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I just completed day 4 of my Dymaxion sleep experiment. Yesterday morning/late night I woke up from my nap around 1:15am. I felt somewhat restless and irritated from then on until my next nap at 6:30am. The 1am-6:30am waking period feels the longest to me. Following that, the 7am-12:30pm period feels the second longest, then the 7pm-12:30am period, and finally the 1pm-6:30pm waking period feels much shorter. I have been musing frequently about this phenomenon, and I would like to address it and other long-winded, polyphasic sleep related philosophical questions in my new Philosophical Implications of Polyphasic Sleep section. You can tart by reading about the relative sensations of time in polyphasic sleeping. But just to give a rundown of what I am feeling I feel that some stages seem as if they are considerably longer or shorter then others.
One might think that the waking period that seems the longest would probably be the period in which it is hardest to stay awake, feel alert, and be productive. I will call this trend a length-productivity pattern. At this specific point in time, however, the 7am-12:30am is the period in which I feel the most tired and the least mentally and physically capable. As for the other three, they follow the length-productivity pattern.
I had an insanely difficult time staying awake during my 8am-12 classes. I could not stop myself from simultaneously dropping my head and involuntarily closing my eye lids. I decided to drink some coffee around 8:20am. To my great surprise I was still not able to keep my eyes open in class. Coffee has always given me a tremendous boost of both physical and mental energy,so that experience was perplexing.
As expected, my 12:30pm nap was very enjoyable and restful. After that nap, I felt very alert, energized, happy, and capable until as late as 11:30pm. I had another blissfully effortless workout session around my optimal physical energy time of around 4pm.
So in sum, I felt worse today in class then I felt the day before. However, despite feeling great yesterday outside of class, I felt even better today outside of class. I was telling my friend that I feel a bit nervous because at times I feel as if the transition is simply too easy and that all of this is too good to be true. The individual accounts of polyphasic sleeping have all emphasized the extreme difficulty of the adaptation, especially in the Dymaxion Sleeping Schedule. However, I feel that this transition has been very easy, and I have taken away most if not all of the tremendous positives of polyphasic sleeping.
While I have executed my daytime naps (6:30am and 12:30pm) with nearly flawless precision, I have struggled to adhere to the half-houred-ness of my nightime naps (6:30pm and 12:30am). Last night I overslept for the third time since I started. I overlept my scheduled 1am wake up time by about 40 minutes. My friend knocked on my door, which I had locked, until I finally woke up. I am very fortunate that he was there to save the day (or at least to mitigate the damage).
It is evident that keeping to the 30 minutes during the nigh time naps can be a very difficult task. I have been incorporating the advice that other policphasic sleepers have broad casted with my own intuitive suggestions in order to make an infallible nap-length adherence strategy.
Other than the occasional classroom ennui and greedy nap time increase urges, polyphasic sleep continues to enrich my life and offer me unbounded happiness and excitement. Outside of class, I feel well-rested in every regard. My eyes are soothed and ready to perform. My brain feels stimulated and seems to be whirring at i its fastest and most productive comfortable rate. My body feels stronger, more flexible, and more well-regulated than before (polyphasics effect on exercise and physical ability is certainly a fascinating but long-winded caveat).
Onward and upward, the sucess continues
:)
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