Jermil's Sleep Blog

Alright so this is round two of polyphasic sleep. I did it successfully for about 3 weeks back in 2008 and now I’m going at it again.

I started yesterday evening with no preparation or anything. I don’t think it’s possible to even prepare for this.

Since I had my own posts to read from last time, I knew what to expect. Also, just knowing that I did it before is making this time a lot easier.

One thing I’ve noticed so far is that I get a really happy feeling every time I get into bed. Most people probably get that same feeling from time to time but I get it 6 times a day!

I’m already getting lucid dreams which is generally a lot of fun.

The night time was a bit rough and I felt confused and disoriented when I woke up around 2:30am. But I kept myself occupied and didn’t oversleep or anything.

But I remember it getting harder everyday until the week was over.

Out of nowhere, I decided to live polyphasically again starting today.

I realized that once again my time is my own. Then I also noticed that I have something I can fill with that time and make a bit of extra money.

I started today, Monday, April 12 at 6pm. In a week, I should be past the adaptation phase and sleeping only 2 hours a day. I’ll keep a daily log here of how everything goes this time around.

I was trying to read through all old posts and found them a bit hard to navigate. So I’ll put a list of them here to make everything a bit easier:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3 – Late For a Nap
Day 4 – Very Vivid Dream
Day 5 – Overslept
Day 6 – Missing Naps and Oversleeping
Day 7 – Week One Done
Oversleeping During Adaptation Phase of Uberman Sleep
Polyphasic Sleep Is Heavenly
Polyphasic Sleep On The Road
The Polyphasic Sleep Experiment is Over

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.

With all this time on my hands, I figured I’d try something I’ve been interested in since I first heard of it.

POLYPHASIC SLEEP!!!

I’ve read of a few people doing it successfully and I figure I should be able to add my name to the list.

I’m going to get my last full night of sleep tonight.  Tomorrow, I’ll be in full uberman sleep mode exactly like when Steve Pavlina did it.  I will post a daily log here of how it goes.  I’ll post about the rest of my life on my other blog which chronicles everything else.