Jermil's Sleep Blog

I barely made it through my 2-6am time of zombie-like lack of focus on anything that wasn’t total brain shutdown mode.

But somehow I did make it. And when 6am rolled around, I was so proud of myself. I really felt like I earned this upcoming ~20 minutes of sleep.

I was imagining how great I would feel after I woke up and had just enough REM sleep to recharge and get through my next block of time before I could sleep again.

Unfortunately, it didn’t go anything like that.

I woke up to no alarm around 9am. I was confused at first but I knew almost intuitively what happened. I was so exhausted from being awake for so many hours for so many days that sleep demanded it’s time in my life.

I felt sad initially because I thought I was doing so well. But this has to be one of the hardest things for a mere mortal to do alone.

So I took my pity party out into the world and sought food. I made it back to my hotel a little before 10am and dove into bed for that nap.

I recently awoke from my 6pm nap and every nap is still full of crazy dreams that feel so real that I wake up so confused that it was only a dream.

So I’ll forge ahead. I won’t quit today because I don’t think I should. And the first week is the hardest, if not the only hard part of becoming a polyphasic sleeper.

Thanks for reading!

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.

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.