So, after 4 weeks of 2-nap, everyman polyphasic sleep, I've decided to call it quits for the time being. I'm a finicky sleeper and I found I just wasn't able to get to sleep when it was time to take a nap. I've had periods of good productivity, but a lot of the time I found myself staying up for the sake of staying up, expending a lot of effort just fighting sleep instead of getting work done.
So, for now. I'm just going to try and go to bed at a consistent time, and get 6 hours, napping as necessary. 8 hours doesn't work for me. I wake up groggy and don't get to sleep easily at the end of the day, so it just ends up being a vicious cycle of poor sleep. This is probably the last time I'll write about sleep for the time being, unless something awesome, or catastrophic happens.
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Polyphasic Sleep Update
Right now I'm two weeks into my experiment with Polyphasic Sleep. So far so...-so, haha. It's been up and down. Before I get into the details of what I've been doing and how it's affected me, I'm going to give some background information on what polyphasic sleep is.
I suppose the best way to start is by defining monophasic (1 phase) sleep, which is what most people do. You sleep 8 hours (more or less) at night (usually). Polyphasic (multiple phase) sleep, on the other hand, involves sleeping more than once a day. The thinking behind it is that by sleeping more often, you can lower your daily sleep requirement and therefore have more hours in the day to get things done.
There are a few different variations of polyphasic sleep. They basically fall into two different categories: Uberman and Everyman. Uberman involves only taking 20 minute naps. Six per day, every four hours. This requires a lot of flexibility in one's schedule, I currently don't have enough to pull this one off. Everyman involves taking one core block of sleep at night, with naps taken throughout the day. There are a few different variations, you can read about them here.
I first heard about polyphasic sleep from a friend who mentioned that Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, and creator of WordPress. It interested me because I never got good quality, restful sleep out of 8 hour per night, monophasic sleep.
I've chosen to take the two-nap approach. I've been sleeping for 4 hours per night (I looked over some articles today, and realized I should have been taking 4.5). Then I take a nap around 2 and another one around 9, give or take up to 2 hours. Looking back at my sleep journal, I was pretty good at going to bed at 3 and getting up and out of bed at 7...for the first 4 days. My problem is that I generally don't fall asleep quickly. With monophasic sleep, this would lead to me either sleeping in or - on days where I could't sleep in - feeling like crap and pounding coffee to get through the day. With polyphasic, I'm getting to sleep for my core sleep quickly and doing so consistently, but my success with the naps has been spotty at best.
I've been trying to really control my nap times and keep them in a small range, but I've been inconsistent with how I take them. Sometimes I set a 30 minute timer, sometimes 20 minutes. Sometimes I get up even if I haven't slept, sometimes I give myself a second timer.
I've generally had pretty good energy levels on this plan so far. However, my ability to focus hasn't been what I would have like it to be. I'm working on a new organization and planning system adapted from reading the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. As I get it more ingrained into my daily routine, things should go more smoothly.
In the next two weeks I'm going to make a few tweaks. First, I'm going to go from 4 to 4.5 hours per night (which I should have been doing all along really). Second, I'm only going to nap when I'm tired, and only on a 30 minute timer. This should help me adjust more quickly and thoroughly. The Everyman schedules are supposed to have a couple of hours of flexibility when it comes to timing naps, so it's not something to be too scared of. I'm just going to track it in my sleep journal and analyze the data over the next few weeks. I'm also going to cut out caffeine completely.
Hopefully with these adjustments I'll be able to make a much better adjustment to this new sleep schedule. I look forward to sharing my experience with you soon!
I suppose the best way to start is by defining monophasic (1 phase) sleep, which is what most people do. You sleep 8 hours (more or less) at night (usually). Polyphasic (multiple phase) sleep, on the other hand, involves sleeping more than once a day. The thinking behind it is that by sleeping more often, you can lower your daily sleep requirement and therefore have more hours in the day to get things done.
There are a few different variations of polyphasic sleep. They basically fall into two different categories: Uberman and Everyman. Uberman involves only taking 20 minute naps. Six per day, every four hours. This requires a lot of flexibility in one's schedule, I currently don't have enough to pull this one off. Everyman involves taking one core block of sleep at night, with naps taken throughout the day. There are a few different variations, you can read about them here.
