Polyphasic Sleep Log – Day 1. I’ve completed my first day on the polyphasic sleep schedule, napping for 20-30 minutes every four hours. It’s been almost 36 hours since I last awoke from a full night’s sleep. “Day” is a relative term on this schedule, since the daytime sleeping schedule is no different than the nighttime one. I’m not sure whether to think of today as “day 1″ (the day after my first night of sleep deprivation) or “day 2″ (the second day after I officially started this sleeping pattern).
I opted to call it “day 1.” No serious problems thus far aside from some fatigue, lower concentration, and occasional sleepiness. I’ve stuck to the plan, always beginning my sleep periods within 10 minutes of the target times and never oversleeping. Yesterday seemed tougher than it should have been, as I experienced some tiredness even though I was initially getting more sleep than usual by beginning the nap schedule after having a regular night’s sleep. Polyphasic Sleep Long-Term Consequences | Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog. One long-term consequence of the polyphasic sleep experiments I did in 2005-2006 is that I still retain the ability to fall asleep very quickly.
Enough time has passed that I suspect this is a permanent change. These days when I decide to go to sleep, I can typically fall asleep within 30 seconds or less. Sometimes I can be asleep within just 2-3 seconds. As Rachelle can attest, this is no exaggeration. This isn’t narcolepsy. This is true for falling asleep at night as well as for taking naps if I so desire. On many occasions I’ve been startled awake while Rachelle and I were lying in bed together. This sometimes happens 2-3 times in a row. When this happens a few times in a row, sometimes I’ll re-enter the same dream and continue where I left off, but usually I’ll enter a different dream that doesn’t seem related to the first dream.
This has happened more times that I can count. Normally I start dreaming immediately as I’m falling asleep, sometimes even before I’m asleep. How to Become an Early Riser. It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom. – Aristotle Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon. But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life.
On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticed a significant feeling of well-being. . … and the next morning, I got up just before noon. Hmmm… I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier.
How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off. When your alarm wakes you up in the morning, is it hard for you to get up right away? Do you find yourself hitting the snooze button and going right back to sleep? That used to be part of my daily awakening ritual too. When my alarm would blare its infernal noise, I’d turn the damned thing off right away. Then under the cloak of that early morning brain fog, I’d slowly ponder whether or not I should actually get up: It’s nice and warm under the covers. Oh, I really should get up now. I should go to the gym. Maybe I’m trying to get myself up too early. I don’t have to get up right this minute, do I? I’ll bet my wife is toasty warm right now. . [ Scootch… scootch… Zzzzzzzz ] Two hours later… Me: What time is it? Wife: Why do you keep setting your alarm if you aren’t going to get up when it goes off?
Me: Oh, did you think that was my wake-up alarm? OK, so I wasn’t really intending for it to be a snuggle alarm. Fast forward to present day… So how do you go from scenario one to scenario two? How to Become an Early Riser – Part II. Last Monday’s post How to Become an Early Riser obviously struck a chord with many people. That post has generated more links than I can count, sending more new traffic to this site than any other post or article I’ve written. And the traffic logs indicate that the surge was decentralized (not attributable to a mention in any one major source). You can get an idea of what that post did for StevePavlina.com’s traffic at Alexa (note the big spike at the end of May 2005).
Alexa isn’t very accurate, but it’s good enough for noting general trends. Last Monday I did a Google search on “how to become an early riser” (in quotes). OK, so this was an instalanche. Since this appears to be a topic of interest, even though I don’t fully understand why, I figured I’d do a follow up post to add some more detail. First, on the subject of going to bed when you’re sleepy… to do this correctly requires a mixture of awareness and common sense. But this isn’t what I meant by noticing when you’re sleepy. Alternate Sleep Cycles. Most people only think that there is one way to sleep: Go to sleep at night for 6-8 hours, wake up in the morning, stay awake for 16-18 hours and then repeat. Actually, that is called a monophasic sleep cycle, which is only 1 of 5 major sleep cycles that have been used successfully throughout history.
The other 4 are considered polyphasic sleep cycles due to the multiple number of naps they require each day. How is this possible? How is this healthy? Well the most important of every sleep cycle is the Stage 4 REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, which has been shown to provide the benefits of sleep to the brain above all other stages of sleep. This way, you still get the benefits of 8 hours of sleep without wasting all of the time it takes to get to REM cycles, resulting in a much more efficient sleep cycle. Uberman Cycle: 20 to 30 minute naps every 4 hours, resulting in 6 naps each day. Everyman Cycle: One longer “core” nap that is supplemented with several 20-30 minute naps. Dymaxion Cycle: