Polyphasic Sleep: Day 7

[marcmagus]

[12:53 - 14:17] Yeah, so you know how I said I was exhausted yesterday morning? Well, it's harder to exercise willpower when you're mostly asleep and your body is telling you not to stop sleeping. Ah, well...I don't really remember how I slept beyond the backup alarm; I think I may have actually hit snooze once or twice. And after all that, I was still pretty damn exhuasted when I got up.

[17:21 - 18:25] Today's lesson is, "When relying on an alarm to wake you, do be sure that you set the alarm correctly such that it will actually sound." Oops. Still, not too bad of an oversleep for no alarm. (Note to self: at requires an EOF to know it's done receiving input. The new invocation is 'echo "xmms -p" | at now +32 minutes' . . . that'll be harder to screw up.)

[21:02 - 21:34]

[01:15 - 01:48]

[05:16 - 05:49] I don't really have any comment on these last three phases. Everything just worked smoothly. I got up, I was functional, I remembered to nap and did so...if it smooths out to all being like this, that would be incredibly cool.

[09:03 - 09:35] Hmmm. I'm tired, but less so than I was this time yesterday!

My instinct says the worst is still to come. I feel like I'm making slight progress, though. My normal awake-time is easy; I just need to keep working on getting those daylight hours working correctly. I'm sure the allergies aren't helping.

I've already started thinking of time (in terms of allocating time to performing tasks) in terms of three-and-a-half hour blocks. It's kind of neat, because they don't stretch on indefinitely. So I can decide to use this block to do some chores I don't want to deal with, and know it's not that long before I get to switch back to fun stuff. Or, in a similar way, if I goof off when I meant to do something productive, I haven't actually lost that much time, and each awakening is a convenient chance to switch gears.

Comments

[pigfish.livejournal.com]

What's gonna happen when you find a task that you want/need to do, and it's going to take longer than 3.5 hours? I'm realizing that so long as the standard "day" is 9-5, and sleep occurs in 1 8-hour block at "night", it would be impossible for anyone with a "normal" job, or say, a family, to make use of a polyphasic sleep cycle.

[marcmagus]

I'm not sure. I've had a few thoughts on that.

First, most tasks I want to do which last longer than 3.5 hours are capable of being broken into smaller chunks with breaks between them. In fact, for most such tasks it's preferable to take a break and return fresh, although we rarely do.

Second, at least some of those who've made it through the adjustment period into normal polyphasic sleep say they have some flexibility in their schedules. Mr. Pavlina reported being able to stretch one awake period up to about 7 hours and compress the others more tightly with no ill effect.

These two together will cover many of the situations you allude to unless there's some source of extreme inflexibility. But it's clear that being on a radically different sleep schedule can create social difficulty between people (I've seen that just being nocturnal). It seems it'll ultimately come down to whether the benefits (extra time being a major one) are worth the costs (more restrictive schedule, completely different sort of schedule from people you interact with, who may consequently be unwilling or unable to accomodate your needs).