Archive for the ‘Sleep’ Category
The Dream Journal Works
I’ve been keeping a journal of my dreams since December 16th. The goal is to have better recolection of my dreams and increase the frequency of lucid dreaming. Prior to logging my dreams I would remember a few a week. I almost never had a lucid dream, and the few that I do remember were only partially lucid. I realized I was dreaming but didn’t choose to take control. Typically the characters in my dream would do whatever I wanted but I wouldn’t try something outside the realm of the current dream. Whenever I wake up and remember a dream I write it down, along with the time I went to bed and the time I woke up.
I Wasn’t Quite Ready
About 35 hours into polyphasic sleep I realized I wasn’t prepared well enough. I didn’t have enough to keep me busy and the motivation to pull through. I woke up from my 2AM nap today very tired. I had trouble falling asleep for most of my naps and hit REM in very few of them. I could have kept going as I managed to make it to 5AM before giving up. At that point I made the decision that I need to prepare better before continuing.
Polyphasic Sleep – Part Deux
It’s that time of the year again. The birds have flown south, nice cars are packed away in garages, and winter vacation is upon us (or more specifically me). I have 5 weeks off of school with some projects I want to start and TV / movies I want to watch. It’s time to polyphasic sleep again! I learned a lot the first time around so I’m trying to avoid making the same mistakes twice. I will not be taking any extra naps or extending them. Instead of slowly phasing it in with core sleeps and naps I’m jumping in head first. Last night I slept 6 hours and I took my first nap at 6pm. I got some light sleep but not much. I’ll be following the same nap schedule I started with last time on the 2, 6, 10 hours. Meals will be an hour or so prior to naps. This is so I can exercise and drink my post workout shake right afterwards.
Sleep in Review
I haven’t discussed polyphasic sleep for quite some time as I stopped it back in February. Since then I’ve followed a few different sleep patterns. While I was in school I followed a split 6 hour pattern, sleeping from 11PM to 2AM and then 3AM to 6AM. That worked fairly well but I frequently found myself quite tired if class was boring.
After school got out I returned to monophasic sleep. I don’t know if it’s because of my experimentation with polyphasic sleep, changes in my diet, or the exercise routine but now I sleep 6-7 hours a night. Before I tried polyphasic sleep I was out for 8 hours a night. If I wanted I could probably sleep that long again, but I’ve found that I function well on 6-7 hours.
Another Day, Another Sleep Pattern
I apologize for the lack of updates. Between school, projects, and extra sleep I haven’t had much free time. I’ve changed me sleep pattern yet again. I found that the pattern I was on (2 1.5h core naps, 3 20 min naps) just wasn’t cutting it. I was frequently oversleeping and was tired during the day. I slept monophasicly this past weekend and found something interesting. I woke up after 6 hours and had trouble falling back asleep. So maybe 6 hours is what my body wants. To test this I’m trying two 3 hour sleep periods, one 11:30PM to 2:30PM and one 3:30PM to 6:30PM. This allows me to maintain my eating schedule and have some extra time at night to shop, prep food, or do whatever. Last night was my first trial. I ended up adding an extra 20 min nap in there. Today I was wide awake all day. I had no trouble paying attention during class. I found it much easier to focus on the subjects. This may be the best solution for me. We’ll see how it goes.
A Week’s Sleep In Review
This week’s sleeping went quite well. There were oversleeps here and there but overall I’m satisfied. Both school days went perfectly as did last night. Tonight should also go well. What I’ve found is that with the 2 core naps I can skip a 25 min nap when necessary and still function fine. However, the likelyhood of my oversleeping at my next nap in this situation is very high. When I do follow it and take all of my naps oversleeping either doesn’t happen or is much shorter.
Sleep Pattern This
It seems that I may have finally found a sleep pattern that works for me. It goes as follows:
Naps:
1AM – 2:30AM
5AM – 6:30AM
1PM – 1:25PM
5PM – 5:25PM
9PM – 9:25PM
Total sleep time of 4 hours 15 minutes. I have been doing this for a few days now and have found that it works very well. I’m not tired and my naps can be very flexible without worrying about them. The 9PM nap often becomes 10PM or 11PM without a problem.
Strange Week of Sleep
This week my sleep patterns have been a bit unusual. I would frequently take extra naps at night, getting a total of 4.5-6 hours of sleep in a day. Getting through the night has been quite hard. I’ve been getting in the bad habit of “snoozing” – waking up after a nap and then taking another one right away. There were also a few days when I woke up from a nap and decided to lay there for a minute – and woke up 1.5-5 hours later.
In: Health & Fitness, Sleep
The Power of Peppers
I’ve always liked spicy food. Chili, General Tso’s Chicken, curry chicken, buffalo wings, etc. It’s gotten to the point where I call Frank’s Red Hot “weaksauce” and don’t consider something hot unless it has at least Cayanne, or even better Habaneros in it. For those of you who don’t know, habaneros are the hottest pepper in the world. Very little is required to make something hot. For example, earlier today I was crushing habaneros that I dryed a few days ago. When finished I licked the small amount of dust left on the spoon and my mouth was burning for about 5 minutes.
In: Health & Fitness, Sleep
Motivation Lacking
Ever have one of those weekends when you know you have stuff to do but just aren’t motivated to do it? That’s how this weekend has been. I’ve acomplished a few things, like listing an item on Ebay, writing up ideas for my new website, and cooking some new foods. Other than that I blew through the weekend without acomplishment. No laundry washed, no cleaning of the apt, and no polyphasic sleep. Sleep plays a big part of it since life is shorter on monophasic sleep. Days fly by much quicker when you are missing 5 hours.
In: Health & Fitness, Philosophy, Sleep