Polyphasic sleep cycle 2.0 - Day 6

Progress at-a-glance

End of day 6*

• Mental alertness: 8
• Physical energy level: 9
• Quality of sleep: 7

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

Detailed comments

I can attribute today to providing me more insight into how I sleep. I can't say my sleeps went 'according to plan' today, but in their variations, they taught me many things.

I overslept my 12am nap today yet again. Why is it always the midnight scheduled nap where this happens?? Anyway, once again, my 3:50 alarm woke me up. Once again I skipped the 4am nap and my next scheduled nap is at 8am. During my waking hours, I typed up my sleep experimental progress for the previous day.

Today we went to the cinemas, and to wander the city for a bit before it begins. With that intention we caught the first bus for the day bound for Chofu. The earliest bus came at 8:30. While waiting for the bus to come, my scheduled naptime came around so I slept on the bus for half an hour. One thing I thought I'd make a special mention of, is sleep quality. Up until now, I haven't been able to fall asleep anywhere except in a proper bed, but on this particular bus trip, I think I managed to fall asleep. What was different about my sleeping style this time, was that I slept looking up, not hunched over. I think I'm not used to sleeping whilst sitting up, but giving my body the impression I'm lying down by facing upward when you sleep helps in falling asleep.

We spent the morning wandering about Chofu and doing a bit of shopping, with more free time than we expected because both the city municipal office and the bank were closed. When it drew near the time for my 12pm nap, we went to a restaurant. Before I ate, I slept at the restaurant, leaning against the wall. I experienced again the phenomenon of falling asleep easier if I slept facing up. I may have even fallen asleep for a short while resting against the wall today. That's a big achievement in the way of sleeping outdoors. And it'll come in handy just in time for tomorrow, when our family goes to Disneyland for a whole day.

After napping and lunch, we finally get to the highlight even of the day - watching the anime movie Hunter X Hunter: the last mission. It was an ok movie, but according to my Hunter X Hunter fanatic friend, it didn't do justice to the characters and to the battles in the anime. I still enjoyed it.

We managed to return to the dormitories in time for my 4pm nap. It was an ok sleep, after which I felt ok. After waking up, I did a bit of packing and then set off for my dad's place again. As mentioned previously, we will be going to Disneyland tomorrow to view the new years' illumination, and making use of our visit there to go on the rides. Since my dad's place is very convenient for commuting to Disneyland, I came over tonight.

I was supposed to take my next nap at 8, but that was when we started eating. We had seafood centering on fish and crab, and it was so tasty that before I knew it, we were all feasting on the food, including me. I ended up skipping my 8pm nap altogether.

Instead, we went to a local hot springs to loosen up before bed. I bathed before taking a sleep, and at 11pm, I had a 30 minute nap. When I was woken up, I was really sleepy, but still able to somewhat think straight.

Here ends my recount of my sixth day on my second attempt at the polyphasic sleep cycle. Soon, winter holidays will end and school semester will begin. I'm interested to see how that will work with my sleeping pattern.

Polyphasic sleep cycle 2.0 - Day 5

Progress at-a-glance

End of day 5*

• Mental alertness: 10
• Physical energy level: 10
• Quality of sleep: 8

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

Detailed comments

Five days into my so-called second attempt and eleven days since the day I first started sleeping polyphasically, it keeps on getting stranger. Over the past 48 hours, the amount of time I've spent in an actual asleep state and my perceived energy level just don't add up. And I mean it in a good imbalance sort of way - I feel a lot more active than my commonsense tells me I should be, in my current sleep deprived state.

My day was not off to a good start, from an experimental point of view. Overslept my 12am nap, all the way until my 3.50 alarm went off which was supposed to tell me to prepare for my 4am nap. That either means I fell asleep before I had time to set my countdown timer at 12am, or that I slept through my countdown timer and up until my 3.50 alarm went off. I am almost certain about having set the alarm before lying down, so I don't know if that meant I was actually tired enough for even an alarm to wake me up.

