I'll be doing typera.tk writing test, both Finnish & English and both word & sentence tests in every phase. It isn't really a viable test to do for alertness and such, I mean I guess it can tell something, but I mainly just do it because I want to improve my writing speed. Just an excuse to do it.

So you'll get
- Rating of the phase
- Writing speeds
- Possibly REM/Deep sleep numbers. I think I'll just do whole days totals and go through individual naps in writing more or less. If there's some data worth mentioning I obviously point it out.

That's all for now, see you in about 20 hours for first post. Oh god, I hope I don't mess up in the first day. That would be embarrasing.

sunnuntai 15. toukokuuta 2011

Going Uberman in... 18 hours

I will be heading off to sleep very soon for what will be (hopefully) my last sleep of many hours in a while. I'll get up 10 am tomorrow, have my last full day of monophasic life and then at 1:40 am. next night I'll have my first nap of 20 minutes. Here's my full schedule

1:40-2:00
5:40-6:00
9:40-10:00
13:40-14:00
17:40-18:00
21:40-22:00

What has changed since my last attempt and how does it affect my chances? Well, I'm now a bit better equipped in the alarm sector, but still, I'd love to have at least one alarm more. I guess I'll make do with these though and at least oversleeping should be less likely than before. Having said that, I did, sleep through my sisters attempts of shaking me awake last summer, so I don't know... I am hopefully more determined to succeed than last year, I have a lot more experience and ways to deal with tired moments, but I didn't have any really tough moments while being on Everyman and anything remotely difficult just made me oversleep, which kind of worries me.

I also have Zeo to really determine exactly how much I slept and if it was REM/some other phase of sleep. Having said that I think that Zeo often has the first 5-10 minutes as a REM, so it can't always be trusted on that sector.

I'm determined to succeed (I guess I've said that every time) and at least I'll do my record. I don't remember how long that was, but I have some vague recall that I did 18 perfect naps in a row last August.

I guess I'll allow one or two oversleeps before I call quits and then move on to quickly attempt SPAMAYL. I have not yet decided what to do after that, if anything. Playing soccer everyday, as I do in summer is a bit demanding for your body when you're only sleeping around two hours a day. I have already started to lose weight. I lost 6 kg:s last summer and thin as it is, so... tricky situation. Then again, even if I lose the weight and more importantly some muscle, the losses aren't that big.

But yeah, let's wrap this post up. See you in around 18 hours when I'll post the starting post and then again in around 40 hours when I post the first daily report.

About the site... I'll probably start working on it hard while on Uberman - it's good to keep thought focused on the task and what better way than to make a polyphasic site while being polyphasic! I've written very little content so far, I'm still very much at the planning stage still, which I'm a bit unhappy of, but it is what it is and I can only blame my own procrastination for it. It will be a site focused on polyphasic sleep and lucid dreaming with a personal development side in it.