Polyphasic sleep cycle - Day 4

Progress at-a-glance

End of day 4*

• Mental alertness: 8.5
• Physical energy level: 8
• Quality of sleep: 7

*On this scale, 10 represents my original state prior to beginning this experiment.

Detailed comments

Merry Christmas! The only day in the year when the majority of the earth's population participates in a celebration that commemorates the difference that Jesus made in our lives (whether people realise or not). Though I know it's hot back in Oz, hope you had a good one. It's a cold one here, but sadly not a white one this year.

So I made it through the fourth day, and still adhering to the strict sleep routine. Most of the difficulties that I'm experiencing at this point in time are my own fault - namely, by putting myself in situations not conducive to sleeping, my sleep quality goes down, and subsequently does the sensation of being well rested, and consequently not feeling as well as I might have been by this point in my transition period otherwise. I guess I was right when I predicted that discipline would be the make or break factor prior to embarking upon this experiment. Here's a breakdown of how today went.

My midnight nap was decent, but I certainly felt fatigued during my awake hours. Same as yesterday, I kept the room lights on while I was awake to simulate daytime. I tried watching some TV programs, but I caught myself nodding off from time to time, which indicates poor attention span and my body wanting to sleep.

Due to my fault fidgeting around and adjusting stuff before going to bed before my 4am nap, my time spent asleep was reduced by a couple of minutes. I know I entered REM sleep again, because I can vividly remember my dream (nightmare?) about a freak typhoon. A bit miffed that my alarm woke me up literally seconds before the typhoon in the dream was about to hit me, after having lifted the walls of the convenience store I was sheltering in, because I wanted to know how being hit by a dream typhoon felt like. Oh well, I'll have many more opportunities, if this polyphasic sleep cycle works out.

I don't know if it was because of my reduced nap duration that I felt a lot more tired after waking up, or whether I'm at the stage in my transition period now where I'm supposed to feel that way irrespective of the reduced minutes or not, but I decided to add in another nap in between my scheduled 4am and 8am naps anyway, namely at 6am. As I mentioned before commencing this experiment, the purpose of these temporary additional naps is to mitigate legitimate sleep fatigue, while never sleeping more than 30 minutes and letting my body pass into deeper phases of sleep. I'm aware that implementing more nap times might run the risk of taking longer to adapt fully in the long run, but if it means mentally making it getting easier to get up after my naps, it's better than risking giving up because of a cumulative overwhelming urge to sleep. I thought I'd mention that I'm making more typing errors as I write this update, indicating that my brain activity is indeed subpar as of this update. *later update*: irrespective of my 6am nap though, I still ended up nodding off between that and my 8am nap.

Today I was faced for the first time with the dilemma of what to do if I approached my nap time while outside. After lunch today, we took a stroll to Funabashi, the closest major city to my dad's place, for some shopping. Bring it on, Japanese winter! This Aussie boy is now ready.

There was, however, one slight issue concerning my 4pm scheduled nap. We were still in the department store at 4pm! It takes 25 minutes to walk home, and not that much shorter by train, so going back home wasn't an option unless I compromise on the time of my nap, which I didn't want to do so early on if I could help it. So I settled for sleeping on the seats where you can take a rest during shopping. One major problem I've learned about doing such a thing, is that the seats I happened to choose were right next to the escalators. And escalators in Japanese department stores, are unbearably annoying, if you stay around them for too long. I tried to sleep through a prerecorded woman's voice perpetually repeating "Stand on the left hand side. Hold onto the rails. Watch your step." over and over and over and over again. I hadn't considered I would need earplugs today, so I didn't bring them with me. Needless to say, I didn't sleep too well. I did in fact have the feeling of being well rested after my 25 minutes of shut eye, but I can't say I actually fell asleep for much of it. It would definitely have been better if I'd chosen a quieter place, or at least brought earplugs. At the end of the day, I'm glad I got to experience what it would be like if I found myself in such a scenario, so early into my sleep routine. In Japan at least, it doesn't seem other people mind much at all if they find you asleep sitting upright in a public place. Though how much this poor quality nap added to my sleep deprivation, only time will tell.

Other than that, everything else went according to plan. In terms of food today, in the wee hours of the morning, I lightly snacked on some cookies. To keep breakfast light, I had a small bowl of rice with natto and supplemented it with mandarins and a banana. After my 12pm nap, I had homemade ramen noodles and some bread. Dinner was the extravagant meal today, comprising about half a kilo of crab (Jap: ズワイガニ) with a glass of wine and followed by some rice and vegetable soup. Hey, it's Christmas :p I finished eating over an hour prior to my 8pm nap, and it didn't seem to make it any more difficult getting up, so it seems ok to eat that much as long as I leave sufficient digestion time afterwards.