My weird polyphasic sleep

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I've been polyphasic for a all month now.
But in a very different way than before.
I read a lot about polyphasic sleep on the internet before started it. And I find something that most of the time said :
You need to have very regular time schedule
You can miss or even delay nap.
It's constraining.
You can't oversleep.
And I used to follow those rules, I use to constrain myself to that and to have lots of trouble with polyphasic sleep. Lots of problems to get up, lots of problem to follow the rules.

This time I'm not following rules anymore.
I have a very disorganized schedule. Let's say that if the basic schedule is 2-6-10, I miss the 10am nap, get a 2pm nap sometime, miss or delay the 6pm nap most of the time, get a 10pm nap at around 11.30pm, get my 2am nap at 3am and oversleep after 6am.
And I feel fine and amazing.
I know people who sleep all night long and are more tired than me.

I think that being polyphasic is not that much about how long you sleep at night or during the day.
It's more about what you do when you don't sleep. it having something to get up for.
I don't think scheduling is what matter the most. I think that planing what to do in between the nap to have as much fun as possible is the best way of staying polyphasic for a long time.

An other thing about polyphasic sleep was the diet problem. I'm absolutely convinced that the healthier the diet the easier it is to be polyphasic. My success at the moment is also probably due to the fact that I had a complete detox before starting. But I do eat everything I want and just get a long core nap a a nap more.

I basically just sleep when I feel like it, but a full night sleep makes me so tired :)
Get addicted to something, seriously that won't hurt.

Polyphasic sleep and food

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The end of the raw food diet allowed me to test the effect of the food I eat on polyphasic sleep.
I started to be polyphasic again at the end of my detox period that is on Monday two weeks ago.
I never had such an easy adaptation to polyphasic sleep before. I had no problem to get up and wasn't really feeling tired during the day even when I had to delay or miss a nap.
Last week-end I changed diet to go back to normal. And huge change appeared on my sleeping pattern :
I tend to oversleep every morning
Problem to get up, don't even remember the alarm o'clock
Tiredness in the morning not in the evening even if I miss a nap or delay it
And tired around nap time
I read somewhere that eating only raw food only can decrease you're need for sleep to only four hours a night. Apparently that what's happend to me when I started back being polyphasic.
Now I don't really want to go back to eat raw food only, it's a bit difficult when you want to have dinner out with other people and also when you're a fan of pizza and crèpes.
I think however that I'm going to try a new approach with food. That is include more raw fruit and vegetable. For example having half raw half normal cooked meal for dinner and lunch. Also I would like to decrease the amount of bread and fat that I'm having. I'm not talking about meat here because I'm already not eating that much meat already. We'll see how it goes.
Even if the raw food diet seems to be the perfect diet for polyphasic sleep, that doesn't mean that I can't find something that allows me more freedom.

Polyphasic sleep and cold

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Summarizing the last few days I will say that the main problem for my polyphasic sleep now is the cold.
I've read some websites where people were telling not to get to warm during nap because you are going to have problems to get up. That probably right for some reasons.
But staying cold is worse.
Belfast is really a cold place. I have been wearing gloves this morning, and we're just supposed to be at the end of the summer.
The problem is that during the night time it's freezing even more.
I have seen myself oversleeping a lot because I just couldn't fall asleep when I should have because of the cold.
I fell that being polyphasic makes me even more sensitive to the temperature. So I really need to find something to be warm enough to fall asleep and cold enough to get up on time. Difficult problem.
I don't know if lots of polyphasic sleepers had real problems with temperature.
Anyway the point here is that polyphasic sleep looks like being more difficult in winter than in summer, probably because of the light as well, I will try to notice effects about that latter.
The question I will try to experiment now will be : Do we need to transform our sleeping patterns according to the season ?
I think that's an interesting point.

Polyphasic sleep : One week later

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According to my previous post about polyphasic sleep I'm supposed to be now on my 9th day of deep polyphasic sleep. Well that didn't go that well. I fact I really started on the following Monday.
My schedule is also a bit funny compared to my habitual one.
I have a core nap in the morning just before going to the lab so that I don't need to sleep in the lab. Then I have a second core nap at 6pm I didn't wanted to but I keep on over sleeping without even noticing the alarm o'clock most of the time. So I always miss the 10pm nap and have the regular 2am one as usual.
That was not so bad all week but I tried to get to a complete Uberman schedule during the week-end. At the beginning it was perfect then I had to miss a nap for social reason and I ended up oversleeping a lot afterwards.
Life is hard for polyphasic sleeper who have to make their schedule match the monophasic people life.
Anyway I'm making process there even if it's not yet perfect and that's the good point.
My projects are in general getting better as well, so "Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes." (Candide de Voltaire).

