7 posts tagged “sleep”

Regarding the polyphasic sleep experiment: the verdict so far is EPIC FAIL. Well, not quite. But close. It's still ongoing, but when the schedule basically curls up and dies every third day, it's definitely not going well. I'm going to give it a go until the 28th day before deciding whether to extend it; but if things continue the way they've been going, then, no.
I'm writing this as I embark on a related experiment: an attempt to wean myself off my internet addiction. I also admit that I might have a problem with alcohol, but that one's more of a lack of self-control rather than an addiction. What? That's a fine line to draw, you say? Maybe; but let's look at the word "addicted" first.

addicted |əˌdɪktɪd|
adjective
physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects : she became addicted to alcohol and diet pills.
• enthusiastically devoted to a particular thing or activity : he's addicted to computers.
ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from the obsolete adjective addict [bound or devoted (to someone),] from Latin addict- ‘assigned,’ from the verb addicere, from ad- ‘to’ + dicere ‘say.’

I'm not addicted to alcohol; rather, when I do take it (which this academic year has been quite rarely), I take a lot of it. There are problems with that, of course. Physiologically it is of course quite unhealthy. A glass of red wine a day apparently does wonders for heart attack risks and what not, but nobody ever said that six glasses every six weeks does anyone any good. Then there's the lack of self-control; I have an unfortunate habit of making a complete fool of myself when I'm even slightly tipsy, no doubt because I repress myself so severely when I'm stone-cold sober. Solution: stop drinking, and loosen up a bit more.

As for the internet addiction: one has to admit first that there's an addiction, and I think there's really no question about this. I'm a college student; that's not an occupation which requires near-constant internet access. However, if I were to realistically assess the time I spend surfing the web, I think it'd probably come to about 12-16 hours a day. That's quite worrying.

I don't know the best way to combat addiction, but as a stop-gap measure I'm going cold turkey as much as I realistically can. It'll help stem my eBaying, compulsive email checking and Facebook stalking, at least for a while. I can't go completely cold turkey because my tutors and school communicate with me primarily via e-mail, but I'll confine myself to 2 set times a day and be done with it. I don't NEED email, but it's taken over my life, and I want it back, like, now.

I think the problem is that the Internet offers so much; it fills a gaping void in my life that I wouldn't really know how to fill if the Internet weren't there. Perhaps with the extra 10 hours that I would've spent surfing the 'Net yesterday, I could, say, clean my room, or wash the dishes, or finish my macroeconomics assignment. Perhaps I could call a friend or meditate for a while. Read a book.

I write this about 2 hours into the whole cold-turkey thing. The worrying thing is that I definitely feel an urge to plug back in; I feel as if something's missing. I feel like not being plugged in is wrong, somehow; that, if I'm not constantly connected, Bad Things will happen. I know they won't; but I think it's me subconsciously trying to rationalise plugging back in. Maybe, for example, an important email is coming. Perhaps Sarah's asking me out RIGHT NOW. Perhaps I just won a lottery and a man from Nigeria is trying to get in touch... but, no. That's all hogwash, and I know it; but inside I yearn to plug right back in, fire up the ol' web browser and plunge into the ocean of untreated sewage that is the World Wide Web.

Arrrgh.

God give me strength.

There's that AA prayer - I forget the exact words. What are they?... Will need to look it up later, I can't seem to find them anywhere. I resist now the urge to plug back in and look it up; it's only a matter of convenience, I don't NEED to know it now.

It roughly runs thus: God give me the strength to change what I can, the courage to accept what I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Hope that's right.

[Edit] The accurate form goes like this.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

I began a trial run of a polyphasic sleep pattern on Monday. It's Wednesday and I don't feel as bad as I feared, which is a good sign; OTOH, I've already had one breach of the pattern and I've had a little more sleep than I'm supposed so, since I've been adjusting the arrangement and frequency of my naps.

Let me explain. Polyphasic sleep is essentially, at its core, an attempt to get by on less than the "recommended" 6-8 hours of sleep - depending on the schedule, this reduced amount can range from 2 hours (!) to a more sane 4 hours. It also differs from normal sleep patterns (i.e. "monophasic" sleep) in that it spreads the sleep throughout the day, as opposed to having one chunk of 6-8 hours every day.

There are, as far as I can tell, several polyphasic sleep types. One is "biphasic"; I don't know much about that pattern. Another is the so-called Uberman sleep schedule, where one sleeps for 20 minutes every 4 hours. Thus, per day, you only have 2 hours. The beauty of the schedule is that you've basically got 22 hours of waking time per day; the reality is that this schedule is very punishing, demanding and you'd basically need to be cut off from the rest of human society to make it work. (Or, at the very least, work from a home office.)