Whatever the actual cause may have been, consequently I ended up skipping the 4am nap, and waiting till 8am for my next one. The good news is that I didn't feel anywhere near as drowsy as the same time on the previous night, so although 4 hours of sleep is by no means much, it seems like it was enough to bring my brain alertness level back despite three consecutive naps over a span of 12 hours where I didn't reach REM sleep (or fall asleep at all, it appears). During my waking period between 4-8am, I typed up my sleep experiment progress report for yesterday, cleaned my room a bit, and did some reading.

After waking up from my 8am nap, I had breakfast (the usual rice, natto, yoghurt), then set out for day two of clothes shopping shortly after. I found lots of bargains today, at stores such as H&M, Appbank and my personal favourite, GU. All these stores put up reasonable prices, but because it was post-new year's sale, there were so many rock bottom cheap stuff. I didn't know it was possible for me to shop for so long, but the clothes I bought were worth every penny.

I took two naps while out shopping today. I didn't feel sleepy in neither the 12pm nor the 4pm nap, but because it was time to sleep, I lay down for 30 minutes. The former nap was taken in the resting area at BicQlo (Joint Bic Camera and UniQlo store), and the latter was in a karaoke room. After taking the former nap, we went to a restaurant for lunch and I ordered a raw seafood with rice dish (海鮮丼 かいせんどん). For the latter nap, my friend and I booked out a karaoke room for an hour and we both rested for half an hour before singing a bit.

When we returned to the dormitory, a bunch of us gathered to make pizzas for dinner. It was really delicious, but we started eating sometime around 7:00 so I couldn't eat more than two slices, in fear of messing up my 8pm nap. It turns out though, that I didn't feel a tiny bit sleepy by 8pm and even though I took a nap in my own bed, I didn't end up falling asleep. It seems so strange to me that two days in a row now, I didn't actually fall asleep in three nap sessions in a row (12pm, 4pm, 8pm) and yet throughout that period, my brain was perfectly clear and I felt like I had a lot of energy. When I tried studying after our pizza dinner today, for example, I had no problems concentrating on the task at hand. I voiced my concerns at the end of yesterday's experimental log that my sleep quality while outdoors will make or break the successfulness of this sleep pattern transition. But looking at how surprisingly energetic I am despite not having fallen completely asleep for so many successive naps, it seems the issue is a lot more subtle and multi-faceted than I'd anticipated. Clearly the brain gets a chance to rest if you just close your eyes for a couple of minutes during the day, whether you fall asleep or not. Well, I'll have plenty more chances over the next couple of days to continue experimenting with sleeping outdoors and gauging my alertness levels throughout the day.

One thing I neglected to mention yesterday was that as of my (delayed) 12pm nap (yesterday), I have reduced each countdown timer session from 35 minutes to 30 minutes. Looking at the changes that have taken place in my sleep patterns over the past few days, it looks like I can get more out of less sleep time now. I saw it as an appropriate time and occasion to make the five minute reduction yesterday at noon, that's all.

Polyphasic sleep cycle 2.0 - Day 4

Progress at-a-glance

End of day 4*

• Mental alertness: 8
• Physical energy level: 7
• Quality of sleep: 3

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

Detailed comments

So today was the first day spent all outdoors with friends since beginning experiment 2.0. It has meant that I've had to do my 12pm, 4pm and 8pm naps outside, away from my comfortable bed, and oftentimes while sitting up. It appears I have great difficulty sleeping anywhere except in my bed. As a result, my sleep quality suffered greatly today. In terms of as a sleep experience, today was horrible, but it has taught me more about my limits of sleeping while outdoors.

Both at 12am and 4am today, I fell asleep quickly but I felt really sleepy when I woke up from them both. I tried to do some blogging after waking up both times, but I nodded off so many times, and my brain was working so slowly, that it wasn't very productive at all. My typing also had significantly more mistakes than usual. It appears that the possible reason I struggled to wake up is because of sleep deficiency.

