My experiments with Polyphasic sleep
I had this wave of exhaustion that swept over me every day at night, around 11:00 pm and often, I’d take power naps, but a lot of them ended up with me oversleeping. Then I’d wake up, feeling not any better. This was during the times I badly felt the need for more and more time in a day just to do all the random things I’d my attention on.
I looked for alternatives to feel relaxed even after sleeping less. The first place I look for opinion is Reddit and the search bought me to this subreddit. This subreddit took me directly to the website that’s apparently being developed and maintained by the moderators.
It took me a couple of hours to go through the whole website and understand the different strategies of sleep and why those divisions mattered. The physiological changes that should be expected and if it affects the body in the long run. Even though there were a lot of different schedules to choose from…I couldn’t find one that perfectly went with the strict restrictions at college, that prevented me from taking naps at specific periods of time during the day :P
It took me a while to come up with a new exclusive schedule that maximized both the slow-wave sleep and REM sleep while avoiding the light phases in between.
As mentioned on the website I used http://napchart.com to create the new schedule. I didn’t want the schedule interfering with my activities during the day…so the schedule was made accordingly. The days go by unaltered …I sleep at 10:00 pm … wake up at 1:00 am …have productive time till 4:30 then again go back to sleep and wake up when I usually do (6:30 am).
Started this schedule with the new year. Initially, it was tough to sleep at 10:00 pm. I guess I took more than 15-20 mins to sleep. Waking up at 1:00 was another major challenge. I could only rely on my alarm to wake up. The stock alarm app on the android proved worthless with their large snooze and easy dismiss schemes. One day was enough for muscle memory to learn and kick in to dismiss alarms.
My search for better apps led me to Sleep as Android
This apps lets us set complex snooze or dismiss procedures which involve solving math problems, scanning QR codes or small attention-seeking games. I used a mix of these. I personally think scanning QR codes is the most efficient scheme because to scan codes I had to physically get off the bed, turn on the light, find the QR code (I used the QR code found at the back of a book…so this also involved me searching for the book first) and scan it.
With a cascade of alarms, I was able to wake up somehow. Waking up became easier as days passed with me waking up even without 1 snooze. Falling asleep at 4:30 am was never a problem. I’d fall asleep in minutes. I still remember those times to be filled with dreams. Strong ones with an equal mixture of reality and fantasy, things I know I’ve never even seen or imagined. My body was trying to cram in as much as REM sleep into the 2-hour slot as possible. Some days at around waking time …I went through a phase of lucid dreaming.
The first week was a bit hard - the body needed time to come in terms with the new schedule. The second week was easy. Just when I thought that things were getting easy, I was hit by a feeling of being over-exhausted. This corresponded to the third stage of the adaptation. Couple of days I overslept. But I kept on going, trying my best. I was able to stick to the schedule and keep it going till the 1st of March.
I use the Loop Habit Tracker app
I don’t know why I stopped the schedule. But it happened. I proved that my body could adapt to the drastic changes I needed. This also re-enforced my belief that ” The mind controls the body ”
Returning to the normal schedule too hasn’t affected me in any way except for the time I’m losing ofc. Polyphasic sleep did work for me. I’m set to return to that schedule starting this April.
Update: 7/7/19
Nothing happened in April. Fast forward to July. I don’t feel like getting back to the polyphasic schedule, mainly because of the difficulty in adhering to the routine on all working days (that did not allow for slots for a nap) and things get messed up on Sundays as I had to make compromises in the routine for attending church.
Now, I’ve adopted the tried and tested, 11pm to 4am normal man schedule. 😅 😅 This too gives me 5 hours of sleep, though I’m a bit skeptical about the quality of sleep. I feel like I’m seeing a lesser number of dreams => less REM sleep. Just as was expected, as REM sleep peaks around 4am - 7am. I also miss those lucid dreams. And, the few dreams that I have are being lost in the urgency of the alarm clock. 😑
Apart from these changes, I’ve also noticed that if at all I get a chance to take power naps of 10 - 15 minutes during the day, I quickly fall into REM sleep. Another sign of the REM deprivation. 😅
Now, do I feel like life was much simpler and straight forward before I began characterizing my sleep too? 😆🤣🤣
Update: 30/5/20
I’m currently trying out a different form of polyphasic sleep - Siesta
It involves 2 main sleeping blocks from 22:30 to 03:00 and the next one from 14:30 to 16:30. This gives me around 6.5 hours of sleep and I’ve turned from being a night owl to a morning lark 🤣 It feels good to be awake before the world is and get productive. I can easily get at least 3 hours of productive time in the morning. This is followed by 5km of daily walking and at least 3 rounds of badminton. Some days I push it to 9km including a 1.5km long sprint. Staying fit and healthy is paramount now in the midst of the Corona virus pandemic.
Comments