Reset Button: Day 1

Starting something new and sticking with it takes a lot of effort. Especially when it involves sleep. The power of the pillow seems to grow stronger each year of my life (having a kid didn't help), but I'm determined to show my pillow who's master. This was a big part of my decision to drastically change to a polyphasic sleep schedule. I just don't want to sleep so much each day, and feel that especially now (young family, healthy, student) is a great time to be super productive. It's probably not far from the truth that what I accomplish in the next two years will determine the trajectory of my entire career (and possibly entire life).

Putting that in perspective provides a lot of motivation. But last night I wasn't thinking of any of that, just how dang tired I was walking up and down the hallway with eyes half shut. So I gave up around 1:30 am and crawled into bed with my wife for the night (she thought she was dreaming). I wish I knew why I never quite woke up from that 1 am nap (it was not refreshing at all). My mom would probably say it's because I'm doing something crazy and unnatural, but I tend to blame it on something more concrete, like possibly my diet or lack of exercise. Anyway, I woke up feeling a bit dejected and guilty, and took some time to think about why I want to do this and how badly I want it. Conclusion: I want it real bad.

So I hit the reset button and am trying to remove all the mental roadblocks that may prevent me from reaching this goal. I all in. I'm trying to brace myself for the sleepless nights so I can handle it better when I hit that wall. Tonight has started out a lot better that I anticipated (my only nap today was at 9 pm) and I got several hours of work done on my current research project. I'm guessing I'll have some nights (and even days) this week that are completely unproductive, but hope I have the fortitude to pay the cost to reach the gold at the end of this rainbow.

Polyphasic Sleep

What would you do with an extra 30+ hours each week? Have you ever wondered why we need so much sleep and wished you could do so much more with less sleep? In the past I've tried getting by on less than 7-8 hours of sleep at night, but never found it sustainable. Sure there were crazy all-nighters during finals week, but these were indefinitely followed by crashes and 10+ hours of sleep. I think I finally found a plausible alternative, and am in the midst of a freakin' crazy experiment.

I'm not doing anything illegal. In fact, no outside substance is involved at all. The experiment involves training my body to immediately go into REM sleep (considered the most important of the 5 sleep phases) and bypass the other phases. This results in drastically shorter but more frequent sleep periods. How drastic? I'm currently sleeping for 30 minutes every 4 hours, or about 3 hours of total sleep in a 24 hour period.

I didn't come up with this on my own, but learned of it from a friend here in Chicago. Scientifically it's called polyphasic sleep and this particular version is know as the Uberman Sleep Schedule (USS). Check out this blog for a detailed log of one man's experiment. In a similar spirit, and at my wife's request, I'm going to track my own experience here.

Why am I doing this? Partly because it sounds like a fun experiment. Can I really survive on only 3 hours of daily sleep? How functional will I be? The main reason though is school. My school/personal/family balance has shortchanged the school part lately, and I'd really like to finish my degree on time and get a job sooner rather than later. I anticipate doing a lot of studying, academic reading and research, and data analysis with this extra time.