The rest of my sleep times today were in actuality different from my scheduled times. The main reason for the time disparity is because of circumstances.

So it begins with my 8am scheduled nap, which I took at 7:40am since a group of friends and I have decided to visit the emperor at the Imperial palace and our departure time was 8:20. Since I didn't have time to eat after I woke up, I ate my yoghurt, rice and natto breakfast before my 8am nap, at about 7:00am.

We expected there to be a line to see the emperor, but the number of people on the day far exceeded our expectations. We arrived at the entrance to the imperial palace at about 9:50am, and was ushered into a line by the coordinators. Our line spent a good 40 minutes waiting just standing there, waiting for lines of people before us to enter. Once inside, some members of our group needed to go to the toilet, and the queue for that was also really long. We waited close to another 40 minutes just for the bathroom. After having refreshed ourselves, it was a matter of following the crowd to where the emperor was. Although we set off this morning with the intention of coming to make the 10:10 session, we ended up watching it at 11:50am. A much longer delay than I'd anticipated. Also, there were so many people that it was a hard enough challenge catching a glimpse of the emperor himself. See if you can spot him in the photo.

Because the emperor's speech didn't finish till 12pm, I had no choice but to delay my sleep time, while looking for a good place to get some shut eye. It meant placing extra burden on my friends, who were kind enough to understand and to even rest with me for half an hour at the nearby park. But it was 1:40 before we found it, so I had my noon nap at 1:40pm. I brought an eyemask and earplugs out, which helped a lot. The quality wasn't too bad, but I don't think I actually fell asleep. My brain was more in a relaxed mode, while still awake. It at least served as rest for my brain and preparation for the next four hours of use. After the nap, at about 2:20, we had lunch, and I bought some yakisoba.

After that, we made our way to Shinjuku for some post-new year's shopping. I've heard many rumours of heavy discounts during this period, so we went to check it out for ourselves. Unfortunately that left me with no choice for my sleep than to find somewhere reasonably quiet probably in a building where we are doing the shopping. In the end we went to a café, and I tried to grab some shut eye while my friends patiently sat with me and passed the time having tea and cake. Because it took some time to get to the first shop we wanted to check out, and to get to the café there, we ended up sitting down and getting comfortable closer to 4:30om, which needless to say delayed my sleep once again. I'm pretty sure I didn't actually get to sleep once again. My brain felt rested, but I was far from getting much needed REM sleep. After my nap, we walked around heaps and did some serious clothes shopping. Didn't buy much though, expect for a 'fukubukuro

' (福袋 happy bag). These bags are the iconic sale item for this period of shopping, and it's the shop's way of getting rid of old stock quickly to make room for the new. They prepackage clothing sets, and by purchasing one of these prepackaged sets, you make heavy savings. The only catch is, the colour matchhup of the clothes varies from bag to bag, and you're not allowed to see inside before you purchase. I bought a five item clothes set containing a coat, two shirts, a jumper and a scarf, apparently costing over 40,000 yen originally, for 10,000 yen. The existence of bargains like this during this time is why this sale period is so lively.

After visiting numerous other stores, we decided to eat out for dinner before finishing up. My 12pm nap was spent at a park under a statue, my 4pm nap was spent hunched over a café table, and for my 8pm nap, we went inside the restaurant, I took a seat near the wall, and slept sitting up leaning against the wall with earplugs and eyemask for half an hour before eating my dinner. I'm afraid to say that for the third sleep in a row, I'm pretty sure I didn't actually fall asleep, and I had to settle for just resting my eyes and letting my brain simply relax for half an hour. What I found interesting though, was that during both my 4pm and 8pm naps, I was not looking at the time nor intentionally waiting for the half an hour to be up or anything, yet somehow knew when that half hour was up. I got up of my own accord after figuring I probably wasn't going to fall asleep and deciding I had enough of a break, and it turned out to be four minutes before my alarm went off. Similarly at 8pm, I decided to terminate my attempt to fall asleep 30 seconds before my 30 minute timer went off.

