Refining polyphasic sleep plans

Well I've realised that no way am I going to bed at 10:30pm. Well, at first. That is too early for me currently so I'll have to work it back to 10:30pm if I did want any chance to be able to do this over school. At first I am going to have to sleep a bit later. Let's see if I can work this out...

3 hours at 12:00am-3:00am

25 minutes at 8:30am

25 minutes at 2:00pm

25 minutes at 6:30pm

It is not quite exactly spaced out and the gaps are up to 1hour different. That would be a problem if this were uberman, but fortunately it is everyman. Everyman is far more flexible than uberman and allows for things such as these.

From Monday to Friday for the next 2 weeks the first 2 naps are very unlikely anyone will disturb me or know I am napping. I got off school 2 weeks early so most my family are out during the day. This will give me an opportunity to adapt while showing it as little as possible. I want that because when people are around my room and I am almost asleep I can just hear them talking.

As for the core, it may be difficult to wake up at 3am. I only have one alarm so I have to figure out a way to assist me to get up. Perhaps I can just pull out a mattress in the room I am in now, not my bedroom. That way I can bring my alarm clock in here and I shouldn't be quite as relaxed as in my bed so I'll be able to get up easily and use my computer to keep me occupied. Also, I'll get water and place it close to where I am sleeping so when I get up I have something to do straight away.

I'll get a few movies that I can put on as well as using my computer. That way I can keep myself occupied more than just sitting here passing time. I can also grab myself a bag of nuts too, so I have something to eat which should give me some energy to stay awake.

My Strategy

All that is well and good but I need an exact strategy. I am supposed to be starting tonight -- but I am not REALLY starting polyphasic sleep. Before I do that I have to make myself able to sleep polyphasically. I learnt from last time that I can't just wake up from a 3 hour sleep and start napping. I need to deprive myself of sleep enough so that I can nap.

Step 1)Get sleep deprived so I can nap

Step 2)Start the actual sleep schedule

What I need to do is skip my core sleep tonight, so I MAY be able to nap during the day tomorrow. If I slept for 3 hours tonight, I wouldn't feel like napping and I probably couldn't if I tried. I probably wouldn't be able to get to sleep successfully for my core anyway, until I am tired enough.

Compared to last time I tried, I think I have a far better chance this time. Hopefully my parents will remember that one of them said I can try it during the holidays...

Exact Polyphasic Plans

3 hours at 10:30pm-1:30am
25 minutes at 7:00am
25 minutes at 12:30pm
25 minutes at 5:30pm

If you subtract the core from the 24 hours in one day, you are left with 21 hours. In that 21 hours, I need to nap 3 times. So from the end of the core to the start of the core(21 hours), there will be 4 times I am awake.

1:30am-7:00am (5 and a half hours)
7:00am-12:30pm (5 and a half hours)
12:30pm-5:30pm (5 hours)
5:30pm-10:30pm (5 hours)

The times between naps are approximately even, worked out from the end of the core to the start of the core because the core takes a lot longer. So instead of going from the start like you would with naps, this is a better estimation. If that makes sense.

I know I told everyone I was going to do 4 and a half hours with 2 naps. That was to try to stretch it over school. The truth is I have no idea if it would work, and if it could stretch over school, traditional everyman probably could too(maybe a slight drop in consciousness in the afternoon, but I get that now anyway).

Right now I am not even considering how I can nap during school. It's not important - I don't have to go back for 2 months. The first step is adapting. That's the hardest part. I can work out school when it comes, rather than attempting a difficult sleep pattern now when I don't need to.

As for my parents... well I strongly recall one of them saying "I don't mind you trying it during the holidays..." last time they got up me for doing it. They let me do it for 2 weeks then there was one week left they made me stop, so this time I'll have 7 weeks I suppose. Plenty.

Learning from last time, I couldn't nap for about a week because I was just too awake. I was tired but couldn't sleep during the day. I'll have to take some more time off sleeping to ensure I am tired enough to at least sleep a bit during naps.

Polyphasic sleep plans

In about a week, I'll be starting my polyphasic sleep again. This will be my second attempt at it and hopefully I won't oversleep this time.

Monophasic sleep - 1 block of sleep
Biphasic sleep - 2 blocks of sleep
Polyphasic sleep - generally more than 2 blocks of sleep per day, though 3 can be referred to as triphasic sleep.

