So, approximately an hour before my first (as of now, anyway) nap, I think I have decided on a schedule:

Naps at the following (approximate) times:

1:40
4:30 *
9:00
1:30
5:40
9:40

With the nap with the marking star a one hour and forty minute to two hours core. I decided to use this length because based on my Zeo results, my sleep cycle wildly ranges from an hour to two hours, and I plan on using the Zeo's smartwake (which has been working wonderfully the past four nights) to help me wake up. I will have back up alarms at the two hour mark.

In the realm of documentation, I plan on little more than an analysis of the Zeo data in accordance with my post about why I think polyphasing should work.

Also, note that the total time I plan to sleep for is just under 4 hours. The same amount given by Everyman3, but spread out more. I have no idea if that will make it easier or more difficult, because the naps are less consistent than with Everyman, but I suppose I'll find out.

Lastly, I assume that if I fail it is because it is effectively more difficult than Everyman3, and in that event I hope to transition into Everyman3.

Edit: I removed one nap, and adjusted accordingly. Total sleeping time 3:20-3:40 is really what I want to shoot for.

EVERYONE JUMP UP AND SAY HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THE MORNING OF DAY THREE!!

*woooohooo!*

...OK, ok, I kid.  This part sucks.  ;)

But I'm doing ok!  Everybody else doing ok? 

Days three and four were hardest for me on everyman (and this feels more or less like everyman) before, and I did mess up. I woke up after my 2-hours and stood up, and started shivering, and could not warm myself. So I wrapped up in a blanket. I slept for a total of 3 hr and 30 minutes, which really is not terrible but I'm annoyed I let it happen (I will be doing everyman 3 if I can't make this schedule work out). The irony of the situation is that for the past two days I have been considering asking how you guys deal with the cold of sleep deprivation. For me, it leads to the most oversleeps!

Last night I decided to not use my normal routine: a blanket for my legs and thin-jacket + sweatshirt. My idea was that I could immediately wake up and put them on to keep warm. Well, I forgot that they were next to me and got cold. From now on I will only do my core sleep basically dressed ready to wake up, I believe that will help me avoid the cold issue. It's like never removing the blanket! After my second core nap, I did not have the cold issue at all which surprised me.

It's on. I'm starting tonight (Wednesday, November 10th). I'm still tempted to do Uberman, but I'm thinking that I should settle for Everyman3. I have a business trip in a month that I'm going to have to deal with.

I just got my Zeo yesterday, so I only got one night of base-line data. Wow! 2.5 hours REM and 2 hours deep! No wake-ups, fell asleep quickly. It was a good night. Maybe it was the Melatonin (I take the stuff every night). I woke up early and went to work early, but still felt good all day.

Questions:

Should I continue to take Melatonin just before my core?

How do I get my hands on software that allows me to see my naps?

If I had to guess, melatonin will make it very difficult for you to wake up. The core is generally already quite a difficult thing to wake up from.. but I don't really know. Never took it.

swtb said:

Days three and four were hardest for me on everyman (and this feels more or less like everyman) before, and I did mess up. I woke up after my 2-hours and stood up, and started shivering, and could not warm myself. So I wrapped up in a blanket. I slept for a total of 3 hr and 30 minutes, which really is not terrible but I'm annoyed I let it happen (I will be doing everyman 3 if I can't make this schedule work out). The irony of the situation is that for the past two days I have been considering asking how you guys deal with the cold of sleep deprivation. For me, it leads to the most oversleeps!

Last night I decided to not use my normal routine: a blanket for my legs and thin-jacket + sweatshirt. My idea was that I could immediately wake up and put them on to keep warm. Well, I forgot that they were next to me and got cold. From now on I will only do my core sleep basically dressed ready to wake up, I believe that will help me avoid the cold issue. It's like never removing the blanket! After my second core nap, I did not have the cold issue at all which surprised me.

Good to hear you found something that mostly works.  I experienced some degree of this in my place where my comfortable temperature for wakeful activities is about 10 degrees f. lower than my comfortable temperature for sleep.  Given that it takes my body about 20 minutes to "warm up" from a resting state, this makes for 20 nasty minutes of intensely craving the warm shelter of my electric blanket.

After that experience I immediately dialed the central heater up.  As long as I am not moving around much, I am still comfortable being awake in a higher temperature.  I have no concerns for the extra heating cost either; this is going to be very worth it by several orders of magnitude.  I also have a 1000 watt electric heater in my room that picks up any slack the central heater might leave.  I no longer use my electric blanket for heating, at least for the adaptation period, since it is very important to make sure your entire environment is warm enough to sustain you during a hard wake up and warm up. 