I ended up arriving home at about 11:30pm. I merely changed my clothes, got into bed, set my timer, and that wraps up my account of day 4 of experiment 2.0.

The greatest benefit I gained for my sleep experiment from today's outing is insight into how much of a social issue this sleep cycle presents itself to be. Once semester begins, and our timings for the day get fixed for us, I'd anticipate to have more regularity and better ability to stick to my sleep routine. But it's during holiday time, when there are no preset times to do any certain task, that makes it socially difficult to just quickly run off every four hours to take a nap, and especially so when you're out. I've always been the kind of person who finds it difficult to fall asleep anywhere except in a bed, and I have no better sleep quality than in my own bed back home. It looks like I'll either need to keep working on conditioning myself to sleep anywhere, or else this polyphasic sleep cycle regime will fall through each time we go out. Well, I'll be going out clothes shopping once again tomorrow, and to the movies the day after, and to Disneyland with family the day after that, so this will give me plenty of opportunity to conclusively establish whether I am able to adapt in such a way, or whether I really am incompatible with sleep conditions outside my own bed.

Polyphasic sleep cycle 2.0 - Day 3

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.

Polyphasic sleep cycle 2.0 - Day 2

Progress at-a-glance

End of day 2*

• Mental alertness: 9
• Physical energy level: 9
• Quality of sleep: 10

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

Detailed comments

Happy New Year! The year has passed so quickly! No doubt a lot of things have happened during that time for all of us. For me, not in the least of my changes is coming to Japan and gaining the ability to communicate in another language. This time next year, who knows, maybe I can say I've gained a new sleeping pattern. At this rate, it looks promising.

Today was a good day in terms of my sleep experiment (and also overall, but I'll stick to the topic in this blog post). I experienced REM sleep in multiple naps, and during my waking hours, was able to go about regular everyday tasks. I undeniably suffered a degree of fog of brain which affected mental processes somewhat, but only slightly. The following is a more detailed breakdown of the day.

For my 12am nap, I set my countdown timer for 35 minutes as planned, and fell asleep within five minutes. I experienced REM sleep, and was woken up by my alarm during a dream. Being woken up halfway through a dream might not necessarily be the best thing, but it means I reached REM sleep even though it was only a 30 minute nap, which is a promising sign at this stage of the experiment. I trust that as long as I'm able to stick to my sleeping schedule, my body will gradually get faster and faster at entering REM sleep, meaning a more efficient sleep. I had half a cup of rice with some seaweed-based condiment to eat. I spent my waking hours trying to do some kanji study. It was considerably difficult staying conscious, frequently nodding off. In my opinion, that had less to do with the nature of the activity than it had to do with how tired I actually was.

My 4am nap also went well, falling asleep within five minutes and experiencing REM sleep. I spent my waking time watching anime. I am really behind on One Piece… I wonder if I'll ever fully catch up, even with all this extra time.

My 8am nap was my best sleep of the day by far. I woke up 4.5 minutes before my 35 minute countdown alarm went off! Though I don't remember any dreaming, I suspect that I already completed a phase of REM sleep before waking up (thus not remembering my dream). Whether I did or not, I felt really refreshed when I woke up, and stayed that way till my next nap.

At around 11am, I felt an onset of tiredness. I'd been yawning occasionally all day, but all of a sudden, this strange nagging feeling welled up inside me telling me it's time to sleep. In the end I waited till my scheduled 12pm before actually going to bed, but I found it interesting how my body is showing signs of altering its sleep signalling system. I attribute the sensation to that and not solely to sleep deprivation, because it wasn't an ongoing feeling, and it wasn't something I'd felt much before. Maybe it's related to what Steve Pavlina, a successful transitioner to the Uberman sleep cycle, felt when he delayed his naps. The difference is, he waited till day 120+ to confirm such a phenomenon happening. I'm on day 2. For me, it's mere speculation yet.

