Everyman Day 9 - Refocus

I'm going to hit the sack soon for the 10th core. I've been on Everyman now for 9 full days and if you have followed my Twitter, you'll know that I've had mostly easy time. Two oversleeps, the other for 2 hours few days back and then practically an extra nap, 30-minute sleep shortly after the main nap yesterday. I'd say it has been easier than I could've ever imagined so far. The oversleeps have besides been more than compensated by two shortened cores and two missed naps.

The reason I'm writing this post is that I've noticed some complacency creeping into my daily habits. I don't get up so fast and I sometimes lay down after a nap (that's so stupid - recipe for disaster). So far, those mistakes haven't cost me. But they will if I don't intervene early enough. So I hope that this post is more of a wake-up call for myself, a way to refocus my eforts on the schedule.

I have had decent amounts of REM on the naps so far, but I don't recall my dreams. I just remember that I was having a dream, but not anything of it. I should be accumulating sleep debt, and perhaps I am, but that's happening really slowly apparently, because I'm still very rarely tired and it is so easy, no challenge to stay awake, unless it's just after waking up when you're not yet thinking straight.

My body has adapted to napping already very well. As I said, there's been plenty of REM already, and also I've noticed myself waking up often before the alarm. What I should still do is condition myself to get up, usually I just keep laying down and maybe fall asleep again. That usually results in more tiredness upon waking. Regardless of this I'm still keeping my discipline with the alarms - all three are in use for every nap, even though the instances where I've overslept on a nap using Everyman are rare. I think it makes falling asleep later more unlikely, when you have to set off three alarms. It's not much, but still, like I've said many times, you need to do everything you can to tip the odds in your favor.

Which is why you really can't fall victim to complacency. Polyphasic sleep is a fine-margin game, especially during the adaptation. Considering how easy it has been so far, I really shouldn't even have 2½ hours of oversleeps under my belt. It's improvement, but I still can't be happy. I hope I manage to avoid mistakes during the next 9 days. Now you must be curious about how much did I oversleep during the first 9 days of my original long Everyman attempt (I know I am), so let's take a look... Well, actually, now that I read it, I only had 3 hours of oversleep from two instances by this point back then. That was with three hour core, so it was in general harder than my current effort.

So is all this talk of improving I just had only an illusion? Perhaps, at least it should make me take the rest of the adaptation very seriously. It's surprising to find out that you shouldn't have had any trouble so far anyway. What it does tell me though is that I can look to the previous adaptation for what to expect during next few days, so I'll have a quick look on that too.

Day 10: Solid naps, plenty of tiredness.
Day 11: Similar to 10.
Day 12: Reversion - nap quality seemed to be down, yet I felt better.
Day 13: Low amounts of sleep, but no big troubles
Day 14: Similar to 13.
Day 15: Better, but still tired
Day 16: Overslept core, tiredness escalates
Day 17: Decent feel and numbers.
Day 18: Tired, but good numbers

So overall it seems like no oversleeps would be decent, but not hard task to pull - during the next days I can expect the tiredness to slowly escalate. No reason to get excited for the "success" so far. The real adaptation is still long way ago - this is just the building sleep-deprivation phase. Still having said all of that and basically disproven my own claims of "best adaptation ever", I would still say that there's something going on with this adaptation that wasn't before. I'm confident of success this time. I will not bend over at the first signs of tiredness.

Speaking of tiredness, I should be going to sleep very soon - 15 minutes from now. I've said all that I want to say for now, see you guys soon again.