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.

Experiment #1: Unexpected Break

Because of a stimulating conversation with a girl that I would like to get to know better, I went to bed at 2 am. Unfortunately, I ended up waking up at 9 am and skipped the nap to go to work. Anyways, I will make sure to wake up tomorrow 4 hours after my bedtime.

Experiment #1: Day 3

Last night, I turned on the TV and saw a couple shows about giving houses a makeover to be able to sell it on the market. It was quite an interesting show and was fun to watch people come up with creative designs and solutions. This is something that I would probably enjoy doing in the future. However, this resulted me in going to bed at 1:30 am so I got up at 6 am today. I watched an episode of Good Eats about pancakes, which basically showed the way I’ve always done it except I don’t make my own pancake mix. I took my nap at 12:30 pm again and was only able to get an 45 minutes of sleep before I had to go to work. Because it is very hard for me to go to bed at midnight, I think I will have to change my bedtime to 1 am and wake up at 5:30 am. My nap will stay the same but I will just have to set an alarm to remind me to take my nap on time. Unfortunately, tomorrow I need to arrive early at the gas station so I won’t be able to sleep only 4 hours as I will miss my nap and I have intense Judo practice. After tomorrow, I will go back to my schedule so I will post again 6/21/08.

Experiment #1: Day 2

Since I had gone to bed at 1:30 am, I set my alarm up at 5:45 am. Though I could’ve gotten up, I felt really tired so I decided to try for another 15 minutes of sleep for 6 am and felt much better. I am not sure if it is mental but that 15 minutes of sleep seemed to make me less tired. I will try this same schedule to see how my body feels again tomorrow except it will be 1 am sleep and 5:30 am wake up. At about 8:30 am I felt suddenly tired and my eyes started to close. I was able to fight it off but I am thinking that maybe pushups or some kind of exercise will help me stay awake. The fatigue was gone by 9:30 am. I watched an episode of Good Eats about making eggs (poached, scrambled, and boiled) especially for breakfast. I already know how to make scrambled eggs but I’m not great at making poached eggs as the white usually gets too tough when I try to make sure the yolk is cooked enough. I tried to make poached eggs following the directions from Good Eats, but I couldn’t flip the egg. After my culinary lesson, I had an hour nap at 12 pm instead of my 1.5 hour nap because I didn’t have enough time before work. I was tired the whole day at work but it could’ve been mental as the whole day was dreary, rainy, and slow. When it got to 10:30 pm, I started feeling sleepy and my body was telling me to go to bed. However, when I got home, the fatigue had passed. I need to be more disciplined in sticking to my schedule and will be in bed by midnight tonight so I can wake up at 5 am and take my full 1.5 hour nap. I will include the notes that I took from the episode on making eggs underneath.

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Poached eggs

Low heat with pat of butter in pan. (Butter is for flavor.) When butter starts to foam, break eggs in middle of plate instead of on edges cups or plate so tiny bits of egg won’t break off and it is easy to clean up. Tilt the pan away from you and swirl it around to let heat spread throughout egg and not just straight up through. Season with sea salt and fine pepper if you want. Take 1-1.5 minutes to cook egg on one side. When thicker white sets, flip egg. Wait 10 seconds. Flip egg again and put on plate.

Notes: I need to practice flipping the egg.

Scrambled eggs

Melt couple pats of butter in nonstick pan on low heat. Crack eggs into cup. Add 1 tablespoon of liquid (milk, water, or cream) per egg. Add a pinch of sea salt if needed but wait on the pepper until it’s on the plate. Pour egg mixture onto pan. When curds start to form, turn on high. Instead of stirring, fold egg over itself. When there is no more liquid in the pan, take it off the heat. Fold it over itself a few times and serve. It might look undercooked but the egg will keep on cooking itself even off the heat.

Notes: Easy.

Boiled eggs

The night before, turn carton of eggs onto side so yolk will be in middle. Put eggs in pot. Fill a pot with cold water, adding a teaspoon of salt to seal any cracking in the eggs. Bring to boil. Remove from heat. Put on lid and leave alone for 15 minutes. Drain and bang egg around pan to start it cracking to make it easier to peel. Finish eggs in cold water bath to stop it from cooking itself. Promptly peel.

Notes: Easy.