Do I suffer or benefit from polyphasic experiments now?

Hi readers!

It's been a while I didn't write a word. Not because I don't like you... I simply like League of Legends a bit more than you :) Just kiddin'.

The topic for today is again: polyphasic sleep. I want to share my very recent day-to-day experience and try to think loudly whether this is a benefit or a serious drawback.

So what the hell is happening? Actually nothing except the fact that I am not able to sleep more than 4,5 hours in one solid block.

Yes, every single night I regularly wake up after 4,5 hours of a sleep. For example when I fall asleep around midnight today you can very probably see me playing LoL or writing posts like this around 4:40 AM tomorrow early morning.

I can't control it. I open my eyes around 4:30, look at my mobile phone, realize it's 4:30 AM for real, sit on the edge of my bed, slowly stand up and go to the bathroom to wash my face. Turn on my PC and quickly decide what I will be doing.

1) Programming -- I am able to be very productive for next 2,5 hours.


2) League of Legends -- I am able to succeed in more matches than usually because I stand against players who has been playing for the whole evening and night and they are tired. I am very precise during my game play, make less mistakes, decide faster -- win more games. That's something which ensures me that e-sport is a real thing.

Wasting of a time bro! You say? Uhm, not really. I relax the same way how you watch TV but this is much more active way of relaxation and gaming is improving cognitive brain functions. Good for me, not for you, passive TV watchers :)

Then I usually go back to bed and sleep another block. 1,5 - 3 hours. Then I wake up, do my morning routines and go to work.

I am not tired, I am fresh, full of energy, I have very good mood.

What is the drawback then? Why am I writing about this?

Later during the day this thing will catch you. Tiredness usually strikes hard around 2 PM (after lunch + circadian rhythm). That's the time you need to do your 20 minutes long power nap which is not always possible and you end up struggling with your own brain and body that desperately need their power nap.

Also, sometimes, I am tired after long day, after party, after whole day long volleyball tournament and I want to sleep at least 8 hours. But I can't. This is crazy and you feel a bit weird. You have to do something for that damn 1,5 hour and then fall asleep again. Or try to...

Taking caffeine in any form (even a green tea) after 6 PM is NO-GO for me. It totally destroys my rhythms and I am unusable next day.

I still don't know whether this is a problem, or not. Still investigating. Overall I feel that I have more free time. At least +2 hours approximately every day and I am still productive at work and at a time I need to.

Will see in the future, I will keep you in a loop.

Seeya! 

It looks like a ruined day, what now?

Hi readers,
after a while I am finally back and want to quickly share some of my very recent thoughts.

Let's imagine -- it's 2 AM "yesterday" and you are falling asleep, thinking about ruined "tomorrow". You know that you need something around 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, you know that you will have problems to get up soon, you somehow know that your "tomorrow" will be completely sucks, because you will be late at work, you will spend the whole day there and you will be sleepy as hell.

You are maybe a little bit drunk, you maybe lost a few League of Legends games, it's maybe too hot in your room so you can't sleep, whatever...

Now, you are lying on your bed and thinking about ruined "tomorrow", full of negative emotions, anger, dissatisfaction -- you know that feel, bro ;)

Here is my medicine! It tastes awfully but it works.

1) Set up your alarm clock around 6:30 AM

Am I mad? Maybe. But you will most probably hit end of your REM sleeping phase and this is 100 times better than be "interrupted" somewhere in the middle of your deep sleeping phase. Note that I suppose you lying in a bed at 2 AM (and you add 4,5 hours).

2) Exercise -- NOW!

Am I totally mad? How can you exercise after 4,5 hours of sleep and at 6:30 AM morning? You are asking: "WTF dude?" Shut up, do it... swim, run, joga, whatever works for you.

3) Breakfast

You think you can omit it? Poor you. Eat some rich and complex carbohydrates. You will need it more than anything else today.

4) Do the most unpleasant work immediately

Actually this shouldn't be a big problem now because you are warmed up after your exercise and you had delicious breakfast. What a beautiful day. Sure, you don't want to make it less awesome and that's exactly why you need to complete your work instead of reading emails, handling your calendar etc. This is the most rewarding part of your day and you need to make sure you will do it ASAP.

5) Take a nap 

I fully understand that this is not possible for everyone to take a nap after lunch. If you are lucky and you can take it, do it. Don't be sleepy, go nap. Alarm clock for 20 minutes and that's it. It is always better to have 20-minutes long nap instead of 3 hours of mindless staring at your PC display and doing nothing productive.

Substitution: Take a coffee, 2 cups of green tea, matte...

Extra-powerful-unstoppable man version: drink your green tea just before your nap. Caffeine needs about 20 - 30 minutes in order to start working for your body. That's a time you will be napping. Can you see that trick? :P

6) Enjoy rest of your brilliant day

Let's sum it up. You got up pretty early. You did your exercise. You had a brilliant breakfast. You did a very great portion of your work and you are proud of yourself. You took a nap (coffee) in order to be able to work even more! Now you are enjoying your day.

This time, you will go sleep around 10 PM to help your body catch up again. No more party, no more PC gaming, no more movies. Sleep, sleep, sleep as much as you can. It will pay in the end.