Note that if things get too hot later I can always vent to the outside and cool down the place very quickly.  Heating, on the other hand, takes some time, so it's usually more useful to keep the place in a heated state.

...

As for myself:

I'm on day 5 of my everyman 3:3 now with no significant mistakes.  All of my naps give me a temporary boost of energy for about 2-3 hours, and then I have varying degrees of sleepiness annoyance to deal with until the next nap.  The time directly after my core sleep has been the worst point for the last two days at least.  The hour after my core tends to suck.  It is actually very easy to wake from (I've never used a backup alarm) but the continuous drudge afterwards is difficult.  I have an interval timer set to go off every 7 minutes to wake me if I conk out during this part. 

I seem to be able to reliably sleep during my naps now.  They almost always contain some form of REM sleep and often also contain light sleep.  My last nap was unusual in that Zeo reported deep sleep at the end of it.  I woke up from the deep sleep feeling %100 refreshed for about 20 minutes, and moderately wakeful and energized after that.  I have not used any backup alarms on my naps either, with the exception of the rare forgot-to-set-it problem, and I find them very easy to wake from.  They are very pleasant experiences.  I wish I could do them more without jeopardizing my chances of success.

My most recent core sleep seems to consist of a typical but highly condensed wake->light->deep->light->REM cycle followed by an unusual deep->wake->REM pattern.  I actually don't remember waking up in that sleep.  The previous sleep also had this pattern, but with an extra waking point that I did actually experience because a noise disturbed me.

I have to wonder how well I'm doing compared to a usual Everyman adaptation.  Maybe I don't want to know.  I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that days 7-10 don't suck too much. 

I think that if I can keep the sleep dep symptoms managable, then I can do this indefinitely with no mistakes.  This schedule is awesome.  I'm realizing that a 7-8 hour monophasic block is incredibly intrusive since it is long and statistically likely to touch SOME event that I care about, thus making it difficult to do consistently at the same time every night.  I don't do very many things that can't be interrupted for 20-30 minutes, so the naps are very easy to work in.  The core sleep is small enough that I'm unlikely to have a scheduling conflict with it.  Sure, maybe this schedule requires much more discipline, but that discipline is also much easier to deliver.

Also it is currently Drowsy Driving Prevention Week.  Just thought you might want to know ;)

Best of luck everyone!  Ganbatte!  Fight, live, prevail!  Etc.

Daniel said:

How do I get my hands on software that allows me to see my naps?

Not available yet. It's looking like Chad and Matt are on it. More details+info here: http://blog.myzeo.com/forum/po.....sic-sleep/

swtb said:

Days three and four were hardest for me on everyman (and this feels more or less like everyman) before, and I did mess up. I woke up after my 2-hours and stood up, and started shivering, and could not warm myself. So I wrapped up in a blanket. I slept for a total of 3 hr and 30 minutes, which really is not terrible but I'm annoyed I let it happen (I will be doing everyman 3 if I can't make this schedule work out). The irony of the situation is that for the past two days I have been considering asking how you guys deal with the cold of sleep deprivation. For me, it leads to the most oversleeps!

Last night I decided to not use my normal routine: a blanket for my legs and thin-jacket + sweatshirt. My idea was that I could immediately wake up and put them on to keep warm. Well, I forgot that they were next to me and got cold. From now on I will only do my core sleep basically dressed ready to wake up, I believe that will help me avoid the cold issue. It's like never removing the blanket! After my second core nap, I did not have the cold issue at all which surprised me.

OK, it's day six and I just woke up from my core feeling great -- for the first time -- so I thought I'd better share.  (There are more blow-by-blog details of the last five days at http://www.puredoxyk.com, if anybody wants them.) 

Also, fortuitiously, last night the Zeo stayed in place all night and got a good recording, so yay, we'll know what the first successful-feeling core nap looks like!  Woohoo!

Days 2-5 were tricky as heck, with the 4-7am time slot being the hardest to stay awake during, some gradually-decreasing symptomatic sleep-dep at night for the couple hours before the core, and some free-floating daytime tiredness that, over the course of those days, gradually coalesced around my naptimes, so that by yesterday I only got tired during the hour or so before it was time to nap, and the naps relieved it.  Very nice feeling, sleeping well for a nap and then feeling great on the other side -- yesterday I felt this for both my afternoon and evening naps (getting up from the morning nap sucked, but I suspect it will suck a bit less today!).

