Everyman Sleep Schedule: Day 2 & Break…again

Today was as terrible as yesterday was great in terms of how I felt sticking to my schedule. I felt constantly tired and the naps helped some but I felt more tired after taking them. The ease with following the sleep schedule yesterday was probably since my sleep deprivation hadn’t caught up to me. Now that it has. I realize that adapting to this sleep schedule might take a week. I have no doubt I can do it but several things have come to my attention.

First, I have the Dragon’s Challenge Judo tournament in Delray Beach on Saturday, 8/16 and I won’t be able to take naps when I have to drive up in the morning. In addition, I don’t want to be sleep-deprived on the day of competition since I want to perform my best.

This is embarrassing especially after the last post and though it seems like the tournament is an excuse, judo is important to me. I will redeem myself by bringing back polyphasic sleep in 2 weeks when school starts and I have a set schedule. To prepare for polyphasic sleep during school, I’ll have to scout for areas near my classes to take naps in. I already have ear plugs. Anyways for now, I will be doing free-running sleep and letting my body decide when I’m tired.

Everyman Sleep Schedule: Day 1

Before I begin my update on my sleep schedule, I wanted to say that polyphasic sleep is something that, barring health issues, anyone can do if they really want it. All you need is the desire and a cheap blackberry from Ebay if you’re forgetful and undisciplined like me. Anyways, let’s get started.

Though I felt extremely tired after only 3 hours of core sleep, it wasn’t so bad after 10-15 minutes. I was able to stay disciplined and kept to my nap times except for the last one at 9:20 pm since I was on the phone with a friend I hadn’t talked to in awhile. Per my rules, I skipped it. Having a blackberry to remind me to take my naps definitely helps keep me on schedule. I’m also surprised that I’m not tired tonight especially after a grueling Judo practice and a change in my sleeping patterns.

One observation during my sleep schedule is that when I take my 20 minute naps, I end up feeling more tired if I decide to go back to sleep for even an extra 2 minutes. Getting up right away is the best option. A possible change I might eventually make in my Everyman sleep schedule is shortening my nap to a period of less than 20 minutes. This might make me less tired since I remember whenever I would take a short 5 minute to 15 minute nap and be woken up by someone, I felt refreshed and alert. For now, I will keep it to 20 minutes. I will have to see how my body feels in the next few days but my first day was great.

Onward to Everyman (Polyphasic) Sleep

Looking back at my biphasic sleep schedule, it really didn’t meet my goal of having more time to pursue my interests. As a result, now that my time isn’t dictated by the hours I work at the gas station, I will pursue the Everyman sleep schedule starting at 2 am today.

• Previously: 6 hours of core sleep with a 20 minute nap in the middle of the day and one more 20 minute nap if I had Judo. TOTAL: 6.33-6.67 HOURS OF SLEEP

• Now with the Everyman sleep schedule: 3 hours of core sleep with four 20 minute naps spaced about every 4 hours. TOTAL: 4.33 HOURS OF SLEEP

To make this transition successful:

• Since I have a Blackberry (albeit the ancient Blackberry 7290 I bought cheap on eBay), I will set reminders and alarms to take a nap every 4 hours.

• Blogger Puredoxyk made a post more than a year ago about her success with the Everyman sleep schedule. Just to summarize a couple tips she has: 1) being sick means sleeping as much as your body wants to though you should still try to keep to your sleep schedule and 2) missing a nap means just skipping it and waiting until your next nap to avoid messing up your schedule. Her blog is here.

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Tentative outline of my Everyman Sleep Schedule:

2-5 am core sleep

9:00-9:20 am nap

1:10-1:30 pm nap

5:20-5:40 pm nap

9:30-9:50 pm nap

and it starts all over again

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Experiment #1: Final Summer Biphasic Sleep Schedule

I have finally found a sleep schedule that I can live on. For the past couple weeks, I have been sleeping 6 hours a night with a 20 minute nap before work. If I have Judo practice, I nap for another 20 minutes right before Judo. Otherwise, I skip that nap. This seems to be working very well and I can do everything I want to do without feeling exhausted.

