Everyman Polyphasic Sleep- Day Zero

Not to put to fine a point on it, this polyphasic sleeping thing is, well, tough. It has to be expected - sleep deprivation is a funny world at the best of times, and of course is sometimes used for interrogation purposes; I hesitate to call it torture since that word gets bandied around today to describe things which are not in fact torture.

However, not too many people interrogate themselves, and herein lies the fundamental problem - it requires a monumental dose of self-discipline, again something rarer than the proverbial rocking horse shit in today's world, and I am no exception.

The nearest experience to this which I can think of goes back some 10 years or so when I was doing selection and training with the Royal Marines; sleep deprivation was quite a big part of life, especially in the field, and I remember being introduced to the experience of falling asleep whilst standing up!

At least I get to sleep indoors and don't get cold with this experiment.

After much deliberation and changing of plans I've decided to build up to things 'gradually' instead of leaping straight in, in the way a couch potato doesn't go straight into their first full marathon.

 This week will follow the 'everyman' schedule. This involves taking a core sleep of a few hours, with shorter naps spaced out the rest of the time, instead of just short naps at equal intervals. The schedule for this week is: 3 hour core sleep 00.00-03.00, with three half hour naps at 07.00, 11.00 and 19.00. This gives a relatively long drag during the day but then I have to be places some of that time anyway; this way the schedule doesn't have to be tinkered with to accomodate other commitments, which I think was part of where I was going wrong before - there was no consistency.

Next week the core sleep will be cut down by about half an hour, but one day at a time. The intention is to update on this daily, which may prove a motivating factor for staying on schedule this time.
By the by a useful resource for anyone considering this (though I wonder who in their right mind actually would) is available here.

Polyphasic Sleep - Proovime Uuesti..x2..

This represents a concerted effort here at the PMC to try polyphasic sleeping. Polyphasic sleeping, for those who don't know, involves, as its name suggests, sleeping in several phases. Whereas most of us sleep in one huge block, getting several REM cycles into the bargain, polyphasic sleeping cuts that up into chunks. The beginnings of this can be seen in the Spanish-style siesta, which might be called 'Bi-phasic', ie a chunk of core sleep very late at night/early in the morning followed by a couple of hours in the mid-afternoon. Furthermore infants, cats, and old people, exhibit polyphasic sleep patterns whether they realise it or not.

However, and this is the real kicker, just because you sleep seven or eight hours in one go at night, this doesn't mean that you should simply cut that up into, say, four chunks of two hour sleep. This is because the eight hour hibernation many of us take, or try to take (in practice it tends to be shorter during the week and longer at the weekends of course) is very inefficient and, it is argued, can leave us feeling strangely drowsy through much of the day. This certainly is the case for us at the PMC, which is why you never see a post from us in the mid-afternoon!

But with polyphasic, the phases are much shorter, as short as 15 minutes to half an hour! There are different schemes, and some of them have even been given names, most notably 'Dymaxion', named after its proponent, Buckminster Fuller (try saying that quickly!) the father of Geodesics, which involves 30 minute naps every 6 hours, and the aptly named 'Uberman', which would presumably be what you need to be to complete it, which involves 15 mins every four house. They say this latter pattern was also followed by Leonardo da Vinci though I don't think there's any real evidence for this.

We are going to try the Dymaxion, naturally, because it's the hardest! But there is another reason - the naps should be spaced out evenly (eg at 12.00, 16.00, 20.00, 00.00. 04.00 and 08.00 if you were following the Uberman schedule) but, like many people, our schedule simply doesn't permit this - presumably it wouldn't go down to well if we told an English class to get on with a 15 minute exercise whilst we went and had a lie down in the corner.

The Dymaxion schedule, however, just about fits, except in a couple of cases, where we'd have to bring the naps forward by an hour or two. Of more concern is what to do in the wee hours when the whole world is asleep. Fortunately there is some good advice at this blog from someone who actually partook in a polyphasic sleep schedule successfully for some months (most people fizzle out within days). Just to keep it in perspective, Mr. Pavlina was already an exceptionally self-disciplined man, rising every day at about 5a.m. including weekends (!), was a non-smoker, non-drinker of not only alcohol but even coffee, a vegan (he opines that eating products with animal hormones in them can interfere with the body's cycles too, although we're largely vegan here at the PMC too), and had an understanding wife who made things easy(er) for him. Furthermore he was based in Las Vegas where I assume they have year round sunshine, quite different from 57' N or wherever Tallinn is. On the other hand now the days are getting longer here, the white nights might be conducive for the experiment, I know they tended to wreak havoc with our body clock in any case.

In case anyone is interested in what the hell we'd try this for anyway, apart from the relish of a challenge, the main benefits we can see are a huge increase in the amount of time available to one. If you're sleeping 8 hours a night, and you go from that to the Dymaxion schedule (which totals only 2 hours in a 24 period, the Uberman schedule even less at 1 1/2 hours) you've gained approximately 6 hours in a 24 hour period - that translates as 42 hours PER WEEK, like having an extra working week every week!.

Of course you have to offset this against the fact that for much of that time you're likely to resemble a particularly caned, lethargic zombie, but they say that the period of adaptation can be as little as one week, after which levels of alertness are actually higher than before!

The experiment is going to be undergone in the absence of caffeine, except in a real emergency - it may give a short high but will be followed by a crash from which your half hour nap is likely to turn into a 10 hour one, something which could have pretty dire consequences if it happened on a working day. But a can of redbull is the fridge just in case. Alcohol is also an obvious no-no, at least for this week, and we quit smoking some weeks ago. It might be worth eating small meals (but more of them) since a large meal sends one to sleep pretty sharply, one of the prime appeals of sumo training in fact.

Sleep deprivation is a little understood area. It is, it has to be said, a particularly effective form of torture, and the super-human self discipline required, particularly after the first 24 hours or so, may just prove too much for little old us, but it is hoped that regularly posting updates here will act as some kind of incentive.

Just as a parting shot, the subject header for those not conversant in Estonian means 'let's try again' - this is because we really know what we're letting ourselves in for, having tried this before (at Christmas time, when we get about six hours of daylight here) and spectacularly failed, due mainly to the factors mentioned before - lack of discipline, caffeine bingeing, alcohol, overeating (well, it was Christmas) and all-out fatigue, so the prognosis is not good.

But once more into the breach and all that, off for the midday nap right now; the next time we post we'll have had something like 2 hours kip in total!!

Just as a footnote, as Steve Pavlina himself decided, the first day is actually Day -1, since we had a full night's sleep (and then some) last night, so Day 1 will actually be Friday 15th April, although day and night are likely to become relative concepts from hereon in!