Biphasic Day One

The past three days I've been (Inadvertantly) sleeping 3-4 hours, waking up, dicking around for a few hours and then going back to sleep for 2 or 3 hours. The first day I felt like hell, but the second and third I felt about as rested as if I'd gotten a straight 6-8 hour sleep.

Well, I'd heard of biphasic sleeping before. Supposedly it was common in the time before the advent of clocks and electricity. So, considering that I've already had three days practice, albeit unintentionally, I've decided to adopt biphasic sleep officaially. Or at least attempt to.

This will be my first day. At the moment, the plan is to sleep from 20:00 to 23:00 (8 PM to 11 PM) followed by a period of six hours awake, and then three more hours of sleep (05:00 to 08:00). Since I normally wake up at 8 AM for work on Monday and Tuesday anyway, this seemed ideal.

Unfortunately my first 3 hour period was a failure (That would be Wednesday, Sep 22 from 20:00 to 23:00). I laid in bed for an hour, which was rather relaxing, but couldn't fall asleep.

5:00 to 8:00 AM Sleep-
The second sleep (Sep 23) went great. Just woke up from it, And for only three hours it feels great. I actually woke up at 7:46, but I wanted to make sure my alarms were suffecient (First night using Task Manager to both wake my computer from sleep and play music). Considering how I jumped up after they both went off it seems they will be ok. We'll see, but I think since I'll be experiencing much less sleep deprivation than somone trying an Uberman or Everyman schedule (Where you get all those crazy stories of people waking up, turning off three alarms across the room, and immediatly going back to bed without remembering a thing) two alarms whould be suffecient.

I also remember having a very detailed dream, something where I was playing a crazy video game, but writing this seems to have made me forget sadly. I can't deny that I really do want to crawl back into bed for 'just a bit longer' because it felt so great to sleep, but I know that is a mistake. Starting my 'morning routine' should help.

As a side note: I'm interested in seeing if this waking up 15 minutes shy of a full three hours becomes a trend or was just a fluke. I did go to bed about 10 minutes early to give myself time to fall asleep (Which was needed, but not too much. I still fell asleep way faster than I have the previous three nights.)
A promising first morning but we'll see if I can make it the full twelve hours till my next sleep. If I end up too exhausted, I'd rather just move that to an earlier time for now, but not unless it is absolutely neccesary. I'd like to keep this adaptation period as strict (And subsequently as short) as possible.
Waking up to 'Alexithymia' by Anberlin was pretty nice, as well.

12:41 PM-
Feeling quite well, been pretty energetic since my shower at about 9 AM. Finished up laundry I started last night (Our dryer sucks so it takes a while), wrote a short story (On this blog, Alexithymia) and cleaned out the mouse cage. The only problem is my stomach has been a bit off, but thats normal for me under light sleep. Nothing severe, just more frequent bathroom trips than normal. So I made some ginger and cinnamon tea. It's supposed to get down to the 40's tonight so I'm hoping A) that will ensure I am able to get good sleep periods and B) That I don't sleep -too- good and not wanna get out of my warm bed!

All in all I'm surprised at how well the day has gone thus far. Not anticipating incapacitating (Heh, alliteration) drowsiness before my 8-11 PM sleep period. But we'll see.

Oh, almost forgot: now that I'm done cleaning the cage I'm at a loss as to what to do. However it's not the usual restless boredom I usually get, I feel pretty relaxed.

1:37 PM-
Played with Bailey for a while. Feeling slight urges to nap, easy to resist. Yawning a bit.

4:40 PM-
Noticeably tired, mostly my eyes. Looking forward to the 8-11 sleep, but I'm not on the verge of passing out or anything.

6:30 PM-
Ate a big meal of homemade chicken soup and bread. The bread really filled me up, I was only able to finish half my second bowl of soup. However, it does seem to have woken me up a bit, at least for the moment. I'm curious as to how this will affect my 8-11 sleep. It may mean I fall asleep easier, but it might also make waking up harder. The success of earlier nap of 5-8 AM leaves me somewhat hopeful. I'd like to feel well enough to exercise (This was one of my reasons for attempting biphasic sleep.)
I should also note that I am -very- keen on not oversleeping and keeping a strict schedule. These seem to be the two biggest issues that fuck up people's adaptation, causing a lot of them to fail. Plus, if I can do all of this without oversleeping a single time, it'd be an awesome personal achievment!