I first heard about polyphasic sleep from a friend who mentioned that Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, and creator of WordPress. It interested me because I never got good quality, restful sleep out of 8 hour per night, monophasic sleep.
I've chosen to take the two-nap approach. I've been sleeping for 4 hours per night (I looked over some articles today, and realized I should have been taking 4.5). Then I take a nap around 2 and another one around 9, give or take up to 2 hours. Looking back at my sleep journal, I was pretty good at going to bed at 3 and getting up and out of bed at 7...for the first 4 days. My problem is that I generally don't fall asleep quickly. With monophasic sleep, this would lead to me either sleeping in or - on days where I could't sleep in - feeling like crap and pounding coffee to get through the day. With polyphasic, I'm getting to sleep for my core sleep quickly and doing so consistently, but my success with the naps has been spotty at best.
I've been trying to really control my nap times and keep them in a small range, but I've been inconsistent with how I take them. Sometimes I set a 30 minute timer, sometimes 20 minutes. Sometimes I get up even if I haven't slept, sometimes I give myself a second timer.
I've generally had pretty good energy levels on this plan so far. However, my ability to focus hasn't been what I would have like it to be. I'm working on a new organization and planning system adapted from reading the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. As I get it more ingrained into my daily routine, things should go more smoothly.
In the next two weeks I'm going to make a few tweaks. First, I'm going to go from 4 to 4.5 hours per night (which I should have been doing all along really). Second, I'm only going to nap when I'm tired, and only on a 30 minute timer. This should help me adjust more quickly and thoroughly. The Everyman schedules are supposed to have a couple of hours of flexibility when it comes to timing naps, so it's not something to be too scared of. I'm just going to track it in my sleep journal and analyze the data over the next few weeks. I'm also going to cut out caffeine completely.
Hopefully with these adjustments I'll be able to make a much better adjustment to this new sleep schedule. I look forward to sharing my experience with you soon!
Monday, March 26, 2012
Life & Training update, Sleep hacking, etc.
So a lot has been going on since my last post. I competed in my first weightlifting meet. I clean & jerked a PR (92 kg), and almost snatched a PR (75 kg, would have been my first body weight snatch), but I got red-lighted because I pressed out.
I've been interning at FITs Toronto, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Lam. I've been working with their athletic development group training. I've also had the chance to attend weekly (more or less) meetings in which I've had the chance to discuss a variety of training topics with the athletic development team at FITs, which includes people with a variety of different backgrounds, including pure athletic development people, as well as those who are also clinicians. Today, we had a curriculum development session. I'm super excited to see that continue to development, it really is a comprehensive, well laid-out approach.
I'm just wrapping up the first day of my new sleep schedule. I slept 4 hours last night, and had a really alert day. The meeting was awesome. I'm supposed to be taking 1-2 20 minute naps per day, I got about 10-15 minutes to rest my eyes twice, but didn't fall asleep. The rest of my day wasn't necessarily productive, I basically watched TV for the rest of the day. But that included watching 3 hours of documentaries on water, which was enlightening. I've been wrestling with the idea of finding a cause to get involved with lately. I've been leaning towards environmental, and the docs opened my eyes.
I bought my domain name last week, seanfahey.ca. It should be up shortly. Hope to see you there soon!
I've been interning at FITs Toronto, under the direction of Dr. Thomas Lam. I've been working with their athletic development group training. I've also had the chance to attend weekly (more or less) meetings in which I've had the chance to discuss a variety of training topics with the athletic development team at FITs, which includes people with a variety of different backgrounds, including pure athletic development people, as well as those who are also clinicians. Today, we had a curriculum development session. I'm super excited to see that continue to development, it really is a comprehensive, well laid-out approach.
I'm just wrapping up the first day of my new sleep schedule. I slept 4 hours last night, and had a really alert day. The meeting was awesome. I'm supposed to be taking 1-2 20 minute naps per day, I got about 10-15 minutes to rest my eyes twice, but didn't fall asleep. The rest of my day wasn't necessarily productive, I basically watched TV for the rest of the day. But that included watching 3 hours of documentaries on water, which was enlightening. I've been wrestling with the idea of finding a cause to get involved with lately. I've been leaning towards environmental, and the docs opened my eyes.
I bought my domain name last week, seanfahey.ca. It should be up shortly. Hope to see you there soon!
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