But I have uniformly groaned when the 4am alarm went off after my three-hour snooze, and needed the help of either all my strength, or my husband's nagging (or both) to get me out of bed in the morning ... until today.  I wasn't happy when the alarm went off, and I would have much preferred to stay in bed, but I'm not sleep-deprived (or I don't feel it).  I came to consciousness quickly, wasn't wandering around stupidly trying to slap myself awake or any of that; I hit snooze once, got up and stretched, and now (less than an hour later) I feel just fine, and without the help of any wake-measures -- all I'm doing is sitting in the dark typing, sipping water, and I'm not bleary at all!  AWESOME!

Oh, I should mention...No oversleeps, for me.  I hit snooze a few too many times (3-5) after a few of my morning naps, and once I lazed on the couch half-conscious and trying to make myself read for an hour after a nap, but I stuck by my schedule by and large, and had no unplanned naps or major oversleeping.  I feel vaguely that I should receive an award for this.  ;)  And for the record, I definitely could not fall asleep for afternoon/evening naps for the first several days of the experiment; it was only after day 4 that the afternoon & evening naps started to be easy to fall asleep for -- so I guess I can stand by the assertion I make in my book, that it's normal to not be able to nap at first, and that time and sticking to the schedule will fix that.

Thanks everyone!  Continued good luck to you!!

PD1

puredoxyk said:

OK, it's day six and I just woke up from my core feeling great -- for the first time -- so I thought I'd better share.  (There are more blow-by-blog details of the last five days at http://www.puredoxyk.com, if anybody wants them.) 

Also, fortuitiously, last night the Zeo stayed in place all night and got a good recording, so yay, we'll know what the first successful-feeling core nap looks like!  Woohoo!

Days 2-5 were tricky as heck, with the 4-7am time slot being the hardest to stay awake during, some gradually-decreasing symptomatic sleep-dep at night for the couple hours before the core, and some free-floating daytime tiredness that, over the course of those days, gradually coalesced around my naptimes, so that by yesterday I only got tired during the hour or so before it was time to nap, and the naps relieved it.  Very nice feeling, sleeping well for a nap and then feeling great on the other side -- yesterday I felt this for both my afternoon and evening naps (getting up from the morning nap sucked, but I suspect it will suck a bit less today!).

 

But I have uniformly groaned when the 4am alarm went off after my three-hour snooze, and needed the help of either all my strength, or my husband's nagging (or both) to get me out of bed in the morning ... until today.  I wasn't happy when the alarm went off, and I would have much preferred to stay in bed, but I'm not sleep-deprived (or I don't feel it).  I came to consciousness quickly, wasn't wandering around stupidly trying to slap myself awake or any of that; I hit snooze once, got up and stretched, and now (less than an hour later) I feel just fine, and without the help of any wake-measures -- all I'm doing is sitting in the dark typing, sipping water, and I'm not bleary at all!  AWESOME!

Oh, I should mention...No oversleeps, for me.  I hit snooze a few too many times (3-5) after a few of my morning naps, and once I lazed on the couch half-conscious and trying to make myself read for an hour after a nap, but I stuck by my schedule by and large, and had no unplanned naps or major oversleeping.  I feel vaguely that I should receive an award for this.  ;)  And for the record, I definitely could not fall asleep for afternoon/evening naps for the first several days of the experiment; it was only after day 4 that the afternoon & evening naps started to be easy to fall asleep for -- so I guess I can stand by the assertion I make in my book, that it's normal to not be able to nap at first, and that time and sticking to the schedule will fix that.

 

Thanks everyone!  Continued good luck to you!!

PD1

Post us a screenshot of the Zeo sleep data when you get the chance - would love to see what it looks like now that your adaptation is getting over the hump!

Daniel,

Your story sounds familiar!  I haven't experienced anything as drastic as doing a complete REM->light nap while fully awake, but there were times when I thought that I had failed and then noticed a bar or two of REM.  More importantly, I was feeling very refreshed from "failed" naps.  Note that I was also using meditation techniques during whole thing.  Perhaps the effect is similar to the noise generation you were using.  I think that even during my "failed" naps I was in some kind of altered state of mind that allows the body to do some, but not all (or even most), of the restorative things accomplished by sleep.  It doesn't replace sleep, but damn it sure helps take the edge off. 

I had my 10th core sleep this morning and I am utterly astounded at how just about every day has had plenty of time where I feel fine.  Without the naps, a consistent schedule, and the rigorous manner of polyphasic sleep, I would crumple after a couple nights of only 3 hours of sleep each.  I know because I've been there.  This experience is already quite surreal, even without a %100 gaurantee that it will work long term.  (You never know, I might be Doing It Wrong and slowly waiting for sleep dep to catch up with me.  But I'll ignore that for now.)

