one-month reflection

Some of these thoughts duplicate the information in my ‘two-week reflection‘ post.

As I said then, I plan to continue this method of sleep indefinitely.

I love the extra time. Some of the time I use for chores, and some is more personal time I use creatively. The creative personal time has obvious appeal, but completing chore responsibilities during the dark hours gives me much more flexibility with Trace and the kids during the day hours. Having both chore and personal-creative time means that I feel much more open to going with the flow of an interaction with Trace or the kids after a long day at work.

I love that I’m not ‘wiped-out’ at the end of a long work-day. For much of the past year, having any personal time during the week usually meant staying up late and then being exhausted later the next evening.

This experiment has been a pretty unqualified success to date. Websites and mailing lists are replete with folk who speak of this being much harder than they envisioned, and falling off the plan due to a cold or a life-obligation or just regular oversleeping. Below are some of the factors, in no particular order, that I think have helped me make this transition so easily. (Some of these can be practiced before trying polyphasic sleeping.) To put the list of these factors in context, my current schedule is a 4.5 hour core-sleep nap from about 10 or 11pm to 2:30 or 3:30am, and 20-minute naps at target times of 7am, 11am, 3pm, and 7pm. If I start the core-sleep particularly early I may throw in a 3am nap as well.

• Consider a version of polyphasic sleeping with a chunk of core-sleep, at least to get started. Steve Pavlina is and always will be our hero for his account of going pure-polyphasic, but for me, given a more traditional work-schedule, a working partner, teenagers, and my reluctance to take a two-week vacation for the transition, starting with a core-sleep of 4.5 hours was *perfect*.

• Consider making flexibility a priority instead of rigidity in your approach to your schedule. This relates somewhat to the above. I never skip naps, but I’m completely fine about starting a nap any time within an hour of the target time, which gives me a two-hour window to start the nap. Similarly, to stay connected with my partner, I try to go to bed roughly around the time she does, which varies with life-obligations and flows. Being able to stay up a bit late to see a movie with my partner or the kids is a nice benefit of my polyphasic schedule, instead of rigidly removing myself from a nice family activity. (Note: many folk who have succeeded in implementing a ‘pure’ 20-minutes/6-times-a-day schedule speak of the importance of firmly adhering to a strict schedule. Not having that experience, I don’t mean to undermine that advice; my goals in my approach are simply different.) Flexibility (and working around others’ schedules, noted below) has also alleviated most of my partner’s numerous concerns at the start of this experiment.

• Learn to ‘roll out of bed’. When your alarm goes off, don’t think. Roll right out of bed and stumble to the other room where you’ve put your clothes. Tell yourself ahead of time that you’ll make any decisions about going back to bed and sleeping longer *after* you’ve gotten out of bed and are in the other room. If you regularly spend even 10 seconds after you’ve shut off the alarm mulling over your schedule for the day, you’ve lost, for you’ll easily be able to convince yourself that it’s ok to sleep just a bit longer.

• Organize your clothes and project stuff in another room the night before. Don’t allow yourself the excuse to stay in bed of not wanting to waken your partner as you bumble around or turn on lights to find clothes. A few organizational experts have written that folk who are successful at difficult tasks don’t necessarily have lots more will-power than others, they’re just better at using willpower smartly. So use your will-power to organize clothes and project stuff before your partner goes to bed.

• Don’t get hung up on falling asleep during naps. They may be mostly like mediation sessions at the beginning. Over time sleep will come when your body needs it. I read a suggestion-post a while back that matched my experience of meditating in a way that invites sleep. I’ll feel an early bodily sleep-signal and sort of welcome it.

• Learn to nap sitting up. I call my weekend naps where I happen to be home and can stretch out in bed for a nap my lux-naps for the luxury of the comfort. But I think much of my success is due to the flexibility of napping positions and places. My two work-day naps are in a little cubicle with my legs stretched out and propped up on a desk, sitting up in an office-chair. It’s actually reasonably comfortable. And I’ve taken a *bunch* of naps in the car — not as comfortable but adequate. I find that reclining the driver’s seat only a little to be better than reclining it a lot.

• Try to work around others’ schedules. Given the flexibility in the target-times, and being able to (usually) nap in the car, if I have to meet my partner at a restaurant or someone’s house for dinner, I’ll often drive to a parking lot near the place, take my nap, and then head inside. That maximises the window before the next nap, and minimizes others feeling like they have to accommodate some ‘weird’ schedule, which allows them to be curious and supportive.

• Develop an alarm system that works for you. For years I’ve loved the simplicity of the default Palm alarm. It emits a two-tone sound only three times, then stops for 5 minutes, then repeats. I appreciate that it’s not incessant and obnoxious, and 99% of the time awaken to it fine. Although I’ve continued to use my Palm and that default alarm sound, it’s a *lot* simpler for me to use Palm software that acts as a timer than setting a traditional alarm time. That’s because in the software I use, I can do a one-time set-up of two time-blocks (20 minutes and 4.5hrs for me), and then easily start the countdown timer, circumventing all the calculation of time involved in setting a traditional alarm. I also use a more obnoxious and incessant backup alarm — my Timex watch’s countdown timer during the day naps, and another countdown timer when taking bed-naps or the core-sleep. I set the obnoxious alarms to go off a minute after the nice Palm alarm, and they’ve only gone off 3 times in the month I’ve been doing this.

• Do some planning ahead of time, making a list of things you’d like to do with the extra time. Learn how to play the piano (well, electronic keyboard with headphones)! Put up that website you’ve dreamed about! If you can’t come up with things about which you feel some passion, you’ll likely not stick with this very long. Add to the list more boring non-sedentary tasks you could do even if sleepy. Chore tasks will *really* be useful to do during adaptation phases when you’re sleepy but the next nap is a ways off. Doing chore tasks also has the wonderful benefit of gaining some nice familial points and offsetting possible partner concerns about the experiment.

• Consider blogging your account, and telling some close friends up-front about your one-month experiment. I decided to blog this account because I found Steve Pavlina’s so inspiring and helpful, but it has had the added benefit of keeping me accountable. Since starting this blog, I’ve read accounts of others that have noted the motivational benefit of public accountability. Also, by considering this a one-month experiment — even if you internally intend it to be longer — you’ll be more likely to overcome humps you may encounter.

So that’s it for now. It has been a great month; I took a leap and have been extremely happy with this schedule. I’ll undoubtedly play with it over time (I’m curious to see what a 3 hr core sleep would feel like) and intend to post two or three times a month for the next few months. Feel free to email me any questions at birkin@earthlink.net. I’ll likely get back to you sometime between 3am and 7am! :)

Advertisement