Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Preparing for equihexaphasic polyphasic sleep: Day 0

After deciding which nap intervals will fit most easily into work, I set my alarms.

I probably won't be sleepy til 3am or 7 am tomorrow, and it's a bit after 1pm now.

At 7 and 11 am, I laid on my couch and failed utterly at sleeping. I'll keep doing this at the appointed times until I successfully pass out.

Allow me to explain my current sleep cycle, which has worked me well for years. I have no idea what it would be called.

I currently go between 24 and 48 hours without sleep, then begin taking 3-hour catnaps each day until I have a day off, on which I make up my sleep debt after about 8 hours of sleep. I find these cat naps utterly necessary to keep my sleep cycle from drifting into the danger zone of complete non-overlap with the rest of the world; they're like tiny nudges on a steering wheel. After a 3 hour catnap, I can go another 24-48 hours without sleep if I want to.  On an average week, I will often have a few days-long stretches of complete wakefulness, a catnap or two to keep my sleep-debt from smashing me into the wall at an inconvenient time, and a day off wasted by restoring my sleep-debt and syncing for the next week.

It works if I'm not conking out at work, can spend more time awake, and doesn't drive me insane.

This sleep schedule has worked well. It doesn't break, leading to awkwardness like suddenly flipping to a nocturnal schedule. It adds levity to the world by slowly decreasing my lucidity and internal censors. It decreases my shyness by the previous means as well. And most importantly, it allows me to completely baffle people I know online, as I obey no timezone other than the one in my head.

No comments:

Post a Comment