See, this is where I get impatient...Day 9, and it still rather sucks to wake up at 4 a.m.  It's easy to fall asleep for the daytime naps now (though I've realized that it's much smarter to just go ahead and wear the headphones with the white noise on every time, rather than risk the pesky hibernators waking me up with their inconsiderate stomping and yammering ;) -- and I wake from them refreshed, and after 19-23 minutes as is my norm; so that's encouraging.

And while waking up at 4 isn't fun yet, it is getting increasingly possible, and the grogginess I experience clears up pretty quickly now; I can actually spend the hours between 5-7 usefully, rather than in a bleary grumbly haze.

I'll try to dump the data off the Zeo soon -- I'm pretty sure it's caught at least a few of my naps (I try to use it for the morning & evening ones, and have gotten most of them) and most of my core naps (except for last night, when I plumb forgot to put it on ;).  And  I finally recorded my 7th "vlog" last night, though it'll be later tonight before I can post it. 

Hope everyone else is doing well! 

PD

I'm looking forward to your data Puredoxyk!  I've been wondering what the naps of the pros look like.  It might help me a bit to know in-depth details about what I'm shooting for.

OK, so if you were looking to laugh at me for being bleary and yawny and half-asleep on my feet, Vlog 7 is for you!

...Which
is ironic, of course, as my level of tiredness has been decreasing for
several days (that was recorded late at night on Day 8; this --
Wednesday 11/17 -- is the morning of Day 10); but I just couldn't get
around to the vlog and I had already missed a day, so I did it right
before bed, when I was quite zonked. 

So, perhaps more entertaining than educational, this one.  ;)

Yesterday (day 9) something significant also happened:  I took a deliberate 4.5-hour core sleep last night.  Here's why:
 
I'd been feeling iffy all day, not in the sleep sense (got all my naps
again, felt great after each -- though my afternoon nap was a bit late
and truncated by a few minutes), but in the
I-might-be-coming-down-with-something sense.  It's getting cold out, and
I walked about two miles to work, then two miles home, plus I've been
exposed to some sick people recently, and I could feel a slight headache
and slight throat irritation all day.

Then I got home, and decided I wanted to go out, which was fun
but it meant another 3 mile walk, and it was colder out, and I
definitely got a bit of a chill that time.  Now, all day I'd been
yawning on and off -- way more than normal -- but by 10pm I was really yawning and really feeling worn-out, like, in the bones. 

Some
of you may remember, from the almost four years I was on Everyman 3
before, that when I get overworked or I don't feel well, I'll sleep 4.5
hours at night.  Last night I decided it was time to do that again.  I
struggled with the decision, since I'm still in the adaptation phase and
I didn't want to make any changes to the schedule yet, but in the end,
the fact that I know my body, I know that taking that extra 1.5
is good for me sometimes, and I knew with clarity that I needed it
yesterday, changed my mind.  If there's a negative impact on my
adaptation, I'd rather that than risk getting sick.  I want to stress
that for me, this was a good decision because I know for a fact that it works,
and I can be pretty confident that it won't ruin my schedule to do
something I've been doing for years anyway.  This was definitely a
shortcut (or longcut, I guess) that I took as a cheat due to my prior
experience.  (When I adapted the first time to Everyman 3, there were no
4.5-hour sleeps for many weeks...in fact, I think I was like six months
in before I figured out that that worked for me, in times of duress.)

Anyway, disclaimers aside, check it out: the Zeo shows a biiig chunk of REM sleep right at the beginning of my sleep last night,
which probably signifies a restorative that my body needed; and I woke
up at 4am today feeling much, much better....one of my tonsils is
slightly swollen, so I'll dress extra warm today (it's raining, and I'm
walking again) and hit the vitamins hard, but other than that I feel
much improved.   

One thing that I do want to improve,
though, is the regularity of the length of my short naps...this sleep
track I have is too long, and I don't seem to wake up reliably at the
same time using it combined with a timer.  Sometimes this has meant
sleeping for 25 minutes; sometimes 18...and I can tell the quality of my
nap is being impacted by that sometimes.  I need a 23-minute sleep
track that ends with roosters like my last one!  ;)

More soon; thanks for watching; happy Wednesday ya'll!

My wife is getting more and more tired every day. She is frustrated with having to wake up at 4:00am and help me get up in case I try to go back to bed (it's happened three times). I want to relieve her of this burden.

