Today is
day 7 of my experimental period. At
the beginning, I set myself a 10 day trial period to see how I would cope
with the Uberman sleep cycle. As recorded in my logs, I had various
achievements and failures, and gained some insights into sleep patterns and
diet and mental and physical performance. In particular is how alert I felt
over these six days compared to my expectations after reading the accounts of
various others on the net who attempted this sleep cycle before me. Something
that might sound slightly unusual in light of the above comments, is that I
will be terminating my first attempt at the Uberman cycle as of today.
It was
more out of necessity than out of my own will. Long story short, I messed up my
sleeping pattern again yesterday night, so rather a matter of continuing, I
have to start again.
What
happened last night, even I'm not sure in detail, but here's the gist of it.
After I wrote and published my previous
sleep log update at midnight yesterday, I went to have my usual 30 minute
nap, setting my countdown timer for 37 minutes. I'm positive that I started the
timer before I went to bed, but the next thing I knew, I was awoken by my
preset alarm, intended to notify me of my 8am nap… Some might doubt whether I
actually pressed start on the countdown timer before I went to bed at 12am,
being the reason why I failed to wake up after half an hour, but I'm pretty
sure that's not it. In any case, something even curioser is that my 4am nap
alarm failed to wake me up as well. In fact, I
just so happened to mention in a previous post how the one advantage of the
iPhone alarm system is that it doesn't stop ringing until you manually turn it
off. So I know that even I didn't start my countdown timer, my preset timer to
notify me that it was time for my 4am nap should have kept ringing till it woke
me up. But… it didn't. And that has remained a mystery till now. Was it a bug?
Is there something about how the iPhone alarm works that I'm not aware of? If
anyone has any explanation to offer, I'm keen to hear it. At the end of the
day, I unintentionally slept a whole eight hours last night, which makes my
attempt a failure.
On that
note, I'm going to take a break from this sleeping six times a day temporarily.
The reason is mainly pragmatic. Tomorrow will be Sunday again, and I'm going to
visit Shin-Funabashi Christ Church
for the first time. What's the big deal with that? Aside from the fact that the
service goes from 10:30 to 12:00 (which is when I need to be taking my nap by,
which will obviously not be happening if I'm still in the church service), the
pastor of the church is apparently a long-time friend of my pastor at the
church I'm regularly attending, Tama Church,
next to my university TUFS. I found out from him shortly before I came to my
dad's. Praise God for the way the Gospel links people together! So since I have to start the sleeping routine from ground zero again anyway, it can wait a
day so fellowship tomorrow doesn't get interrupted by my strict sleep routine.
Having
said that, I haven't given up on trying to establish a polyphasic sleep cycle
completely just yet. That's just not my style. There may be a day when I give
it up, because life circumstances force me to, or because of another clear
reason why. But just because I feel tired, or in this case, because of a
mistake on my part that led to the failure of my experiment, is not enough for
me to give up.
In fact,
in these short six days, I've learned a lot from the mistakes I've made along
the way. Apparently Coke was also an accidental creation, but is now regarded
as black gold by many. Similarly, my mistakes that have cumulated in the
termination of my first attempt at the Uberman sleep cycle, have served as a
stimulus for me to retry with renewed fervour. Of course, whether my life
circumstances make it practically feasible to do so is another question.
Reading the sleep logs of other bloggers who tried sleeping polyphasically
failed simply because their lifestyle wasn't forgiving enough to give them a
chance to do the transition. For the time being, I still have a bit of time
left before the new semester begins. While it's still holidays, I still have a
chance to get used to it, so I'm going for it. I can't live with myself if I
didn't keep trying until I could honestly say I followed my intended course and
legitimately failed. Specially not when progress in these past six days have
hinted at so much promise.
So it's a
goodbye from me for now, but not forever. Be on the lookout for my attempt at
the Uberman sleep cycle, take 2.
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