Polyphasic Sleep: Week 1

This is day 7 of my polyphasic sleep experiment. Note that I started counting from 0.

Overall, it's working out remarkably easily. Instead of oversleeping a nap, my biggest problem has been feeling the need to cluster 25-minute naps in the mornings.

I went slightly insane between day 2 and day 4, but I seem to have gotten past the biggest sleep deprivation.

I've been experimenting perhaps too much with my schedule. Noting from Steve Pavlina that it is possible to skip a nap using caffeine (at the expense of requiring a compensatory nap a cycle or two later) I've been skewing my schedule to mesh with work. This may be what's causing the morning nap clusters. Also, I've often been skipping quasi-naps that I feel are a waste of time simply laying down with my eyes closed. This might be a mistake.

Since I've already gotten the basic adjustment over, I'm going to try imposing more strictness and regularity. During Week Two, I'm aiming at:

Each nap between 4 and 6 hours, unless the nap would fall in the middle of work. In this case, I'll have one or two cups of coffee before work and a mid-cycle nap after work.

No skipped scheduled naps. If I don't think a nap will do any good, I'll still lay down and give it a try. At the very least, this is some high quality time to think and reflect on things.

Increase activity in scale with my time awake. Ideally, I want no down-time besides the naps. This should also have the effect of motivating me: I should be angry as hell that I decided to take one more nap than I need, when I could be doing foo.

Try getting sunlight or bright light immediately after a nap. I think this will help establish the cycle, and break dependence on diurnal rhythms.