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Ok so I figure from now on I am just going to start every post here with “We are back up!” I figure that is a step above the “Sorry I haven’t Posted” opening line that some blogs have.

So I said I was going to post about the polyphasic sleeping with updates. The problem is, at 3 o clock in the morning when all you can do is walk around your neighborhood with a blanket around you to prevent you from going to sleep, sitting and typing a blog is all but impossible. I did manage to write one entry but am thankful that my sleep dep’d brain couldn’t post it. It was kinda neat to look at what my dream would like all typed out in horrendous sentence fragments. Kinda like a lost tablet from thousands of years ago I could only guess at what I may have been talking about. So rather then post when I was completely out of it I am posting now. (and yes it is 3am but I am not that tired tonight apparently)

So here is a run down of how polyphasic has been “working” for me. First week was great, maybe had an extra hour here or there but was pretty much on schedule. 2nd week… less good. I had quite a few guests over which cut down the space that I could be active. Also I had recently spent a few hundred dollars making my bed more comfortable. During this week I was crashing during my 1-5am nap pretty regularly. The real issues is that if you can’t do what you want to because you are too tired, do you really count as awake? That’s a better way to sell at least the initialization phase of polyphasic. “Wish you had more time in the day? Well with polyphasic you’ll have 6 extra hours staring blurrily at a wall hoping you don’t nod off!”

With the third week I began to accept that I had lost the extreme willpower needed to do the Uberman Schedule. More often I was choosing sleep rather then sleep dep which meant more and more 3-4 hour naps. So, now that I have come to grips with the fact that I do not have enough willpower to continue with the Uberman I should stop right? Well.. stronger then willpower is stubborness. Or at least they are warring it out at the moment. Also… probably the best advantage that I have found with polyphasic so far, is not really having a bed time. Previous to this I would work at 6am and would have to head to bed around 10 every night. In my current social setting, that just isn’t realistic. My house is up till midnight most nights and past that regularly. With polyphasic I can stay up and as long as there is something to do it really isn’t that hard to stay awake. It makes me think that in pairs polyphasic would be easier.

So now my schedule is still the 1-5-9 am and pm nap schedule, I just allow the nap start times to float by +/- 1 hour. Also I am no longer surprised when my “extra nap” I throw in at 2 am ends up lasting until 5. So I still sleep less then a normal person but not by much. Instead I spread it out a bit more during the day allowing me to stay up later. I don’t really expect this pattern to change for awhile but I will post more about it if it does.

I have been attempting the “Uberman Polyphasic Sleep” schedule starting on 7/31/3009.

First I should probably start out with my reasoning for making the attempt in the first place. I read about it on one of my many blogs and was enthralled by the concept that with a bit of modification to your schedule extra time could be had. Granted it also has a feel of a get rich quick scheme. Either way it was interesting enough for me to start looking into it more. I started by reading Steve Pavlina’s Blog. I found it to be a beacon of success in a sea of blogs where failure was standard. This served as proof that it could happen and could work. There was a small problem though, Steve was a bit too… together. He doesn’t smoke, drink, is a vegetarian just to name a few things. I do not have a life so free from vice so I wasn’t convinced. To balance it out I began reading PureDoxyk’s blog. Pure Doxyk took a more laid back down to earth approach to it that really helped me think this might be possible.

Once I knew it was possible I began to prepare for it by making sure I could quit caffeine for a month as I expected it would negatively impact my attempt. Once that was done I checked with my work to make sure I could have set break times and then got a week off in order to adjust to it.

I will split up the other days into a few posts so that people can follow along.