As to the secondary effect I don't feel as hungry as before during the night but I really feel that I need to go to bed for the 6am nap. That's the really unmissable one.
I have a lot of very weird and intense dreams. I just have to speak of something or even just mention something to dream about it during the following nap. I thing that it's mean that my brain is treating the information as soon as it get them so that must do some good in the long term. We will see.
Except that, nothing really special. Being polyphasic even strangely is really great.

Polyphasic sleep : Trying to go back

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I'm curently having enormous troubles to go back to polyphasic sleep, mostly due to lack of motivation in general.
So I'm gonna do it as a 30 days trial. I already used 30 days trial before to keep busy during the night. Now I'm going to use the trial to be polyphasic.
The plan is to do it for 30 days no matter what. On the 18th of September I will go back to Germany, as that can affect my schedule the simplest thing to do is to start the 30 days tonight.
So today can be counted as day 1.
I'm planning to write a diary as regularly as possible so that I can summarise the issue of the schedule more clearly for you than before.

To keep busy and motivated is going to be the main problem.
(maybe I need some encouraging comments for that)














I still have the Korean SRS entries to make from the beginning since I lost them all, that really makes me feel depress.
I also want to test few other technics, I'll talk about them in due time in The Korean project.
I also need to take a good look at my kanjis, I have to go further in the Japanese learning process and so can't possibly stay stuck in reviewing my kanjis forever.
Especially that I've got a Japanese friend now.
I have lots of movies and animes that I haven't seen yet.
And of course I can knit amigurumis.
As Sebastien is becoming more and more interested in learning Chinese I think I should have a look at that as well.

So as always : Aja aja, Fighting !!!

Polyphasic sleep : break

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I haven't written anything about polyphasic sleep for a while.
It has been going fine so far, no in itself because I see it more as a tool which allows me to do more things when I need to than as a way of life. So I haven't been 100% polyphasic.
Last week I stop completely to really being able to be monophasic during the travel to Iceland.
I don't know exactly when I will go back to be polyphasic, but probably quite soon as I always want to do a lot of things.
It has been a bit difficult to go back to normal.
I felt very tired during my usual nap time at 2 pm and 6pm. Probably because one is just after lunch so you need energy to digest and the second is just after work so you're tired of your day.
But nothing very dramatic, we will see how it is in the opposite way.

Polyphasic sleep, 30 days trial end

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Yesterday was the last day of the trial.
Nothing really changed since the last post about it. All my project are going fine :

1) I'm improving in violin but I think "the spring" is still a bit to difficult so I need to find something easier.
2) The quotidian repetitions are really really necessary to improve your language skills. I think I'm not going to continue to add 100 a days as it's too much time consuming but I will try to keep with something between 200 and 300 a day. (scheduled and added)
3) The FSI lessons everyday are not going so well as it's a bit boring, I think I'm going to change for pimsleur for the next 30 days then go back.
The thing is that pimsleur has got translations included in the tapes and I need to look for the translations every time with FSI, so FSI will probably be easier if I build a bit more of vocabulary.
4) The FSI 1 hour writing is find I just got trouble to do only 1 hour a day, but that a very nice problem to have I think.
5) The review of my physic is not going well.
At the moment I need to read everything I can on R-matrix theory in the lab, that is between 5 and 7 hours of reading a day. When I go home I really don't feel like reading again. Even if I sometime read about R-matrix. If I need to finish to understand something I didn't during the day, I read during the night.
6) Reading a chapter every day, I truly can't, I usually was reading two or three. But that better isn't it ?
7) Writing a post, that's going fine, I'm even seriously thinking about opening more categories.

The effect on the polyphasic schedule isn't so great, as I never prepared anything to do when my trials of the days were over, I tend to oversleep each time I don't have specific things to do.
If I can't keep with the schedule this week-end, I'm gonna go for a full monophasic week and go back to polyphasic sleep next week-end.