Seeya!

(I wrote this post using DO-IT-NOW-AND-DON'T-BE-PERFECT method)

Adjust your sleep: two years of polyphasic experience

Hi all! :)

Today's agenda: to share some of my experience with polyphasic sleep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep).

     Why? Simply because I can... and I can because of 2 main reasons. 1) I did it. It's finally working for me exactly as I wanted to in its very beginning. 2) I have found a time for posting it, together with a lot of enthusiasm using DO-IT-NOW-AND-DON'T-BE-PERFECT method.

     You've probably heard about strange people who divide their sleep into more segments. Just look at ^ wiki page to find out more about particular patterns. If I understand it correctly (a lot of material, sources, blog posts) the main idea or the principal reason why people do this -- is to spare some time. For example "Everyman pattern with 2 naps" where one spends 4,5 hours in core and 2x20 minutes in 2 power naps. 4:30 + 0:40 = 5:10, 5 hours and 10 minutes of sleep which basically adds 3 extra hours when comparing to someone who slept full 8 hours. That's it. Once you adapt to it and learn to work with those patterns, you should be able to by productive at the same rate (even more) as someone who sleeps 8 hours, and additionally, you should have some extra time for yourself, your work, your family, hobbies... for writing posts like this.

     For writing post like this... really? Actually, this is not my case right now and I will tell you why. After some diploma-thesis burst and caffeine experiments where I totally ruined my regular sleep cycles, here it comes a period of a time when I need to "just and only" study for my final examination. First thing what I did was to completely get rid of a caffeine and focus on jumping back into my polyphasic sleep train.

     In my case, I don't care about a sparing of a time now but rather focus on sleep pattern effectiveness with regards to studying and learning.

     How do I sleep now? The first 4,5 hours core, 2-3 hours of work (studying things, this blog post, anything), the second core (varying) 1,5h to 3h following my body needs and one power nap during the day. So I can basically end up with 4,5+3 = 7:30 + 0:20... approx 7 h 50 min of a sleep per day, let's say 8. So I sleep 8 hours in total which is the same amount as a decent one-phaser.

     So why am I doing this? It's beneficial even only for those 2-3 hours of work phase between 2 core sleeps. This is my super-power-hyper-mega effective working time. This 2to3-very-productive-hours-chunk is usually placed somewhere between 4 and 9 AM, depending on the exact time when I have felt asleep. 

     Today's observation: It helps me to be hungry. Basically "the hunger" feeling is able to wake me naturally after 4,5 hours of a sleep. For me, hungry in the early morning hours means one yoghurt or cottage just before sleep. Sooooo NO a half of a fried duck with dumplings and red cabbage at 10 PM!! (I did that two days ago and it was awesome anyway.)

     Of course, I have slightly opened window jalousie to allow the sun/day light come inside and wake me up naturally. There exists even some special alarm clocks in the market... those are able to simulate sunrise via lightening up a lamp gradually and even add some bird singing. Awesome! :))) Hmmm, formerly, I meant this one as a joke, but such an alarm clock can be very beneficial in a case when a street light is distracting you from core sleep, when you need the most darkest place as possible and you simply need to completely close your jalousie and you need to simulate natural daylight using some technological solution. Ok.

     Next, caffeine-free way -- I just stopped using caffeine. By stopped I mean stopped after one month experience when I was fully working on my diploma thesis and caffeine helped me to broke my sleep pattern in order to be able to program more code, write more technical text, stay focused during late hours, improve my coding performance together with epic music, etc. (Experience during this phase deserve standalone blog post as well -- later)

     I don't want to have literally NONE of above-mentioned things right now. I need to study, my brain has to be in "sleepy" phase to be able to absorb, process and store a bunch of information. Division into 3 phases will help to stay in REM-like phase which, I am strongly convinced about it, is beneficial for learning. (<< source needed here -- later)

    So, now I've spent some around 1 hour writing this post, eating a breakfast, thinking and I will probably be able to study for a next oncoming hour period. After that I will sleep again for next 1,5 or 3 hours. Yeah, every time you need to make sure that you sleep in 1,5 h intervals as REM phases are ending there. I.e. 1,5 h, 3 h, 4,5 h, 6 h, 7,5 h. If you go sleep at 1 AM and have to get up at 6 AM, set your alarm clock at 1+4,5 = 5:30 AM rather than 6 AM. At 6 AM you will probably meet your deep sleep phase and your day will sucks. I am pretty sure you know that feeling ;)

     That's it. Just wanted to share some thoughts, finally. Anyway, that was very nice procrastination as I didn't need to study and my brain is internally satisfied by writing a blog post :D

__________________________

I wrote this post using DO-IT-NOW-AND-DON'T-BE-PERFECT method (I will probably elaborate in next post) which was developed internally by my creative mind to control my perfectionism (fu*k you!) and finally made me able to share my thoughts with others more effectively. Which means that you can find more grammar mistakes, not entirely the best citation norms, you can find just a raw record of my mind stream -- probably nothing for your diploma thesis to base on :D