After my 12pm nap, I had a bowl of rice with stir fry, very similar to yesterday's lunch. That's because I hadn't gone shopping for new material yet. But it's healthy and tasty, so I didn't mind.

From about 2pm till my 4pm nap time, I went shopping for the new year's party this evening. This was the first time I'd travelled so far away from my sleeping quarters, and it told me two things. One, I was able to function normally even on the second day of the experimental period to perform everyday tasks like shopping despite my predictions. Two, (with some timekeeping reminders from a friend I went shopping with,) I was able to complete a moderate sized task and still return to my room for my nap in time.

After waking up from my 4pm nap, preparations for the new year's party went under way. Most of the time between 4:30pm and 10pm was spent on preparation, assisting a friend with making the new year's cake, cooking rice and a mapo tofu dish, and decorating the designated room for our celebrations. I was able to sneak in my 8pm nap on time as scheduled, and return to making the cake without losing my rhythm. The preparations for the party didn't require very high intensity physically nor mentally, and I was able to deliver what was expected of the for the tasks at hand without a problem in my state.

After 10pm though, the party began. There was so much food! It was such a challenge resisting myself from gorging on the delicious food made by all the other foreign students. But I had to, since my 12am nap was so close. In the end, I ate primarily vegetarian friendly dishes, and of moderate quantities. Everything was so tasty!

We celebrated the transition into the new year at midnight with a toast, after which I quickly ducked out for my nap. The nap itself was of reasonable quality, not the best I've had, but I fell asleep within ten minutes. When I woke up, I experienced slight fog of brain, but again it didn't affect my interaction with others too much. However, as the party went on, I did notice that my energy levels couldn't match the energy level of the party the entire time. At about 1:30am, I was feeling pretty out of it, but I stuck it through till a bit past 2am, by which time the majority had left, and we cleaned up and disbanded. It was good being able to celebrate New Year's with the other foreign students. We will be at our respective separate universities from next year, so it was a valuable opportunity being able to celebrate new year's together.

I've crossed over into my third day on my second attempt at a polyphasic sleep cycle, and it's getting near my 4am nap. Happy new year's, everyone! For the moment, it's over and out.

Polyphasic sleep cycle 2.0 - Day 1

Progress at-a-glance

End of day 1*

• Mental alertness: 9
• Physical energy level: 10
• Quality of sleep: 10

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

Detailed comments

During my pre-experimental research stage, I read someone's comment somewhere if you adopt a polyphasic sleeping pattern, then return to a monophasic one, and at a later stage desire to recondition yourself into a polyphasic cycle, it becomes easier. Not enough research is available to give a definitive stance on this claim yet, but I may have experienced something of the sorts today. Comparing my first day on my first attempt at a polyphasic sleep cycle, and comparing my first day on my second attempt (the day just gone by), I fell asleep arguably faster this time round, my sleep quality was better, and I was more awake at after each respective nap. Of course, another plausible explanation is that I allowed myself more sleep per cycle this time round, which would obviously boost overall performance. So in the end, I don't know :P But I'll leave this speculation here for now, if ever it makes sense to refer back to it.

The 12am to 8am interval was pretty good. That may have been because I'm faring better on my second attempt, or it could be simply due to how I filled up my time, namely making Christmas cards.  Yes I know Christmas was five days ago. But I've been at my dad's place till yesterday, so I haven't given my friends anything yet, so better late than never. In addition, it helped me pass the time during the night, quite effectively it turns out, by keeping my brain active in a non-strenuous activity during my awake hours.

I spent the most part of the day grocery shopping, and also spent some time catching up with friends and doing some homework. I made sure to time everything so that I would be able to return to my room in time for my scheduled nap every time. Overall, my mental function was close to normal, but I think I sounded a bit sleepier than I usually do. I also yawned a number of times today, while performing not menial tasks.