Maybe when fall starts, I will change my schedule because of school, but right now, I will stick with this. It is comfortable. It gives me time to do what I need to do such as making my massage website (which I finally finished after working on it for a few days). It also is easy for my body to stick to.

Experiment #1: Day 11, 12, 13

I am currently feeling sleep-deprived on 6 hours of monophasic sleep a night. Though I thought that my body would be able to handle that much with no problem, I will go back to 4 hours core sleep and a 1.5 hour nap with a 15-20 min-nap whenever I am able to fit it in. This should do it for me. After I am no longer working at the gas station in a month, I will have more flexibility with my time to try something else that might work for me better.

Experiment #1: Day 10

I slept 5 hours of sleep with a 20 minute nap without being tired so I think I will slowly decrease my sleep by 20 minute intervals after a couple days to first get used to 5 hours of core sleep. I won’t be posting about my sleep schedule for the next couple days unless something unexpected comes up. An interesting video about the body clock and sleeping can be found here.

Experiment #1: Days 7, 8, 9

For the last couple days, I was just getting too tired and with my desire to visit with friends, it has been difficult to keep with my schedule of the 1.5 hour nap. As a result, I have decided to change it up to a different biphasic sleep schedule by increasing my core sleep to 6 hours of sleep. Obviously I can’t sleep during work or when I’m in the middle of meeting with a friend but I can still live on 6 hours of sleep without being terribly sleep deprived. The free running sleep comes in with 5-20 minute naps that recharge me when I’m tired. It is much easier as the naps are shorter in length. Though I set a alarm clock for 30 minutes, I always wake up before my alarm sounds. I really enjoy this as I feel just as refreshed with these shorter naps as I did with the longer 1.5 hour nap. What I will try to change is the amount of fixed sleep I get. It is possible that I can slowly and incrementally decrease the amount of fixed sleep I have from 6 to 4 hours. We will see.

Experiment #1: Day 6

In contrast to yesterday, I felt happy and I realized that drinking so much not only makes me tired and slow (in both body and mind) the next day, but it also makes me depressed. There was such a huge difference in my mood when I woke up this morning even with only four hours of sleep. A friend who is going to the University of Florida for pharmacy school visited me this morning and we talked about what we wanted in our life. Incidentally, I missed my 1.5 hour nap before work but I didn’t feel the effects of missing my nap at all. However, it is probably better that I stick to my schedule so I will end this post early to go to bed and wake up at 4:30 am tomorrow morning. Before I go to bed, I want to share an inspiring video from YouTube. This is how i want to live.

Experiment #1: Day 5

South Beach was fun. I drank too much Grey Goose. I haven’t drank in a few years so I didn’t really know where my limit is and ended up asking every girl in the club to dance. Unfortunately, the ones that did want to dance probably regretted it since I was much too uncoordinated to do so. I find it pretty funny now. Anyways, the effect it had on my sleep schedule is pretty obvious. I didn’t go to bed until 4 am and got up at 10 am to get ready for work. I was not myself when I woke up. My mind and body was slower and I didn’t know how I would be able to go to Judo today. As a result, instead of Judo, I went home and slept to recover from the alcohol in my body. When I woke up, I felt better. Though I will probably not drink that much again for a while because I’m not much of a drinker, I think that it is possible to drink some as long as it’s not excessive and still maintain a biphasic sleep schedule. A series of events have broken my schedule but I will continue the schedule tomorrow.

Experiment #1: Day 4

I am back on schedule. Though I am usually tired about an hour after I wake up, there are no unusual side effects. Like I mentioned before, I am now constantly hungry since I am awake more. Today I ate a thick slice of banana bread right when I woke up at 7 am and then I took at nap at 11 am. I woke up at 12:30 pm so I made myself 2 plates of scrambled eggs. In the first plate (of 2 eggs), I made good old scrambled eggs and it tasted pretty good. In my next plate of eggs, I added oatmeal to the egg to make it more filling and it turned out pretty good. I wanted to add salsa too but there wasn’t any at home. Anyways, it was time for work by then. When I came back, a friend from out of town called and I ended up going out with him and his friends to South Beach. It’s too bad that I didn’t get to eat much for dinner. I will try to get back early enough so I can still stay on schedule.