Polyphasic Sleeping - Days 4-6 (Fri & Sat, Sun morning)
Day 4 (Friday)
Involved a bit of sitting and staring off into space trying not to think about how tired I was, but mostly I worked. I'd passed a pretty lousy night the night before, having eaten more than I should have during the wee hours of the morning (hey, I was hungry!) Not feeling quite as desperate for rest when I lay down to take a 30-minute nap as before, mainly because I'd accepted that I can fall asleep in the first ten or fifteen minutes.
Day 5 (Saturday, yesterday)
It feels a little weird calling it yesterday, because I can remember it - it feels like last evening was in this waking period, even though I've slept twice since then.
During the wee hours of Saturday morning, I spent most of the time learning about the Drupal CMS and installing it on my testing webserver. So, although I may feel tired at times, it mainly affects my motivation to work and makes me disinclined to try to make decisions (though I am very cautious by nature), but I can still absorb and put to use technical information (my brain is functional).
I was awfully tired on Friday, and had been planning on adding in an extra (seventh) nap sometime during the day on Saturday. However, instead of putting at least a 90 minute gap between the two naps, I ended up having my noon nap and then resetting my alarm for another 30 minutes right after it. I guess my tired brain can rationalize anything when it's just been woken up by an alarm. I felt groggy after that, but I livened up again after my 4PM nap.
Saturday evening, I was talking with some people about computers, and had difficulty breaking away (computers...too much fun...to resist talking about). After I passed my 8PM nap time, I started feeling progressively more tired, until I made myself head home, and ended up arriving home just a few minutes before 9PM. Then I felt compelled to wait for an eBay auction that was ending in the next 22 minutes. The eBay auction exceeded the price I had been willing to pay, so I turned in at about 9:15PM. When my alarm awakened me at 9:45PM, once I woke up I felt fine.
There has been some grogginess in the first 5-15 minutes following the naps, but it seems to be growing weaker, so the temptation to go back to bed is much easier to resist now. (Note: never, ever, lie back down.) Furthermore, it feels like I'm sleeping longer during the nap times, even though the actual amount of time hasn't changed. The first few times it happened I jerked awake when my alarm went off thinking "Oh no, I've overslept!" even though my alarm was plainly still beeping.
Day 6 (Sunday morning)
I wasn't particularly productive this night, but that would probably be mainly because I didn't start working on something that would keep me engaged. Getting started is the main thing.
I've noticed the past few nights, each night the deep point of my former sleep cycle has been growing less pronounced. The first couple of days, I could really feel it hit at 4AM - I wanted very much to stay in bed (I didn't, because I knew I would sleep through my next alarm if I did). Now, I just feel a little more tired when I wake up from my 4AM nap than my other naps, and it wasn't particularly distinguishable this morning. Pretty soon, I'm hoping that my day/night sleep cycle will be balanced out, so that I feel as awake at night as during the day.
I confess when I started writing this post I was having a hard time keeping track of how many days it's been since I started this experiment. Do I count from when I woke up from my last full night of sleep (Tuesday at 8AM), or do I count from when I would normally have gone to sleep but instead started doing the polyphasic thing? (Tuesday at 10PM) I'm going to stick to what seemed to be my original assumption, flawed as it may be, that Day 1 began when I woke up from my last full night of sleep (and so, of course, I would have felt entirely normal on day 1, having had eight hours of regular sleep the night before). If you think it should be the other way around, feel free to mentally subtract 1 day from all my day numbers (so my Day 1 would become Day 0). If I didn't think it would change my post URLs (OK, it doesn't), I might modify the titles myself.
Involved a bit of sitting and staring off into space trying not to think about how tired I was, but mostly I worked. I'd passed a pretty lousy night the night before, having eaten more than I should have during the wee hours of the morning (hey, I was hungry!) Not feeling quite as desperate for rest when I lay down to take a 30-minute nap as before, mainly because I'd accepted that I can fall asleep in the first ten or fifteen minutes.
Day 5 (Saturday, yesterday)
It feels a little weird calling it yesterday, because I can remember it - it feels like last evening was in this waking period, even though I've slept twice since then.
During the wee hours of Saturday morning, I spent most of the time learning about the Drupal CMS and installing it on my testing webserver. So, although I may feel tired at times, it mainly affects my motivation to work and makes me disinclined to try to make decisions (though I am very cautious by nature), but I can still absorb and put to use technical information (my brain is functional).
I was awfully tired on Friday, and had been planning on adding in an extra (seventh) nap sometime during the day on Saturday. However, instead of putting at least a 90 minute gap between the two naps, I ended up having my noon nap and then resetting my alarm for another 30 minutes right after it. I guess my tired brain can rationalize anything when it's just been woken up by an alarm. I felt groggy after that, but I livened up again after my 4PM nap.
Saturday evening, I was talking with some people about computers, and had difficulty breaking away (computers...too much fun...to resist talking about). After I passed my 8PM nap time, I started feeling progressively more tired, until I made myself head home, and ended up arriving home just a few minutes before 9PM. Then I felt compelled to wait for an eBay auction that was ending in the next 22 minutes. The eBay auction exceeded the price I had been willing to pay, so I turned in at about 9:15PM. When my alarm awakened me at 9:45PM, once I woke up I felt fine.
There has been some grogginess in the first 5-15 minutes following the naps, but it seems to be growing weaker, so the temptation to go back to bed is much easier to resist now. (Note: never, ever, lie back down.) Furthermore, it feels like I'm sleeping longer during the nap times, even though the actual amount of time hasn't changed. The first few times it happened I jerked awake when my alarm went off thinking "Oh no, I've overslept!" even though my alarm was plainly still beeping.
Day 6 (Sunday morning)
I wasn't particularly productive this night, but that would probably be mainly because I didn't start working on something that would keep me engaged. Getting started is the main thing.
I've noticed the past few nights, each night the deep point of my former sleep cycle has been growing less pronounced. The first couple of days, I could really feel it hit at 4AM - I wanted very much to stay in bed (I didn't, because I knew I would sleep through my next alarm if I did). Now, I just feel a little more tired when I wake up from my 4AM nap than my other naps, and it wasn't particularly distinguishable this morning. Pretty soon, I'm hoping that my day/night sleep cycle will be balanced out, so that I feel as awake at night as during the day.
I confess when I started writing this post I was having a hard time keeping track of how many days it's been since I started this experiment. Do I count from when I woke up from my last full night of sleep (Tuesday at 8AM), or do I count from when I would normally have gone to sleep but instead started doing the polyphasic thing? (Tuesday at 10PM) I'm going to stick to what seemed to be my original assumption, flawed as it may be, that Day 1 began when I woke up from my last full night of sleep (and so, of course, I would have felt entirely normal on day 1, having had eight hours of regular sleep the night before). If you think it should be the other way around, feel free to mentally subtract 1 day from all my day numbers (so my Day 1 would become Day 0). If I didn't think it would change my post URLs (OK, it doesn't), I might modify the titles myself.
posted by Wireball at 6:26 AM
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