My eating regime went well today, largely sticking to the schedule I drew up prior to beginning take two of my polyphasic sleep cycle. The one major difference is that I skipped the 12pm-4pm meal, simply because I was out shopping and didn't get back in time. But I had dinner at 6pm, and I cooked stir fry for the first time since coming to Japan in April. For my ingredients I used soy bean sprouts, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, celery, and something that looked like bok choi. Not your conventional ingredients, but it was delicious. In terms of nutritional value, I think I ate sufficiently today.

All in all, a good end to the first day of my second attempt at the Uberman sleep cycle.

Polyphasic sleep cycle 2.0 - Day 0

Tonight is my first night back in my own dorm room since I first started sleeping polyphasically. But my previous attempt has already, simply put, failed. And before I even reached the planned end date as well. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed.

So that's what brings me to my second attempt at trying to adapt to the Uberman sleep cycle. My rationale for wanting to do so, as well as details on what this polyphasic sleep thing is all about, refer to this article I wrote previously. In this post, I'll be outlining my strategy, adding and improving on my initial experimental setup, in the hopes that I will at the very least stick with the Uberman sleep cycle till the end of my designated experimental period. The rationale for my experimental design this time adds my own experience from my first attempt to the things I learned from reading about others' attempts.

Goal: to change from a monophasic 7 hour sleep cycle to a polyphasic sleep cycle sleeping for 30 minute sessions at regular four hour intervals, for a total of six times (i.e. three hours' sleep) per day.

Experimental timeframe: Ten days will be allowed for the sleep pattern transition period. After the initial ten day period, I will evaluate the viability of continuing the polyphasic sleep cycle based upon my state of mental and physical functionality in comparison to prior to starting the experiment.

Sleep schedule: I will be taking six lots of 35 minute naps each 24 hour period, evenly spaced out every four hours. These naps will begin at 12am, 4am, 7:50am*, 12pm, 4pm, and 8pm every day. I will be using a countdown timer, which I will set at 30 minutes before I lie down. I will strive to keep my actual start time within 10 minutes of the predetermined timings. My first sleep begins in five minutes.

During the initial transition period of ten days only, I will allow myself an additional nap time between the 12am and 4am, and between the 4am and 8am naps respectively where necessary, inspired by Steva Pavlina's attempt of the Uberman sleep cycle.

*Instead of 8am, I will be timing my sleep for 7:50am purely because of pragmatics. I have class every weekday beginning at 8:30, and it takes 5 minutes to walk to class from the dormitories, and I would rather not rock up late to class every day.

Diet: From this point on until at least the termination of my polyphasic sleep cycle regime, I will be on an almost vegetarian diet, though I can't promise I can stop eating meat altogether. This time, I will strive to maintain a more regulated diet so that my diet might have minimal impact on my quality of sleep. I've given an outline of what I plan on eating throughout the day by looking at each nap segment. I'm using my experience from my previous attempt as a reference point.

• 12am-4am: soon after waking up from my nap, eat half a cup of rice with soup, or the equivalent amount of calories. Consumption of fruit and vegetables (excluding starch heavy ones e.g. potatoes, corn) is unrestricted.
• 4am-8am: from past experience, I haven't needed to eat anything. But once semester begins, I will need to go to class immediately after waking up from my 8am nap, so I may consider moving some of the food I eat in the next segment into this one.
• 8am-12pm: one cup of rice with natto, and one cup of yoghurt with a proportionate amount of cereal. Eat fruit liberally.
• 12pm-4pm: one bowl of noodles/cup of rice with lots of vegetables, or the equivalent amount of food. A little bit of meat is okay, but if eating animal products, seafood is preferable.
• 4pm-8pm: one bowl of noodles/cup of rice, lots of vegetables, maybe a little bit of meat (seafood preferable).
• 8pm-12am: no significant food intake is planned. Snacking on fruit and vegetables is okay.

