My Body Is Not Agreeing

I had the stupidest reason for delaying this; I overslept again, two successive days! This time for 7 hours. It was dumb, I woke up normally 8.30 like I had planned, but I had brain fart that I should get still 15 minutes of more sleep. Right, like I can wake up to that.

But today I'm starting again, hopefully. Ironically after that "Uberman Mentality" post I've started to have regrets and had some thoughts on giving up. My life is a mess after all right now.

New Stuff for This Attempt

Some changes again taking my earlier lessons into consideration.

- I'll sleep with lights on any chance I get. I don't know if it'll help much, but even a little will do wonders.
- Playing poker for a while every waking phase (except when I'm feeling super-fucked-up). This is to assess more accurately my thinking processes. I can feel fine and put the 8 for my mental rating, when in truth I couldn't do anything deeper level thinking. This forces me to do some and I'll notice the deficiencys. I was thinking about 15 minutes minimum / every phase. The nice side effect is that this forces me to put in 45 hours / month. That would be a solid amount for me.
- I'll be constantly changing the place of my phone when alarming and of course using my computer's alarm from now on.

Those were just few quick pointers that came up just now.

The Uberman Mentality

I had not before realized how much effort it actually requires to switch to polyphasic. Sure I knew that it would be extremely hard during the first days. What I didn't expect was that it would require consistent effort for weeks. But now that I've readed much more about polyphasic sleep, I know what I'm up against.

I had only read about Steve Pavlina and his success which made it look easy. Now I didn't think it was, but it seemed like that if you're determined and dedicated, anyone can pull it off and the worst point is over after three or four days - which might be true, but getting to that point without trouble is very, very hard.

I just ignored the failures. There's tons of blogs all over internet about failed attempts in different polyphasic schedules. It was probably good though that I didn't waste any thought on them and didn't let it put me down. All I needed was to acknowledge that there is those. But now that I've failed time and again and seem like adding my blog to the bodycount (I'm determined not to) I need to really read any material that there is. Even about the failed accounts, because they might have something valuable to offer. Those who adjusted with relative ease can't help me now.

Thing is, that when I was aiming to stay on schedule for few days, I should be expecting trouble for at least a couple weeks. I made it about a week with very low on sleep on the third attempt, but even then I had constant oversleeping. I get no closer to succeeding.

In the polyphasic sleep Google group there was said that extra naps for easier adjustment are not necessarily good. They need at least to be consistent and there's no-one who had succeeded with free-running sleep. That would be cool, but I guess I have to go for strict form of Uberman with no extra naps or anything. Pavlina recommended them for avoiding oversleep.. Well, my own experiences tell me now that it won't help to that; as you can read my last nap was extra nap that I described "that nap hit the spot". I felt great after it, yet when I went back to normal nap I overslept heavily. They won't help in that, what helps in that sense is working methods of waking yourself.

It's half about consistency and it's half about resilience. I have the latter, I need to mantain former. I need to have set sleeping times and need to be able to follow through with them. I can strech it a bit, but only a little. I need to wake up to alarm - partly it's not down me, partly it's down my body not agreeing with to whole think and shutting down the alarm while mind is still asleep.

I had a tired moment at couple hours back around 22:00. I realized just now that it was probably because I had already adjusted to certain extent to uberman - my body wanted to go back sleep after four hours awake despite me sleeping 10 hours prior to that. I should've maybe gone to bed then, but it's too late for that now. I'm not resetting completely after all when I do go to sleep. I aim to do it around the same times where my last schedule were settled - 0, 4, 8, 12, 16 or 20.

It's the mentality that I have that I hope will push me through. I had planned to give it up after the last failure. But I find I can't. I just really want to do this. Not because I want to have extra time. Sure, that's nice, but I'll probably waste it anyway. I want to do it for the experience, I want to do it for the lifestyle. It just seems so fitting schedule for me. I don't know, maybe there's some need to prove it to people that it can be done (there has been some can't rants already). All I care is that now I have the true uberman mentality, now I just have to make it count and do this.

I will be continuing with the format I started in the last attempt. I like it and I think it's pretty clear.

Crashed And Burned (Again), But Not Wanting to Give Up

I said this was the last attempt. So when I failed to wake up for my alarm again and slept for full 10 hours, I am supposed to quit this experiment and just accept I can't do it, not yet anyway.

But no. I don't want to give up. I feel devastated after the whole attempt just crumbled after the promising start, but I want to try again. I really would like to life polyphasic despite all the troubles.

There's just this trouble of beating oversleep which seems impossible. I wasn't particularly tired when I went to sleep this morning. Yet I shut down my phone while sleep. Walk across the room and shut it down I should say.

I had the idea with speakers of computers and I probably have to instantiate it.

I guess next we're starting another last attempt. Let's just say that it's fifth attempt.

Day 2

Day 2.1
Naptime 0:10 - 0:20, 10 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

Extremely short but refreshing nap. I still don't remember any REM so I am a bit amazed why I am feeling so great. But I don't mind.

Day 2.2
Naptime 4:05 - 4:35, 25 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

When I woke up, my tiredness wasn't that bad, but now.. It's just really tough. I can barely stay awake while sitting. I'll be waiting 'til the middle of the phase and definitely getting an extra nap just in between the two normal naps now. My eyes just keep closing. It's the first time I'm really having trouble in this attempt.

