The Sleep Blog of Jermil Sadler

When I started this trial, I had all my time to myself. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Anyone who hung out with me was gracious enough to adapt to my schedule. When I napped, they napped with me or occupied themselves in other ways and woke me in a half hour.

But when I went home for Thanksgiving, I traded in that extreme freedom for the opportunity to spend time with family. It wasn’t a bad trade-off at all. I’ll always choose spending time with my family over a silly sleep experiment.

I knew that if I did keep up with my naps, I wouldn’t be able to go certain places with my family because I’d have a nap coming up in an hour or so. Or if I did try to nap while we were out, I’d have to go back to the car or something and take away quality time that could be spent with people who love me.

I tried to get back into polyphasic sleeping once I got back to my world. I couldn’t adapt back though. I would set my alarm for 30 minutes and wake up 6 hours later with no recollection of turning off the alarm. After that happened for a few days, I decided I’d stop fooling myself. Especially since I’m going back home soon and I’d end up in this same boat again.

It was a WONDERFUL experience. The main thing I miss is the extremely vivid dreams every time I went to sleep. They felt so real but I got to the point where I was able to tell when I was dreaming. For 20 minutes 6 times a day, I could do ANYTHING I wanted and I had complete control over it. It was like playing a real life video game where the only limit was your supremely ridiculous sleeping imagination. I’m sad to have to give that up.

I would still recommend it to anyone that has at least a month to do whatever they want with their time. Hopefully everyone has a month at some point in their life to take control of everything they do. If not, that’s a different issue that would be covered in my main blog.

Thanks for reading this and when I start this experiment again, I’ll write about it here.

I embarked on a 9 hour road trip from Virginia to Michigan the day before Thanksgiving.  I wasn’t too worried about it since I knew there would be rest stops along the way and I could definitely get my naps in.  But it started out much harder than I expected.

I left around 4am.  I felt fine for a good while right up until my 6am naptime.  I came across a rest area in Pennsylvania right near 6 and slept for about 20 minutes.

When I woke up, the sun was rising.  I hit the road again feeling refreshed.  But about two hours later, I started feeling really drowsy.  I found myself nodding off once or twice and realized I had to do something in order to not plow into the back of a 18 wheeler.

Oddly enough, around that same time, my sister sent me a text telling me to call her if I get sleepy.  I called her INSTANTLY and we talked for about an hour or so until it was almost my naptime again.

After that nap, I felt a lot better and was able to make it the rest of the way with no problems.  I didn’t get caught in any traffic at all.  I wonder if I had to go 10-20 miles an hour, would I have become sleepy again and nodded off in the middle of the freeway.  

Hopefully I’ll never know.

I’m loving this polyphasic sleep experiment.  I can’t imagine going back but I know I’ll have to soon.  I’m living it up while I can though.

I came up with an idea that would allow the church that I attend to be able to spread their message across the world!  I came up with that during church but I feel like the level of creativity that I’m at these days is directly tied to polyphasic sleep.

I completely missed a nap yesterday because I was helping Narendra move.  I started feeling weird an hour after my scheduled nap time.  Weird like I started getting confused and life started feeling like it was a dream.  Not extremely dreamy but almost an intoxicated feeling.  It wasn’t bad but it was definitely noticable.

Obviously , I ended up oversleeping when I got to my next nap.  Your body needs so much REM sleep daily or you’ll eventually DIE or pass out in your mashed potatoes and gravy.  I slept for 2 hours instead of 20-30 minutes.  I felt great when I woke up though.  I think that’s better for me since I oversleep almost every other night.  I figure sleeping about 4 or so hours daily gets me more free time than sleeping for 8-12 hours daily like I used to.

The main benefit is this extremely creative mindstate.  I surprise myself with a lot of the things I come up with.  This is something that I hope sticks with me when this is over.  I’ll type something out and be amazed at what I just produced.  Or I’ll come up with an idea for a picture to take and when I do it, it’s stunning.  Maybe I’m just my biggest fan and the sleep deprivation tricks me into thinking that everything I do is awesome.  Maybe this is inflating my ego to monumental proportions and I believe I’m the best thing out there.

For the past few days, I’ve been finding myself oversleeping while trying to adapt to the Uberman sleep schedule.  I would go to sleep at 2am and wake up at 6am.  Or I’d go to sleep at 6am and wake up at noon!

I realized the problem was that I shut my alarm off and go back to bed before I’m fully awake.  I don’t even have a chance to fight it!

I read of people adding an additional nap between those times.  I tried adding a 4am nap and I overslept during that one once.

