Progress at-a-glance
End of
day 3*
- Mental alertness: 9
- Physical energy level: 9
- Quality of sleep: 9
*On this
scale, 10 represents my original state prior to beginning this experiment.
Detailed comments
Today was
comprised of big progress, and big mistakes, at the same time. Having said
that, however, all of my sleeps today pointed toward one clear direction - as
can be seen from my progress at-a-glance figures today, my attempts at
adjusting to a polyphasic sleep cycle appear to be working! And as always, I
learned valuable lessons from the mistakes I made - I just wonder whether this
was a lesson where I needed to make a mistake in order to learn it.
I already
recounted my 12am sleep in yesterday's
sleep log, and published it before taking my scheduled 4am nap. As for the
4pm nap itself, I once again experienced REM sleep, and woke up feeling rested.
The remainder of the night went well. I occupied my time by scanning all my
paper documents into digital form and putting them in cloud storage. Boy was
there a lot of paper processed today, as you can see in the photo below. In
between naps, eating and other small things, I was digital filing until 3pm
today. So in between I had my 8am and 12pm naps, which were both very pleasant
and refreshing. As much as filing away half a kilo of paper feels.
One
particular success worth mentioning today was my 12pm nap. I set my countdown
timer for 35 minutes and lay down as usual, but this time, I woke up with 15
minutes on the clock still remaining. That meant I had only been asleep 20
minutes, but I felt rested and as good as I could be. This to me is huge
progress. This is the third day since I began attempt two of my polyphasic
sleep cycle experiment, which is the period I predicted I would suffer greatest
from sleep deprivation, and yet I seem to be faring the best I've ever been in
the ten or so days since the start of my first attempt. This makes some sense,
because even though officially I've made a distinction between my first and
second attempts due to failures in the execution of my experimental setup, in
reality, I've been giving my body time to transition to the same polyphasic
sleep cycle ever since the very first day, ten days ago. So in an unofficial
sense, this sleep log entry becomes my day 10 reevaluation post. Although my
official decision on whether to continue or not shall wait till the tenth day
of my second attempt, here is a glimpse of how I view progress so far.
First, to
finish off the day's sleep log. 8am was a good nap, 12pm was a better nap, but
sadly, the rest of the day was downhill from there. I overslept my 4pm nap,
because of another mistake I made. This time, my mistake was the product of
laxness in the eating schedule.
I
mentioned above already how I was digitalising my paper documents and filing
them into cloud storage for a good part of the waking part of today, all the
way till 3pm. It wasn't as if I didn't feel hungry during the filing process,
but I waited for a bit, intending to eat right after I'd finished my digital
filing. The issue was, as I mentioned earlier, I completed my digitalising just
before 3pm, a mere one hour till my next nap. By that stage I was feeling
hungry enough to start questioning whether I could last till after the nap
without eating. I was already aware, through
a prior experience, the dangers of oversleeping if I eat too much before
sleeping, but eating too much vegetables, I was hoping that it wouldn't affect
my sleep. I was really hungry o before my nap, I made stir fry, and I ate it
along with the leftover Mapo tofu I made for last night's party. But
ultimately, it did affect my ability to wake up. When I lay down, my stomach
felt considerably heavier than normal. I think I slept straight through my 4:35
alarm, and kept sleeping with the alarm ringing in the background until I came
to around 5pm. Sleeping soundly with the alarm continually ringing around me
was a power I didn't know I possessed, but that's just how much influence my
pre-nap meal seems to have had. Learning from this experience, I will never eat
such a substantial meal so close to a naptime ever again.
But one
point I find of particular interest concerning this experience, was how
relatively surprisingly short I was asleep for. Eating too much and
oversleeping is a problem I've suffered already, but the previous time, I slept
for a continuous five hours straight . That indicates just how much sleep my
body needed back at that time after eating. Of course, the constituents of the
dishes is considerably different so the influence on my sleep should also vary,
but oversleeping by a mere half an hour is not so bad. A more crucial factor is
how my body perceived the necessity of sleep. It appears that the sleep
duration that my body deems necessary is rapidly coming down, as it learns how
the next nap is not too far away.
Maybe it
was a flow-on consequence of having slept a full hour, but in my 8pm nap, I
wasn't able to fall asleep within the 35 minute duration. I still felt fine
after it though, until about 11pm when I felt the onset of tiredness. I stuck
it out till 12am, though.
In terms
of as an overall evaluation of progress, at this stage in time, the increase in
frequency of REM sleep and reduction in time required to fall asleep as well as
time spent asleep is promising. Something that has been surprising is how
un-sleep deprived I've been going about daily things, since I expected a more
difficult intermediate phase. I've learned a lot, and am still learning, about
the impact of diet on sleep quality. There are many promising breakthroughs in
progress, but I'm still experiencing inconsistency in sleep quality, sometimes
sleeping 20 minutes and waking up refreshed, other times lying in bed for 35
minutes and still not being able to fall asleep. I think that calming down your
thoughts before you go to bed is important for falling asleep quickly. Though
at this stage in time, how I can guarantee that, especially if I need to sleep
while not at home, I haven't quite figured out yet.
The
biggest obstacle to the continuation of this sleep cycle in the long term, as
far as I can see, will not be an intrinsic challenge, i.e. the sleep cycle
itself is not only possible, but even comes with many advantages. The most
difficult thing is living a four hourly sleep routine lifestyle in a
monophasically sleeping society. If I continue this polyphasic sleep cycle for
long enough, think there will come a day when I can no longer continue simply
because of societal limitations in sleeping every 4 hours. For the foreseeable
future though, the timetable for the semester appears to accommodate it well
enough.
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