Polyphasic sleep, 30 days trial, 20 days later

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It has been 20 days since I begun the 30 days trial, so here are some feedbacks about how it is going on, the problems, and details about each part of it.

1) The playing 30 min violin a day is going fine, I'm nearly able to play "itsumo nando demo" so I begun to study "the spring" for Vilvaldi. I'm a big fan of Hayao Miyasaki, I'll talk about it later. Anyway, that's very exciting. I also decided to be polyphasic to be able to study languages and do things at night so that I can play violin when I come back from work. So 100% great.
2) Doing the SRS repetitions +100, that's going find. I stop adding 100 when I reache 985 repetitions cause even if I like that as I explained in a previous post it was a bit too much and it was running a bit out of time.
3) FSI korean oral lesson everyday. That one also is not so good, but that's because it was a stupid idea from the beginning.
The thing is, instead of doing one different lesson every day, I'm doing the same lesson over and over again until I'm able to understand everything and repeting without hesitating. I think that's cleverer than repeting just for repeting, and I'm improving a lot that way. So we can conclude that it's also going fine even if it's different than the initial idea. The goal is not to finish repeting the lesson as soon as possible but to be fluent as soon as possible.
4) FSI korean writting lesson for 1 hour every day.
This one is going very fine. I need 3 or 4 day to complete the study of 1 lesson so that give me time to absorb all the informations.
5) Reviewing physic, I have nearly finish to review everything of the first semester, I just have to do some more exercises in mathematics and mechanics, so everything is great.
6) Reading a chapter everyday. That maybe the easiest trial of all, the only problem is that I want to read more and I have to prevent myself from doing it to save time for the other project.
7)Writting a post one this blog everyday, for that one we can figure it out by yourself. And "Musashi" is a really good book.

So the trial are going fine, but that's more difficult than I expected.
The main problem is that I don't have that much of freedom, if I want to do something for longer than expected, the other trial will suffer, and that's not a good point because I'm not motivated the same way to do the same thing everyday. I think next time I will do only one trial at a time.
The lack of flexibility give me also trouble to find the time to knit or anything else except during the week-end and the main reason why I wanted to be polyphasic was for to be able to do more thing I like during to week and not only the week-end. I really miss the flexibility allowed by polyphasic sleep.
The result on the polyphasic sleep is, probably due to the lack of flexibility, also not that great, as my core nap tend to increase during week days instead of dicreasing as I first thought it will do.
The effect of each the trial in themself are great but the effect of the multi-trial is more a negatif one.

Polyphasic sleep, 30 days trial

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In the basic of polyphasic sleep I told you that you need to prepare something to do, to make sure you aren't gonna get bored and go to sleep.
If you don't have a big project why not to try several small ones, or some that can be organize in "30 days trial".
I get the idea from here. Basically the "30 days trial" is something that you decide to do every day for one month, to quit a bad habit or create a good one.

Why is it good to do that in polyphasic sleep ?

It is good to do that during polyphasic sleep because if you fail at being polyphasic you will fail with you trials too. So that give you some more motivations. I fail two days ago because I couldn't have my day time nap for social reason, so that give a day without doing nothing in the trial as well. I was pretty unhappy about it. As a result I decided to give up the idea of Ubermann schedule. Of course I stay polyphasic, I feel to well with it to quit, but I'm not going to try to get ride of my core nap.
I generally get a core nap between 6 am and 8 am and I really enjoy it anyway, as I can sleep very deeply. And it also allows me to sleep only ones in the lab instead of to with is good as I got more trouble to fall asleep there. I basically get 4 hours sleep a day instead of 3 but that's still less than most of the people so I guess that's OK.

What are my "30 days trials" at the moment ?

1) Play violin everyday, I really like to play and since I begun the trial one week ago I'm really improving a lot. I still don't play very well but as long as I enjoy myself I just go for it.

2) Do all my SRS programmed repetitions + 100 everyday. 100 is a very big number but I keep with it cause I really need to let the Korean enter my brain. So far it's OK, but the more entries you memorize the more repetitions are programmed, even been polyhasic, I'm affrayed of running out of time to be able to keep this rhythm.

