The Body Wants What The Body Wants
When your body tells you something you should listen to it. Last night was my second extended oversleep due to missing an alarm. I took my 2AM nap late at 4AM and proceeded to sleep to 12:30PM (8.5 hours). Every time I’ve either not used an alarm or slept through it I’ve taken 8-8.5 hours. I think this is my body telling me something: that I’m not getting enough sleep. I’ve been practicing polyphasic sleep now for a few days shy of a month, so I think I’m through the adjustment period. The kicker is I NEVER slept through an alarm before in my life. The only two times I’ve done it were on polyphasic sleep.
Another thing I’ve observed from my 8h sleeps: the feeling of being cold disappears. I’m going to look into it today or tomorrow but I have a feeling that it’s due to a hormone imbalance. Whatever it is goes back to normal after 8 hours of sleep and doesn’t return for about a day after returning to polyphasic sleep. Usually after a long sleep I get a small amount of pressure in my head until I take a nap. The first nap I took today was at 2AM and afterwards I felt great. It’s almost time for my 6AM and I’m feeling really good right now.
So what am I going to do about this? Today, nothing. I’m going back to 4h/25min polyphasic today. However, I may extend my 2AM nap to 1.5h. That has always been the hardest nap and I feel that added extra time to it may help me throughout the day. Also, on Tuesdays and Thursdays I will be going about 5.5h between naps due to class (assuming I can find a place to nap in the afternoon at school). I think adding in extra time to a morning nap could help me focus better. Another option is reduce the frequency of naps and add a core sleep of either 3 or 4.5 hours. That may work out even better than 1.5h and 5 25 min naps.
My conclusions so far are mixed. While 22 waking hours a day are nice, the extra 5 hours aren’t as useful as the other 16 normal ones. I’m often tired, lethargic, or just not motivated during the night to accomplish the same things I do during the day. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the extra time. I’ve used it to watch my favorate TV series, 24; researched trading; written blog entries; and gone grocery shopping without crowds. When I do oversleep the days seem extremely short without those extra hours. I think that adding a core sleep and reducing the nap frequency will still give me added time and improve the quality of that time. Plus having longer waking periods between naps allows me to focus on a topic for more time.
In one way or another I will continue with polyphasic sleep. I doubt I will ever return to the 8h routine unless outside influences dictate it.