Things change really fast - I just had a huge surge of energy for some reason. It's still half an hour 'til 6:00, so I'll see if I take the extra nap, maybe I'll do anyway as I'm still drowsy.

Okay, 10 minutes since last update and I'm again feeling like I'll fall asleep any moment. I just need to get the extra nap, even if it won't help me to not feel like a zombie. Though I'm not yet in a zombified stage, I'm just very tired.

Extra Nap
Naptime 6:00 - 6:25, 25 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

That nap hit the spot. Only light tiredness and better mental clarity again. I'll make it easily to eight o' clock for third 'official' nap of this day.

Day 1 - Just Hangin' Around

Day 1.2
Naptime: Missed nap
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

I just completely missed the nap. I was way too awake and couldn't clear my mind from all the thoughts that were coming through. But I guess this was to be expected after that long oversleep yesterday. I'm not too upset about this, just hoping that it won't become a recurring event. I didn't have any trouble during this phase despite not taking the nap.

Day 1.3
Naptime: 8:15 - 8:30, 15 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

I'm not actually 100 % sure that I fell asleep, but if I did it was only for a short time. I felt very tired at the start of this phase, but after a while it got better. I had planned to exercise in this spot, but due to tiredness I delayed it.

Day 1. 4
Naptime: 12:15 - 12:30, 15 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

I'm once again not sure whether I slept at all, but I was certainly in some sort of semi-asleep state, so let's credit 15 minutes to sleep for myself, I don't have a clue about the truth in this.

Day 1. 5
Naptime: 16:40 - 16:50, 10 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

Once again not sure about my sleeping, but I'll put down 10 minutes. I was nearly on time when it comes to this nap, just didn't fall asleep instantly.

Day 1.6
Naptime: 20:10 - 20:30, 20 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5

I feel fine. Ordinary nap. This is going swimmingly. I've taken some caffeine today, equivalent of one cup of coffee. Don't know it that is contributing to my wakefulness. Probably it is at least to some extent, as I don't drink coffee and use any other caffeine products usually, so my body should be pretty sensitive to it I'm not planning to take any more as it can mess with my REM cycles. It could assist me when the sleep dep. gets bad, but I'd rather not use it. I decided not to care about that today, as I don't expect to be anywhere near to be getting REM sleep yet. Maybe I'll get there on third or fourth day, if I can keep this up 'til that without oversleeping. So far so good.

Day 1 Total Sleeping Time: 1h 30min
Day 1 Average Mental State: 7,33
Day 1 Average Tiredness: 0,66

Last Attempt - Day 1 - Do or Die

Well, do or die sounds a little dramatic, don't you think? I've had my full day awake and just finished my first nap of the last attempt. I've learned a bunch of lessons after three total failures which both had a lot of smaller errors in them. I'm going for uberman right at the start as it's well known that it's possible, unlike dymaxion.

So my package of errors I did and I'm not to do anymore:
- Be stricter with my sleeping times. My schedule were on constant change in the previous attempts, so it's not wonder I kept oversleeping and failing to adjust.
- Plan better - add-on for the previous - I need to keep everything in my plan to avoid having to shift my sleeping times.
- Aim for a little shorter naps. I always put my alarm for over 30 minutes after going to bed, sometimes almost 40 minutes if I wasn't that sleepy. That was because I wanted to give myself time to get to sleep. I aimed to sleep the full of 30 minutes. It's not that important really and 15-20 min is much better, since it's easier to wake up. If you slip into too heavy sleep it's going to be tough getting up.
- Get up no matter what. My last attempt failed because I overestimated my wakefulness and decided to lay down there longer. No more doing that.
- Alternate the alarm's locations and such. I need to keep myself on toes regarding to where my phone is when it starts to alarm me to wake up. I'm surprisingly able while I'm sleeping..
- Autosuggestion. I didn't use it much during my last attempts, now I'm going to add some of this to intensify my efforts. Maybe it helps me waking up as well.


Things I'm expecting to finally to experience, that I have so far not 'enjoyed':
- Serious sleep deprivation. I'm talking about the hardcore shit, where you can't even sit without falling asleep. I've had trouble staying awake when I lie down and extreme drowsiness at times, but I haven't really hit the full gear on sleep deprivation yet.
- Hallucinations - this one is a symptom for the sleep deprivation that I'm yet to experience. I've experienced extreme sleep deprivation in my life before, but never hallucinated (unfortunately I don't even do psychedelic drugs).
- REM on naps. Yes I did experience some REM-naps but they were due to the oversleeps earlier on the day. If I get REM while I have not slept over and hour for days, that's when I condies myself done this.

I'm going to make some formatting changes to my blog now, so here goes.

Day 1.1
Naptime: 0:15-0:45, 30 min
Mental: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tiredness 0 1 2 3 4 5 - This varies of course, but I answer on this after waking of from the nap.
And then I'll have a short space of text talking about whether I finally had some REM-sleep or not and some random stuff. On the scale I guess 8 is my normal state, where I feel pretty good and 9 is where I feel great. 10 is preserved in case I feel really, really great. I also notice about extra naps etc. in here. This time I'm going to be a little more conservative with those and only use them when I really feel like shit. Tiredness is rougly like this 0 = not at all tire and 5 = I can barely sit without falling asleep. 4 and 3 are pretty bad and 1 and 2 pretty mild.