Description of Polyphasic Sleep
Polyphasic sleep generally refers to scheduled napping to achieve more wake time. This means to replace some or all of your normal sleep time with naps, 20-30 minutes long(about 25 is best). After a few days, you start to become tired which means you want to sleep. Unfortunately at this point we start to enjoy sleeping, same as how if we suffer mild sleep deprivation over a period of time we start to enjoy sleeping, because we feel the need for it. Days later, the sleep deprived feelings start to wear off. Schedules with a core sleep as well as naps take longer to adapt to, often even a month to become fully adapted.

Sleeping polyphasically causes your naps to contain the full sleep cycle, not just the first 20-30 minutes. At first you will only get the light phases of sleep, but as the conversion to polyphasic goes on, you will start getting deeper naps, into REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Commonly it is thought that the naps contain only REM sleep. This isn't true, but they probably contain a significant portion of it relative to a normal sleep cycle. The naps are actually just condensed sleep cycles, from 90 minutes in to one short nap.

For example, if you sleep for 3 hours at night, say from midnight to 3am, then had 3 naps each equal to 20 minutes spaced out in the remaining 21 hours, you would still get 5 sleep cycles. A human adult monophasically is required to sleep 7 and a half hours in one single block. 5 lots of 90 minutes, which is how long each sleep cycle takes. It can be quite difficult for the body to adapt to having short sleep cycles, especially if mixed in with longer ones. But, with a bit of hope and strong mental power, overcoming the temporary physical weakness is merely a hard task to accomplish.


Now I've decided on a few things.

1) I have to sleep long enough that my parents won't worry about me and should at least let me try it for a while (at which point I can convince them to let me continue, if I succeed).

2) I don't want to sleep during school.
People often won't respect each other at high school. If people caught me napping, which is definite, they'll come and abuse me while I'm sleeping. Also, if it is a rainy day I cannot sleep in many places, only those which have people swarming around.

3) I am not going to let my parents stop me. Last time I tried, my parents stopped me because they were concerned about it. They obviously don't think a bunch of naps can replace normal sleep.

This time, I must try a different sleep pattern. Last time I was stuck between 5 naps of 24 minutes, or 3 hours and 3 lots of 20 minute naps (everyman). I'll not choose either of those, but instead I'll choose a variant of everyman sleep. 4 and a half hour core, plus 2 naps of 25 minutes. I can nap before school, after school, and sleep somewhere in between.

Perhaps it won't grant all the benefits uberman or full everyman would, but it is certainly better than monophasic or biphasic.


I deleted my past blogs about polyphasic sleep. They were repeated "I overslept a bit this morning, slept less than I would on monophasic still, and I'm okay". I'd say at the most I got to about 25% adapted. I think my greatest time successfully on the sleep schedule must have been about 3 consecutive days, then comes the hard bit. Which undoubtedly leads to failure (except this time).

I also tried biphasic sleep. It didn't work because I had not enough time in between the main sleep and the shorter sleep. That was a miserable blog, biphasic isn't majorly impressive.

Future Blogging

So I haven't written for a while, but thats okay, because no one will find out because not many people read this. I think a few people do so I may as well take the time to say that I haven't written anything lately because I have lost motivation for a few reasons. One of them pretty obvious, not many people read this. Simple, no one reads and my writing doesn't do much. I've also not a lot to write about any more. I'm done ranting about school and being the restricting age I am, 15, it is hard to do anything new and useful without the ideas being rejected by parents(such as polyphasic sleep). Without having full freedom it can be more difficult to unleash ideas if you know what I'm trying to say.

However, that doesn't mean the end of this blog. In just under 4 weeks I start 8 weeks off school. Perfect time to try polyphasic sleep again, keeping it as secret as possible from parents until I am close to adapted. I'll do everyman, and try to stretch my naps out so I don't have to nap during school. Having a small amount of experience with it before, and the determination to reduce my tiredness and gain extra waking hours, I should have a good chance at passing, if my parents let me. Perhaps after that I will start a bit of body building, to prove it is possible to body build and polyphasic sleep at the same time, though I'm sure I wouldn't be the first.

So this blog isn't much. I wasn't expecting it to be much so it's not like I failed. In the future I intend on building my own website, perhaps with the aid of a product like "Site build it!". When I am old enough to be able to engage in creative ideas. Those which parents don't seem to believe in. Polyphasic sleep is just one of them(others include personal development topics, such as health, and other experiments) and I am still not even sure if I can do that. We'll see.