8:00 to 11:00 PM Sleep-

Hmm. Not that fanatastic, but not horrible either. Certainly not the refreshed feeling of this morning's nap. That may be simply be the effects of a sleep debt, or, it may be the fact that I really pushed getting into bed -exactly- to 8 PM instead of going ten minutes early like last time. In tomorrow's sleep, I'll try hitting the sack ten minutes early again.

Also: one of my alarms was set wrong! My cell phone was set to 8 AM! That would've been twleve hours of sleep. Lucky me, my computer alarm going off (Just the music) was enough to wake me up, but it was a close call. I need to up the volume on that.
Furthermore, the urge to go back to sleep immediatly upon waking up is quite strong. I was sitting in my bed fixing my cell phone alarm after turning off the computer one, and thinking "If I don't get up now, there's a decent chance I'll flop over and pass out"
So, I just slid off the bed and stood. It helped, and the urge to go back to bed faded quickly afterwards.

Mm... so a bit groggy this time. But definitly more refreshed at the moment than when I went to bed, and only a six hour stretch till my morning nap as opposed to twelve like last time! Not so bad at all. Oh! What the fuck did I want to add... Um... the food! That was it.
Anyway, I had a pretty big meal about and hour and a half before bed time. I was curious as to if this would affect my sleep at all. It -may- be why tonight's nap wasn't all that fantastic (Although, I've certainly had times I've felt worse after sleeping 8+ hours straight). But there's too many variables to say definitly if that is the cause.
Think I took about 10-20 minutes to fall asleep, not great but it is still early in the test, and still much better than before I started. I think I could use with a glass of OJ though! ;) And a bike ride might be nice in an hour or so.

11:22 PM-
Mmm, have some orange juice and the last of the s'mores brownie mom made (Soooo good, but so sweet! Not a bad breakfast food when coupled with something tart like OJ) and I feel quite good, it's really amazing how even just three hours is that helpful. I guess thats how those uberman guys feel, but on their 20 minute naps! Well, once they start adapting and the naps actually kick in, anyway. Amazing stuff. I'm sure they think what I'm doing is cake, but if I just jumped into something like that I'd very likely fail... I know my limits, and unless I have something continiously going (Like in P-Days at bootcamp. You're up for something like 72 hours, but since you're constantly on the move with PO's pushing at you it's not that hard)
This biphasic presents me with better options, I think. I can move down to four hours total a night, and from there can, if I decide I want to, move into a polyphasic sleep.
Still really have my doubts about polyphasic. Mostly I hate the idea that you can only really miss one nap or you're doomed to crashing! But you know, thats what the future is for, I can always try it, and if I don't like it I don't have to stick with it. The benefits once you're fully adapated seem pretty badass, one youtube blog in particular from a girl has me pretty convinced. She actually went back to monophasic after about 8 months of poly, and she said it SUCKED. She actually missed polyphasic! (I should note she went back because she wanted to lose weight, not because of any inherent problems in sleeping polyphasic. She loved it. But then, I also think she looked better black hair than blonde :P)
Jeeze, I really start rambling on these updates. I wonder if I keep up this log it will help my writing blocks at all. Anyway...

Day One Recap-

Not to shabby, actually. The three hour sleep cycles seem to be the way to go. I'll make minor adjustments as needed, though of course the eventual end plan is to cut that down to two hours (Four total) if possible, however that won't occur anytime before 21 days on the 6 hours schedule, possibly 30 if things end up taking a while. For now it's just slow and easy down the 6 hour path.

No oversleeps! Of course, I've only had two official three-hour sleeps, but if you add in my jacked up schedule beforehand (Which is the cause of all of this anyway) it's more like four days of this. So I had a headstart before my official 'Day One' :P

P.S.- Official sleep time is now 6 hours in the last 24. Hm... that doesn't sound all that impressive unless you consider that it's 18 hours awake with very little stimulants or sleepiness! So in that sense,
I'm making anote here:
Huge Success!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science:
We do what we must,
Because we c-

Ehm. Anyway. TECHNICALLY speaking, it's been more like 6 hours of sleep in the last... ehm... 34 or 35 hours. So that's a bit more impressive :P (If I had been able to sleep on my first official nap it'd be 9 hours in 34)

Whelp. Next day begins after midnight, which is only about 20 minutes. So I'll see you there :P
(Assuming anyone will be reading this. I suppose it's really for my own record keeping, since my blog is read about as much as Maxim magazine. Everyone just comes for the pretty pictures)

-Edit- Forgot to add, this 6 hour awake period is supposed to be caffeine free. Don't trust 6 hours as enough time for caffeine not to screw up my 5-8 AM sleep.