Overall, there will be a reduction in protein intake, but I hope to supplement that with soy products. I am especially fond of tofu and I can eat mountains of it. The diversity of tofu products helps. Also, I expect a sharp increase in vitamin intake, for the better. My caloric intake will probably decrease, considering how much I ate before, but there are long established studies demonstrating that underfed mice (and probably people too) live longer than overfed mice, and even those consuming a normal diet, so a reduced caloric intake is not of concern to me.

Predicted course of events: Shouldn't differ much from my first attempt. The first 24 hours, I will be slightly tired, but otherwise normal. The next 48-72 hours, I will be a walking zombie. The remaining time over the ten day experimental period, I will slowly transition from zombie-like status to regaining normal brain clarity.

Known significant events during the experimental period:

• Dec 30: experiment begin
• 31st Dec (night): news year's party at the dormitory
• 2-4th Jan: going shopping for post-NY heavy discounts
• 6th Jan-: winter semester begins

Detailed breakdown of experimental design:

     The Uberman sleep cycle is a method well known amongst the polyphasic sleepers community. I have chosen to try out this pattern of sleep for two main reasons, firstly because it appears to come with a truckload of advantages and only slight disadvantages, and secondly because it happens to fit into my weekly routine.

     If you want to read up on the advantages and disadvantages of the Uberman sleep cycle, just refer to my previous post or type the search term into Google, and you will get more than enough results so I won't bother adding to the vast amount of content already available. The deciding factor for me personally in choosing to undertake the Uberman cycle, is the distinct lack of 'core sleep'. From a theoretical perspective, I agree with the thinking that retaining a core block of sleep in your regime encourages oversleeping in the long run. From a practical perspective, it frees up more time to be awake doing stuff!

     A note on my modified sleep schedule. I've concluded that 25 minutes per nap is insufficient (at least for me) from my previous attempt, and have subsequently increasedthe amount of time allocated to each nap, as seen in my experimental setup. I've considered altering the timing of each sleep to try and get 30 minutes in an asleep state every nap, by predicting how long I will take to fall asleep, but I've decided that it is (1) too subjective and (2) too inaccurate, so I've opted for the more standardised fixed timing approach.

     As for compatibility with my usual daily routine, I worked it out like this. Until winter holidays end (Jan 5th), I will have a 100% flexible schedule (excluding one off events) which allows me freedom to make the sleep cycle transition. After winter semester begins, from Monday to Friday, I can sneak in a nap before class begins at 8:30, then during my 11:40-12:40 lunch break I can sneak in another nap, and after classes finish at 3:50, it's the next scheduled nap time. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Aikido training from 5:30-7:30pm, Wednesday there is a prayer meeting at Tama church from 6:00-7:00, none of which interfere with my 8pm nap. On Saturday, I'm at Aikido training from 10:30-12:00, so my noon nap time might be slightly delayed, but only by a bit. However, I do sacrifice having lunch together with the other Aikido members after practice, unless they are willing to wait half an hour, or unless I delay my sleep time. The morning service at Tama church is from 10:15-11:50 ish, which is compatible, but if I want to stay for lunch, I may need to sneak off somewhere for a quick 30 minute shut eye between end of the service and lunch time. There is also an afternoon service for younger people from 5:30-7pm, which fits into the schedule just fine. I'll just need to watch out for the occasional social event or Christian event and such, which may interfere with my 8pm sleep time. Though if I let people know in advance, disappearing from the gathering for half an hour if need be shouldn't be too big of a deal.

     Having already attempted this sleep cycle once, I still regard the biggest factor that will make or break this experiment to be self-discipline. Over the next ten days (and if I happen to succeed, then from that point onward) there will be various life events that will threaten to throw me off my planned routine. These can be planned events such as parties and outings, or it can be something more abstract such as getting tired of maintaining a healthy diet. Sometimes it will be plain insensible to stick uncompromisingly to my sleep regime. But other times, I need the discipline to not make excuses and to stick with it. Let's see how polyphasic sleep cycle experiment 2.0 works out.