Polyphasic Sleeping Day 3

Last night I slept from 1am to 6am, getting up wasn’t too bad.

The experiment so far didn’t seem to affect poker. I ended 50% up (that’s 5 quid!) and it would have been better if Matt hadn’t flopped a straight against my two pair, with position on me too I just kept betting into him and giving him money.

Today I have started to feel quite tired but it’s manageable. I went swimming with my daughter this afternoon which completely blew away all tiredness for a good 2 hours.

Polyphasic Sleeping Day 2

Yesterday I napped at 5.20pm and 11pm. I used my phone as an alarm clock with Armatage Shanks by Green Day to wake me up (get it?). It worked but it was hard to wake up after the 11pm nap.

Today I slept in my car at lunch time with the car blanket and a pillow I swiped on my way out this morning. I hope it doesn’t get to cold to carry on doing that. I did have to skip Friday pub lunch to fit it in. I’m not sure how I’ll reconcile that clash as I go on.

Every nap so far I’ve managed to start sleep within a few minutes but I don’t expect it will have been REM sleep yet. I’ll update as to whether the sleep starts to feel different as I go on.

Tonight I am playing poker so no 11 pm nap. I’ll stay up to 1 am tonight (and sleep to 6am). Hopefully skipping a nap won’t matter.

If poker ends before 1 I think I’ll watch Lost.

Polyphasic Sleeping Day 1

I have decided to start a polyphasic sleep experiment.

This is where you have several short sleeps per day rather than one long sleep. The idea is that your body gets used to the pattern and enters REM sleep very quickly during the short sleep. REM sleep is thought to be the type of sleep that you really need to rest your brain.

From some internet research there are two main options:
1. 6 x 20-30 min naps per day every 4 hours (uberman).
2. 1 x 3 hour sleep at night then 3 x 20-30 minute naps per day (everyman).

The reason for this experiment is that I am close to option (2) already with my 10 month old baby keeping me awake at night. Usually I get 5.5 hours (12.30am – 6am) of sleep and am fairly knackered most days and end up having an evening nap.

So the grand plan is:

1. Reduce night time sleep by half an hour per day until I am getting 3am – 6am.
2. Nap at 12 noon, and 5pm and 11pm for 20 minutes each (from day 1).

Grand total = 3 + 20 + 20 + 20 = 4 hours.

That’s a saving of 1.5 hours on my sleeping time and if the theory is to be believed I should feel more awake and perform better at work (I’m a software developer).

All the blogs I’ve read on this subject have suggesting writing a blog as a way of not giving up so I am going to update this blog every day at 12am.