I'm Failing

published by Jarkko Helenius on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 23:14
English

Basically everything went fine for 23 days. I had some slight problems, but they were really minor, like falling asleep for five minutes while sitting at computer etc. Nothing to really worry about. But now I've all the sudden had three major oversleeps in space of s ix days. I'm afraid that all the good work has gone to waste.

 

The problem is overwhelminly with the core, I always wake up easily from the naps. Core is always where I'm the most tired and hardly awake sometimes. I have three alarms – Zeo, by the bed, my computer across the room which forces me to get up if I'm to shut it down and then there's my phone, which I put to alternating places and set it later as a back-up. Zeo goes off first, my computer next and my phone last. But today I just slept through them. I mean I had a flashback about shutting down my computers alarm this morning as well, but I don't remember anything else so I was barely awake even then.

 

I guess what I've been doing lately is simply, for some reason, going back to bed after getting up from core. This has been my nemesis in every polyphasic attempt. I'm not thinking straight and it always beats me. I guess I  should have so many alarms, that it's massive project to shut them all down. At least for the core, I could do with only one for my naps.

 

That's it. I needed to went somewhere as I'm very frustrated. How can everything go well enough for 25 days and all the sudden something click and I turn right back to my old habits? Oversleeps were 6 and 7 hours twice so they were pretty bad, not just couple of hours too much. I'm gutted, but I'll add some alarms and hope that solves my problem.

Daniel Tracy

Fri, 12/17/2010 - 12:37

I had a similar experience, in that after a few weeks of successful Everyman3, I had serious trouble waking up from core. I am lucky enough to have a wife that spoke sternly to me not to go back to bed and to leave the room. Then the only problem was staying awake. I thought that the problem was caused by slight oversleeps, but perhaps that is just the time waking up from core gets hard because of accumulated sleep deprivation or something.

 

I think I was getting through it, but a business trip totally tripped me up recently. I am re-starting on Everyman3 briefly in prep for Uberman. But the mistake that I made from the business trip was turning a small failure into a huge failure by frustration. It started with an oversleep of two or three hours that I could have soldiered myself up from but instead went back to bed. Then my completely monophasic night turned into three days of monophasic sleep as I evaluated whether and how to continue. That was my big mistake. Because of that, my Everyman3 feels like it's starting over completely and it's even harder. Don't give up! Let a partial failure remain a partial failure, and make plans on how to conquer the immediate problem.

 

Daniel

Daniel Tracy

Fri, 12/17/2010 - 12:49

Oh I forgot: one more thing. Is it possible that it would be easier to do Everyman3 for 3 weeks and then a full night sleep to catch up, rinse repeat? I don't know how this would work out, but I think people with experience would say you're just not adapted yet and a night's sleep would just screw you up. But who knows. Point being, however, go back on Everyman right away.

 

After three days on monophasic, I already felt cheated of time and I realized that I had to go back to Everyman.

 

Daniel

Jarkko Helenius

Sun, 12/19/2010 - 06:15

Yeah, once you're tried polyphasic there's no going back.

 

Anyway, I have just visited one three-day event and it screwed up rest of my schedule so I'll just think of it as starting over from day 1. I just really could use couple of more alarms or other ways to wake from my core.

Jarkko Helenius

Mon, 12/20/2010 - 02:13

Well it didn't go as planned. I slept through all of my alarms with such
a ridiculous ease that I in fact made my record ZQ. Over 9 hours of
sleep with over 4 hours (!!!) of REM - ZQ was a nice and solid 106.

 

The core is the problem so I'll just get rid of the core - I'll return to Uberman for a couple of days just to retrain myself getting up to alarm. Body will appreciate the three-hour sleep more as well once it's sleep-deprived.