Listening to your body

I've had a pretty good day, but must admit I'm tired right now. I slightly overslept a few of my naps today by hitting the snooze button, something I hadn't done previously. And while visiting a friend tonight I found myself fighting urges to nod off during the conversation. Her place was pretty warm, so that definitely didn't help. I've got a slight sore throat, and in general I've felt better before. I've gone three days/nights straight, and have gotten a lot done. I think I'll listen to my body and go sleep for the rest of the night and hit the reset button.

Wednesday Update

Everything went according to plan today--four naps and I'm still up at 3:30 am working on school projects. I've had a decently high level of focus, which is really excellent (doing some rather technical academic reading). I had two intramural sports games this evening, and I'm guessing the physical activity is going to result in some stiffness and exhaustion tomorrow, but I'll do my best to stick to the schedule. I'll sleep now until 7 and try to do this again tomorrow/today (Thursday).

A Loss then a Win

I ended up really missing my child Tuesday morning. I typically get him when he wakes in the morning, which works as a great alarm to make sure I'm up around 7. Consistent with my strategy I stayed up most of Monday night but went to bed around 3 to get a "few" core hours of sleep. With no child though, I ended up waking up at 9 instead of 7! Oops.

Last night I decided to correct this inherent weakness by setting two alarms and mentally preparing myself. It worked! I slept from 4-7 and managed to pull myself out of bed and get started on my day. Of course I wanted to sleep, but I told my body I'd take a nap in an hour and I ended up with a pretty good morning--much better than yesterday anyway. My goal today is to get 3-4 30 minute naps for a total sleep time of approx. 5 hours, and then to repeat this for the rest of the week.

Commitment Week

My wife and baby are visiting family this week, which makes it an ideal lab to perfect my sleeping schedule. Tonight is a lot harder than most of the nights I remember from last week, which may be a direct cause of sleeping at night this last weekend. Hard to judge how quickly my body adapts to a new regimen and what switching that regimen can do to my work/focus/enjoyment. I am doing it though, which I think is good enough for me. I'm going to try to stay awake another hour before reliquenshing my body to the bed sheets.

Weekend Challenges

This last weekend was just too much and I failed to keep a polyphasic sleep schedule. We had family come visit from Utah and did lots of walking, talking, and eating. These long (and fun) days did not easily facilitate napping, and even with an occasional nap I was exhausted at night and only put forth a cursory effort to get any work done. That's two weekends in a row where I was unsuccessful at keeping this sleep schedule, but I'm determined to go at it again this week. Even if this turns into a strictly weekday system, that's still a net gain on productive hours and I'd be happy--not as happy with a complete polyphasic sleep schedule, but still happy.

Qualified Failure

I guess I wasn't fully adapted yet after all. I should be careful about making statements like that, because this experiment is completely unpredictable. I slept through both alarms and Barbie ended up waking me up this morning at 7:30 when our child started crying. I really can't think of anything about yesterday that was so different from the rest of the week, which makes me think that last night was about the cumulative effects of reduced sleep over the week. I had more exercise this week than typical, so maybe that played a factor as well.

So I had three great nights before I crashed hard. Even if this was the most my body could handle, which I don't think is true, I'd be happy to continue this pattern for the indefinite future. I felt great during the first 3 days and nights, and only during the 4th night did my body really complain. That was three nights of additional productive work I otherwise wouldn't have had, which arguably came at a very low cost. I'm going to try inserting core sleep every night though, and see if I can get more than just 3 great consecutive nights.

Tired

I'm tired. Much more tired than I think I should be given I took my scheduled naps today (10, 2, 7). I felt fine during the day, but then did fall asleep in bed while my wife was reading to me just before midnight. Managed to kick myself out of bed and do a bit of reading, but my eyelids feel quite heavy and I'm going to take a short nap. From past experience, I know I need to set a backup alarm and keep the alarm itself across the room so I have to get up. I don't want to be miserable, but I really want to restrict myself to never sleep longer than 3 hours max again for a while.

I wonder if this extra fatigue would be different if I'd gotten 2-3 hours of core sleep at some point last night rather than only 30 minute naps. Is 2 hours of sleep the critical difference? I think for the next while I'll make sure I always have some core sleep at night and see if I have extreme fatigue moments like this one again and with what frequency.