Finding My Rhythm: Adjusting Sleep Patterns

Summary: I'm a committed polyphasic sleeper. I take several naps during the day and limited core blocks of sleep at night, striving to keep total hours of sleep under 5. Failing to completely execute the Uberman was discouraging/depressing. However, other schedules such as the Everyman are currently more feasible for me. Relying on naps to shorten total sleep hours as a general strategy seems to be working.

I'm still following a polyphasic sleep pattern, albeit modified from my original intention. I wanted to jump straight to the intense Uberman schedule, sleeping only 30 minutes every 4 hours (3 hours total sleep). I found that I could successfully pull this off for about 2 days, and the third day would physically crash at night. I was disappointed, mostly because I felt the majority of my naps were already generating REM sleep and that I should be able to make it through the night. Yet however I structured my day, diet, and exercise, it seemed that I was unable to reach a coherent state between 2-6 am on the third day.

More than anything I felt disappointed in myself. I would walk around our outdoor parking lot in the chilly night air to try and wake up, take showers, walk the hallway, and still could not focus on a single thing. I would fall asleep playing internet games. I either lacked the internal motivation I thought I had, or faced a somber truth that self sleep deprivation is difficult to enforce!

I really thought I could do it, and failing to consistently stick to the Uberman became semi-depressing. I never returned to a monophasic sleep schedule, but would end up sleeping in longer chunks of time at night than planned (between 2 and 5 hours). My wife can attest that the days after I hit this "wall" I was none too pleasant. I essentially thought I could force my body to do anything my mind set its will to do, and am still grappling with the realization that this might not be true. I don't ever anticipate forcing myself to not eat or drink water, which would just be stupid, but given a scientific explanation for why this sleep schedule should be feasible, I'm still a little discouraged that I didn't reach it.

Polyphasic sleep encompasses more than just the Uberman schedule, and when I consciously decided to allow myself several core hours of sleep at night (conceding the Uberman just not currently feasible for me) things have gone much better. Variations of this type are called the Everyman. My wife was concerned that adding large chunks of sleep would undo all the positive ground I made in the Uberman, and I admit I was also concerned about losing progress at reducing overall hours of sleep. Yet I find that I can still benefit from 20 minute naps and awake both refreshed and surprised by how little time has passed. I'm currently averaging 3-4 hours of sleep at night and 3 daytime naps, so my total sleep is about 5 hours, well under my previous 8-9 hours! And most important is several hours of uninterrupted work at night, which decidedly increases my daily productivity.

For two nights coinciding with a boy scout camping trip I did briefly return to the world of monophasic sleep. Sharing a tent with a fellow leader and having limited sources of heat and light make staying up most of the night rather ridiculous. And the adventures of the trip itself were so exhausting (physical activity and sun exposure) that I didn't even try to stay awake the next night. There was a little difficulty getting back to polyphasic sleep, and I wouldn't recommend switching back and forth between the two often, but I seem to have survived.

I'll do my best to more consistently record my successes and failures. I've been reluctant to share the failures, because I'm the type to guy that feels he never fails. That of course is not true, it's just the image I have of myself and like to portray to others. I think a policy of honesty however will make this blog much more useful to me and realistic to others.