Mine's the "Everyman" sleep schedule. It consists of a "core sleep" period of 3-4 hours, followed by intermittent naps of 20 minutes - depending on the length of the core sleep, it can range from 2-4 naps in a day. I'm currently using a pattern of one core sleep of 3 hours, with 3 20-minute naps every 5-7 hours. This pattern requires more sleep (4 hours a day), but is much more flexible - while the Uberman schedule requires strict adherence to the one-nap-every-four-hour pattern, this one allows deviations of up to one hour either way for each sleep period. So, if I need a nap at 2pm, one can usually take this nap any time from 1pm-3pm without any ill effects.

The unfortunate thing is that one needs to adjust to this pattern. This is the hard part; it takes between 1-4 weeks for the body to adjust. Also (and this is actually slightly worrying), the long-term effects are undocumented, since at present it's limited to a small group of crackpots and ne'er-do-wells on the internets. As such, all the polyphasic advocates warn that kids shouldn't try this at home, as the effect on their growth might be detrimental.

For more information, one can go to these websites:

1. Wikipedia's entry on polyphasic sleep
2. Wikipedia's entry on the Uberman sleep schedule
3. Puredoxky's blog - search for "Everyman"
4. Everything2's entry on polyphasic sleep
5. Steve Pavlina - one man's sleep log
6. The other side of the fence - a polyphasic sceptic

My reasons for trying this schedule (with the attendant risks) are basically: I would like more time in a day, I already spend most of my time alone (so this schedule won't cut as much into my social life), and I'm curious. If it works, I'll have an extra 4 hours a day! Yayy.

Yes, there are risks. The sceptic site goes as far as to suggest that long-term effects (might) include permanent damage to the part of the brain that controls sleep. Sounds pretty dire, huh? Well, we'll see.

In any case: it's Day 3. I've stuck reasonably rigidly to my schedule (which currently mirrors Puredoxyk's schedule) (i.e. Core sleep from 1-4am, naps at 9am, 2pm & 8pm) except for a slip-up yesterday when I took a 60-minute nap at 3pm instead of 20 minutes. I'm a little sleep-deprived, but nothing much worse than my first week of school anyway. :p Oh, and I'm keeping a sleep log - without one, the temptation to slack off and sleep whenever I want is too strong.

(Note; this is probably my third attempt at a polyphasic sleep schedule. The first two times, I had no sleep log, and no way to track if I was actually sticking to the schedule. Needless to say, after a day or two, I was basically sleeping as much as I wanted. Not good.)

And this log, well, in case I die from sleep deprivation (unlikely, but who knows?), at least this will be a warning to future experimenters.

Woooohoo.

Wired: How to Cheat on Sleep, and Stephen Pinker on Swearing (much swearing inside, be warned).

I'm trying this out, to see where it leads me. It's intriguing so far, but you do need at least one person whose doings you're reasonably interested in for it to be useful. I signed up ages ago, but without anyone I knew who was using Twitter, updating to an audience of myself got old quite quickly. Now, at least, my brother's on, so it's gotten that much more interesting.

In any case, my Twitter page is here.

By the by - and this is directed to the Vox Twitter group - where is that post where one posts one's handle in the comments? I can't seem to find it. Posting the URL on the front page or some such thing would probably be useful.

To sleep, to sleep.

Fascinating stuff. I haven't had a lucid dream for quite a long time, and would love to know if there's some way to enter a lucid dreaming state intentionally. In a way it's almost like extending your life for free - instead of being confined to your waking hours, now you can do stuff with your sleeping time too! (Except, of course, it would be quite different qualitatively. For one, it's not "real" - you can only really work with what's in your head already, which can be either a good or bad thing.)

I made my afternoon seem really long by taking a lot of 20-minute naps. Inexplicably, my 20-minute naps always seem to last a very long time, and I am invariably quite disoriented as to the actual time after emerging from one of them. They always seem to last much, much longer than they really do. (e.g. I'll sleep at 1pm, wake at 1:20, but think it's probably 3pm or some such thing.)

(Or perhaps I do sleep for very long, but before I awake an army of little gremlins storms into my room and sets all the clocks to 20 minutes after the time I fall asleep... improbable, but not impossible.)

I especially love the brief period of time between my falling asleep and my being fully awake. It's quite fascinating to observe how reality and my desires for how reality should be mesh. It's like someone's crossing the wires in a telephone exchange (one of those old antique things) and there're two versions of reality suddenly talking to each other. So I'll suddenly be very convinced, for example, that I'm talking to a certain person who I used to enjoy talking to but don't anymore, and we'll be having an excellent conversation - then, abruptly, the brain realises that something's wrong, and some kind of realignment occurs, and I'm shunted into one of the realities properly. I have absolutely no idea how long these... episodes last, because there's no way to tell the time without being in a single reality properly (and thus breaking the state I'm in).

Other things I've experienced - the "I'm falling!" sensation. Apparently that sensation between wakefulness and sleep is called hypnagogia. Fascinating.

Shit... lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Little sparks of insanity doing a little nonsense dance in my head.

Can't sleep.