3) FSI Korean lesson oral everyday. This is a great way of review everything I learn so far and it helps a great deal with my pronunciation and comprehension.

4) FSI Korean lesson writing 1 hour everyday. This help me to memorize the vocabulary as well and to practice my writing skills, as I'm absolutely not confidant about the spelling . The fact that I decided to do that for one hours is to prevent burnout and to make sure I got time for everything, because even a polyphasic sleeper can run out of time.

5) Review physics course from first year at University 1 hour everyday. That allow me to refresh my memories about part of physic that I'm not using anymore and about things that I may need but don't remember.

6) Read a chapter of a book everyday. You always need to read to improve, to gain more knowledge, and because it's fun to read anyway... At the moment I'm reading "Musashi" from Eiji Yoshikawa. That's nearly 1000 pages so if I stop reading for to long I'm going to be lost. I like historical novel.

7) Write a post on this blog everyday. Yes guys, you have something new to read everyday and posted at the strangest hours possible from the middle of the night because it's a trial.
That doesn't mean that I will stop posting after that of course, I have to much things to say.

Polyphasic sleep vs Monophasic sleep

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Your sleeping time is divided into sleep cycles. During a full night sleep, monophasic sleep, you go through about 6 complete cycles. Each cycle last approximately 1 hours 20 minutes and is divided into 5 phases.
During the first phase you're falling asleep but are still aware of your environment, that's at that time that you muscles can relaxed and you can move quickly without wanting it. This phase and the second one are part of the light sleep.
The third and fourth phases are the deep part of the sleep, that during this part that people sleep walk for example.
The fifth one is called the Rapid Eye Movement (REM). That the part during which one dream.

During polyphasic sleep, what we want is to go straight to the REM phase. The brain will then clean up the information that came to you. That's the most important part to have a good quality of sleep.

When I'm on monophasic, I don't really know in which phase I was when I wake up. However in polyphasic sleep it's much easier to notice.
I know when I'm in phase one because of the shaking.
I know that I'm in phase one or two if I'm not dreaming, and feel asleep while knowing where I am.
I know that I was in phase three or four when I wake up without knowing where I am, what time it is, and if I already sleep.
And off course I know that I was in phase five, REM, if I dreamed.

The problem is I need to get more REM than anything else, but I haven't reached that part of the polyphasic sleep yet. If I don't get my REM sleep I feel tired afterward.
So far I have been polyphasic the most for a full week, but I had to stop for a three days conference, tonight I'm back. We'll see what happen.

Polyphasic basics

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I'm currently trying to adapt to Ubermann schedule of sleep. That is sleep only half an hour every 4 hours. My time of sleep are therefore 2 am, 6 am, 10 am, 2pm, 6pm and 10 pm.
At the moment my sleeping looks more like the Everyman schedule as I usually have a longer core nap of several hours especially after 6 am.

There is for me some basic rules to be able to adapt to such sleeping pattern :

- No tea, or coffee (but I never drink coffee) as you have to enter the fifth phase of sleep, called REM phase and that this particular phase is disturb by caffeine.
- Always prepare some things to do, you are gonna be tired at some point and it's always difficult to find idea of what to do in this case, especially during the night time.
- Drink and eat more, as you are spending more energy because of being awake all night, you need to adapt you diet too, anyway it makes you hungry if you don't.

So far I don't see anything else particular, I feel as good as if I had a monophasic sleep, the only thing is that I can do much more thing and it's great fun.

Polyphasic sleep

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For a month I have been preparing to become a polyphasic sleeper, according to the Uberman sleep schedule, that is sleep every 4 hours for half an hours.
So for one month, I have tested different things, like the effect of tea, the effect of liquide diet, and was polyphasic during the week-end only.
This week-end I was suppose to completely became polyphasic, but I had a big headache for three days so I finally went back to bed.
I'm gonna be polyphasic tonight again.

Why ? And What is so great about being polyphasic ?

1) It make me feel great, in generale I'm a sleepy head, I don't mind sleeping all week-end long, but when I spend a polyphasic week-end I feel healthier.
2) I can do a lot of things that I couldn't have done in other case.
3) It's very interresting and funny to do.

I think that the main problem is that I don't act during the night as I'm acting during the day, I don't drink enought and don't eat enought, so now that I know that, I just have to try to do my best. We will see.