I have two ideas:

1. I sleep on the couch in the living room. I'm on my own for waking up after core sleep. On the bright side, I'm less likely to go back to bed after the alarm goes off if I'm on the couch in my clothes. This choice is most likely.

2. I immediately switch from Everyman3 to full Uberman. Why? Because I never have a problem waking up from my naps, just core. But maybe that will change drastically under Uberman anyway. To those who are adapting or have adapted to Uberman: is waking up from naps a huge problem, or just staying awake between them?

Daniel

At your number 2, Daniel, it is both extremely difficult to wake up and stay awake. For me, when I attempted uberman (and failed), the problem was waking up on day ~3 to 4. I invariably failed to wake up one of my naps, and would set myself back a day or two. It always devolved to everyman. This is the opinion of someone who did not ever adapt to uberman successfully remember.

Link to my eleventh vlog below, if anybody wants to see it.

The zarking Zeo fell off my head again last night!  Argh, thingy!  I don't think I've gotten a full readout for a core nap in over a week.  It still showed one interesting thing (in the 2 hours it captured) anyway, though... no REM sleep.  I'm sure I got some later, but it's fascinating that with a 4.5-hour core, it's all just light and deep sleep for the first 2 hours.  I deeply suspect this is my body getting too much sleep.  I *feel* like I'm getting too much -- see below for more on that, though.

Today I'm going to meet the Zeo people!  *Exciting!*

Hope you all are doing well.  I'm great, other than the part where I really want to stop taking the extra core sleep, but am not sure I can without getting sick.  Bah!  ;) 

PD

[x-post from my website]

Hrm, ok, I think I'm officially sick of sleeping 4.5 hours a night. 
It's been what, a week?  I don't like to do it longer than 2-3 days
usually.  It loosens up the naps (just like Everyman itself does; longer
cores = looser naps), but the "looseness" they're at with a 4.5 hour
core is looser than I like.  I start to have trouble sleeping
reliably...I've missed one of my naps (as in, I took it but just laid
there and couldn't sleep) every day for the last three.  If I was just
getting my 3-hour core, I'd sleep much better for the naps, so I'd have
more time and feel more rested.

On the other hand, there are still ridiculous amounts of
winter virus running around out there, and it seems like I know more
sick people than not-sick people.  I can tell I'm fighting it off (I
have a canker sore on my tongue, and I wake up with a stuffed nose --
and sneeze once, and then I'm fine; it's pretty funny actually) -- and I
really don't want to catch it.  Plus I have to walk around
outside -- I walked home in the rain, yesterday -- so I know I'm
stressing my immune-system anyway. 

Work, holidays, kungfu;
all these things demand that I not be sick.  And that extra hour and a
half of sleep (plus vitamins, plus extra warm clothes) is a reliable way of keeping the sick off; I know this.

But I'm sick of it, now.

Ah, conundra.

Well, while I figure that out (not sure what I'll do yet, if you can't tell), here's Vlog #11
for you.  It's a bit lengthy -- not as bad as Vlog #4, but not exactly
brief either.  But I had good material this time:  I effed a nap up
royally, and while I was not-sleeping I came up with a good list of all
sorts of things one can (!= should) eff up a nap.  So this is a How Not
To Do It Vlog. 

Funny side-note:  in the Vlog itself, I identify it as Vlog #12 (e'en while acknowledging that I'm not sure about that).  If it were a coin, this might make it a collector's item.  ;)

Hi, I'm interested in polyphasic sleep and I was looking for some info, as I'm thinking about trying it. I looking for some blogs and reports of people trying it but every one I found just stops with no further info, just like this post. Are you all dead? Everyone failed it and did not post here? I find it hard to find a report with some clousure, so I like to know how the people that started this group adaptation are doing right now.

I'm doing alright.

It's not as good as advertised, but it's still awesome.  I sleep closer to 5 hours a day on everyman than 4 hours.  I'm still sleepy from time to time, but this is probably no worse than a monophasic schedule.  It requires more consistancy but is much easier to be consistent with: a 3-4 hours core is much less likely to have schedule conflicts than the unreasonably long 8 hour coma that people normally use, and almost everything can be interrupted for half an hour to catch a nap.

I think most people that succeed will just pick this up and start moving on with life.  I would be interested in hearing how the others are doing.

Note: I don't reccomend starting with a 4 hour core.  You may not need it.  It is fairly stable for me, but I might be an outlier.  It would probably also make your adaptation much longer and crappier.

- Chad

Forget about your problems and buy levitra online right here and right now. Enjoy your life and get a great satisfaction from it. You won't be sorry.:)