What I decided to do was use a backup alarm so that if the first one didn’t work, the second one in another room would definitely wake me up.  I allowed 5 minutes in between the first and second alarm.  I figured if i was awake enough, I could go turn the second alarm off before it made that annoying buzzing noise.

A friend stayed over for most of a night after I set up the backup alarm.  She witnessed the insanity that my body forced me to go through in order to get sleep.

She said I shut off the first alarm when it went off.  Then I went into the other room to turn off the second alarm before it even went off!!!  I didn’t recall any of this.  I figured I was fighting a losing battle.

Well today, I decided to combine multiple alarms with leaving lights on near the room where I slept.  I believe the light is the key.  I have no problem waking up feeling just fine during the day.  But 2am and 6am are my major trouble times and I hear around those hours are trouble for most people.

Having light visible when the alarm wakes me up makes a big difference.  It helps me to realize that I only planned to sleep for a few minutes and it’s time to get up!  Otherwise, if it’s pitch black in my entire apartment, I’m almost certain to roll back over after ending the bothersome beeping.

It’s been a week since I’ve started this experiment.  It feels like it’s been FOREVER.  The days are way longer and I have more time to do crazy things.

I’ve noticed my level of creativity is greater during the late night hours.  I believe that after midnight, my brain works differently than during the daytime.  And I’m able to express that creativity without having to worry about going to bed for the night.  I just take a break every once in a while to recharge.  Then I can keep on going with what I was doing.

Lucid dreaming is amazing.  I had a fantastic dream the other night that felt extremely real but was so preposterous that I knew it wasn’t real while I was dreaming it.  But it was still rather enjoyable.

This is a experience that everyone should try at least once!  I can’t imagine going back to sleeping all night like everyone else.  I know that I’ll have to soon but polyphasic sleeping is just incredible.  Even doing it for a week will change your life.

I plan to stick with it until I leave DC at least.  The only rough spots are around 3 or 4 in the morning.  I’ll have to figure out a way to still be productive during that time instead of being a zombie.  I can keep myself going if someone is here during that time. But when no one’s here, I slowly degrade into a zombie and only want to eat oatmeal cookies and cheese.

I plan to keep updating almost everyday and especially when something weird happens.  Sign up for the RSS feed or subscribe through email to get the updates to come to you!

I overslept again last night.  I guess I should’ve expected it since I missed 2 naps yesterday.

I tried to sleep at 6pm and just couldn’t fall asleep.  I tried again at 6:30 and was slowing dozing off.  Then I got a phone call from a guy who wanted to buy my table!  I was so excited I took a friend to dinner.

We got back around 9 and I tried to nap at 10.  It wasn’t working for me.  I decided to not force it and just got up and got to work.

We got a ton of things accomplished photography related and I worked on an idea for a niche blog.

I was able to sleep at 2am and I felt a lot better afterwards.

I want to see how practical this is in the real world when I have to deal with real people.  During this week, I mostly kept to myself and didn’t worry about anyone else’s schedule.  I did what I wanted when I wanted to.  That worked out great because I could head back home in time for my naps and not be concerned about it too much.

I miss that extra time I would’ve had this morning while everyone else slept.  I feel like I’ve wasted most of the day when I only lost 4 hours.

I didn’t think it would happen to me.  I thought I was stronger than everybody else.  I was wrong.

From what I’ve read, oversleeping is the reason a lot of people fail during the adaptation period of polyphasic sleeping.  Their bodies can’t handle the drastic change in sleep habits and somehow tricks you into staying asleep longer than the prescribed 20 minutes.

I remember feeling extremely tired around 4am.  I wasn’t scheduled to sleep until 6am.  Somehow I made it and  got in the bed at 5:45.  When my alarm went off, the time was shortly after 6.  I felt like a disaster and decided I’d give myself 10 more minutes of sweet, sweet sleepy time.  I reckon I set the alarm wrong and didn’t wake up until almost 11am.  I was devastated.

Physically, I felt bad.  My head hurt and I still felt tired. I imagine it was because I hadn’t “slept” in a few days and once my body got a taste of it, we needed MORE!!! I sat around like a zombie and got nothing accomplished.  When 2pm rolled around, I decided I’ll try to catch that nap and see how it worked out.

I fell asleep shortly after lying down and woke up 25 minutes later.  I felt a lot better afterwards.  Most of my headache went away and I didn’t feel quite so tired.  I was also glad I could still nap and everything seemed to be on schedule.  My 6pm nap went great too.

I’ve read that taking an extra nap during those late night hours aid in preventing oversleeping.  I’ll add one if staying awake during the night gets unbearable.

After my 6am sleep, I felt so refreshed that I thought I overslept.  It may have been due to the extra nap I took while watching a movie the morning before or maybe it was because my sleep schedule had been thrown off.  Whatever the reason, I haven’t that good since starting this experiment.

