Polyphasic sleep - Day 1

I am going to have to make this clear. It is not day 1 of the sleep schedule - merely day 1 of actually trying to start it. Preparation I suppose.

So like I had planned I would completely circumvent sleeping for one night. I did. Well it was morning when I went to sleep. Not what I had planned. It started getting light at 4:30am. It is really quite satisfying being awake while it slowly grows lighter. Unfortunately my mind at this point told me to go lie down for a while. I suppose I felt guilty.

Guilty of what? Well I have a doubt in my mind as to whether my parents will agree with letting me try this sleep schedule. I only slept for about 6 hours. Surprisingly I managed to lie on my bed for over an hour before I went to sleep. Now imagine if my alarm had gone off 3 hours in to sleeping. Would I have gotten up? I somehow doubt it. Can I really wake up after sleeping for only 3 hours? Perhaps not while adapting, but after that sure. Trouble is adapting.

Especially at 3am. If I had 3 hours of sleep and woke at 10am sure. That just isn't going to happen though. I am starting to think that I should circumvent sleeping again for tonight, but tomorrow I'll start uberman. It definitely won't work for school - but let's not get carried away. Will I really still be on this schedule in 2 months? Nope. I am going to switch back to everyman towards the end of the holidays.

So my new plan is to take most of the naps without anyone noticing(Read on for nap times). This will slow any suspicion as it may take them several days to catch on I am doing this. That's exactly what I need. At least a few days to say "I am going fine, don't stop me now".

Like I said earlier, I can't wake up from sleeping less than half of what I'd usually do, especially at 3am. I'd be a fool to even try. Uberman may be more intensive, but I won't have a high chance of oversleeping every night. I've experienced before that naps are far easier to wake up from than core sleep. I even felt more refreshed after naps and really tired after core. That is probably due to bad timing as I may have been in a deep phase of sleep but not REM or light phase whenever I woke up from a 3 hour sleep.

Core = bad.
Nap = good.

So what are my new nap times?
2:30am
6:30am
10:30am
2:30pm
6:30pm
10:30pm

Except for the weekend, 5/6 of those times no one will even know I am napping. If I go to sleep at 6:30am, I'll wake up just before 7 and that sometimes happens to me anyway, so that won't generate much suspicion. The only real problem is 6:30pm, however there is a good chance that no one will even walk past my room. My siblings won't care, but as long as my parents don't walk past my room at this time I'll be fine.

Following this, a week later they might decide "Hey is he napping". I can then say "Yep, 2 hours a day and I feel better than before". Once I've actually shown it can be done, there should be a lot less problem with me being able to do this.

Only one thing really stands in the way. Adapting.

Video games are a great way to keep yourself awake for the night. Seriously, get hooked on one you could skip sleeping for 2 nights no problem. Just this morning I was sitting here, doing nothing in particular. Starting feeling the need to sleep. That was about 2am right. It carried on for a while, but eventually I just logged on to World of Warcraft and for the next few hours I was awake.

As nerdy as you might think it is, it is definitely a good method. I can nap at my computer if I wanted and wake up good to go.

Actually I created a new character to level just to keep myself occupied. There is easily over a week of in game time before reaching the highest level. This will sound extremely nerdy - but I'll probably be on for over 16 hours a day. Just while adapting. I'll do more productive things when I've adapted but I am counting on this to keep me awake.

I've been constantly spewing out this blog post for a while now so I am going to draw it to a conclusion. I still feel there is a lot more I can write about though. Like how I may add in a nap at 4:30am for a few days.

This uberman sleep schedule is the master of all polyphasic sleep. It is a larger accomplishment than everyman. Not just because many seem to think its harder(maybe, I don't think it is), but because most can't juggle their schedules around this sleep pattern.

I think I've done a good job at planning, but now to prove I am not all talk and actually do it. Goodluck.