Blue Skies... (240 hours)

I have discovered yet another bonus to polyphasic sleep. I normally go months without a day off, and only get them near, but not on, major holidays; e.g. I work christmas eve and day, but two days later I'll get a day off. I normally prefer to work at night, it is when I am most alert and like(ed) to be awake. Since 08:00 and 20:00 are now basically the same to me, this difference went away. I worked an 08:30 - 02:30 shift recently, followed by a 17:00 - 23:00 shift (the next day). This happened on a weekend, so I didn't have to go to school. Most people would not call this a day off, but I do. A massive 26:30 between obligations is enough of a day for me. This day I was able to keep my schedule regular, no six to seven hour stretches of wakefullness, no two naps jammed into a four hour period, it was 4 or 5 hours between every nap. This was also the longest I had gone without oversleeping (70 ish hours, though it is true that it was less than 48 hours from a massive oversleep).

Over this twenty six hour period I noticed many things:

• I took five(ish) extra minutes to fall asleep, bringing me to about 10 which is still a far cry from my monophasic 30


• I woke up 10-25 minutes early half the time. No alarm, no noises, just time to get up.


• I woke up rested, every time


• I had another dream. It was less intrusive than the last one, ocurred after I was asleep. Less exciting too, just soaring through stars, but no less vivid.


• I was able to abandon my schedule. My body told me when it was time to nap. I still had to plan them in my head, to keep friends & family informed, but I could tell when it was time.

I had previously been pretty alert, 75% or so, but this was the first time I felt this alert. I was operating at 90-100% from 15 minutes after I woke up to the time I went back to sleep with the exception of my trouble time, when it is enough to say that I didn't oversleep.

I had been hoping that this was a new level of adaptation and was independant of my work schedule, but once the weekend was over I slipped back to the was I was before. This answered some questions, which reminded me of the reason I was doing this in the first place, to answer questions. I had been telling people who asked me "how long are you going to do this" that I would do it until I felt like going back. But experiments arent supposed to work that way, they are supposed to have a beginning and an end. They are supposed to have a hypothesis and a control variable. Of these things I have one, a beginning. So I set out to create the things an experiment should have:

Purpose:		To examine the effects of a polyphasic sleep cycle on M@ and to deduce if such a cycle would be flexible enough to incorporate into his every day life.
Method:		Devise and adopt a schedule that should fit around M@'s work/school schedule, allow two weeks for adaptation, and report on the results.
Hypothesis:		With a 5 hr. wake + 1 hr. sleep repeating schedule, M@ should be able to perform at or above his previous levels of efficiency. He should also be able to make this work his work schedule by slightly adjusting his nap times.

I chose a two week duration because, after my "day off" experience, no further experimentation needs to be done. So I will call this whole shindig to a close soon, but that's material for another post.