Today at my 10am sleep, I had an extremely vivid dream.  I remembered it when I woke up and while I typed this, it was still fresh in my mind.  It was about someone that meant a lot to me and I can still feel the emotions that were running through me during the dream.  It was very interesting and I hope I get more every 20 minute sleep I take.

After that vivid dream, I read about vivid and lucid dreaming on wikipedia.  During my next nap, I had a lucid dream where I realized I was dreaming and was able to stay dreaming and interacting with the dream world.  

During a discussion yesterday, a friend and I came to the realization that the times when I wake up and I’m tired are times when I didn’t eat before I went to sleep.  The times where I feel great after sleeping for 20 minutes, I had something to eat before I slept.  I’m going to keep track and see if the two have anything to do with each other.

I also noticed a few days ago that I’m paying more attention to how my mouth is positioned when I lay down to sleep.  I realized that I tend to keep my jaw clenched slightly.  I’ve been making an effort to keep it more relaxed while I doze off.  I never noticed that before I started this experiment.

Another thing… I can actually feel myself while I’m in the process of falling asleep.  When I would sleep only during the night like everyone else, I couldn’t tell if or when I was falling asleep.  Now, I can feel my entire body relaxing and my breath slowing.  My dreams start before I fall asleep.  It’s like watching a movie in my mind WHILE I’M STILL AWAKE.  It’s very comforting to get to the point where you know you’ll be asleep in less than a minute from the time you start to feel it.  

This experiment is really interesting and I think this is closer to how the natural human sleeping experience is supposed to be.  It sucks when sleep is just a time away from the world.  It should  be a time to live out your dreams that you haven’t quite reached in the waking world.  You should be able to interact with your dreams every night.  You should be able to actually feel emotions that you wouldn’t otherwise let yourself feel when you have full control of yourself.  It should DEFINITELY NOT be a time where you lay like a corpse until a buzzing sound wakes you up way earlier than you need.

What do you think about the common sleep pattern of the world?  It doesn’t seem to be working for most people since “they” say most people don’t get enough sleep.  Why don’t we try another approach???

I could barely make it to my 6am nap.  I had to constantly find something to do to keep myself occupied.  I sent some emails out for something things that I’m selling, I watched a little TV and some of a movie, played solitaire, and planned out things to do during normal hours tomorrow.  I felt really tired if I didn’t have anything else to do.  I think the symptoms of sleep deprivation were finally kicking in.

I felt better later in the day though.  I met with a friend to help her get her website going.  I was full of energy during that time.  It was like I had a normal day of sleep.  My friend said she forgot that I was doing polyphasic sleep because I didn’t seem like I hadn’t slept.

My appetite isn’t as crazy as I thought it would be.  I’ve read that people have to eat more when staying up 22 hours and that should be expected.  So far, I haven’t eaten more than I usually would.  I think it’s because it’s a bit weird to make pork chops and beans and whatever else at 3am.  I might eat an extra bowl of cereal or an additional yogurt or two but I haven’t had an extra meal so far.  Steve Pavlina said his appetite decreased during the adaptation phase as well.

I ended up missing my 10pm nap because I was out with friends.  It was interesting how my body reacted during that time.  Everything basically slowed down and if I had put my head down, I could’ve slept where I was.  I made it home by 11 and tried to sleep then but couldn’t really.  I got a few minutes of sleep and that was good enough.  I played it by ear in order to figure out the next time I should sleep.  I ended up going around 2:30 and slept the whole time.

Then I watched a movie with a friend and we both ended up dozing off.  I’m not sure how long I was asleep but I’m going to see how I feel for the 6am nap.

My 6am nap went very well.  I fell asleep within maybe 5 minutes and woke up with the alarm.  I felt ok after I woke up.  Not extremely tired but not really awake either.  I didn’t do much during this time between the naps.  Nothing really seemed important enough to tackle.  I did make breakfast though.

I fell asleep almost instantly during my 10am nap.  But when I woke up, I reeeeeeeeally wanted to go back to sleep.  After a while, I was slowly able to adapt to this new level of tiredness and was able to accomplish a few things.  I decided to work on a blog post of something that happened last night.  I started around 11am but it took me until 4pm to finish it.  It usually doesn’t take that long for a post of pictures.

My 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, and 2am naps were great!  I always start these naps thinking that I’ll never fall asleep and my brain is racing too much.  Soon after, I’m waking up to a loud beeping noise.  I woke up a bit groggy after each of those naps but after a few minutes, I realize that I’m not letting myself go back to sleep and my body adjusts to the amount of sleep I currently have.