I broke down and took my 11am-ish nap.
I had my first nap nightmare, if I can call it that.
I was cleaning my teeth with a pick. While cleaning on the backside of my lower front teeth, I began levering out something stuck between my teeth down by the gum. Levering and levering, I ended up removing a chicken wing bone from between my teeth (and partially jammed into my gum). The sensation of a gaping hole in my gums where this inexplicable chicken bone had been, was very vivid.
Damn. Body horror ftw.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep Reboot: another tactic
Since I'm playing around a bit and experimenting before going back to strictness on the third, I'm trying out DSEPAMAYLOSWYAZ.
Don't Sleep Even Polyphasic As Much As You Like Only Sleep When You're A Zombie.
I want to see if zombie-time naps are more or less efficient than regularly scheduled naps.
I've, as of now, accumulated a ton of zombies on my back. I'm holding off for when I begin shambling AND it coincides with a scheduled nap. Then, delicious nap.
Watch as this fails.
Don't Sleep Even Polyphasic As Much As You Like Only Sleep When You're A Zombie.
I want to see if zombie-time naps are more or less efficient than regularly scheduled naps.
I've, as of now, accumulated a ton of zombies on my back. I'm holding off for when I begin shambling AND it coincides with a scheduled nap. Then, delicious nap.
Watch as this fails.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep Reboot: 2pm
As expected, a dud nap. Even dud naps can feel refreshing, though.
I'd much rather have 25 minutes of meditative relaxation, than >30 minutes of sleep.
I'd much rather have 25 minutes of meditative relaxation, than >30 minutes of sleep.
A tentative plan
I'm going to stick with this reboot limbo, blogging after each nap as it happens, until Saturday the 3rd. Working out the biggest kinks in my schedule.
On the 3rd, I'll go back to once daily updates for the month.
I figure, zooming in on my naps hour by hour every few weeks can't help but make me focus on fixing them.
On the 3rd, I'll go back to once daily updates for the month.
I figure, zooming in on my naps hour by hour every few weeks can't help but make me focus on fixing them.
Polyphasic Sleep Reboot: 7am oversleep and nap cluster
I overslept my 7am nap by about 20 minutes, woke up feeling groggy and horrible.
I got up, took a shower, inventoried my food supply for Recipezaar, then took another nap without knowing it. Woke up groggier from that, etc.
Finally at about noon I had a vivid dream waking from which left me more alert.
Now the reboot gets rebooted.
I wonder why so few of my naps lately have had dreams, compared to the 3 weeks of progress earlier.
I got up, took a shower, inventoried my food supply for Recipezaar, then took another nap without knowing it. Woke up groggier from that, etc.
Finally at about noon I had a vivid dream waking from which left me more alert.
Now the reboot gets rebooted.
I wonder why so few of my naps lately have had dreams, compared to the 3 weeks of progress earlier.
Polyphasic Sleep Reboot: 3am
I finished getting all the updated stuff working, made a pot of coffee, and settled down for a nap around 3:50.
I put on Kid A, and as I often do while listening to this album imagined endless snow-covered plains under gray skies. In a few minutes I actually felt cold wind against my face and the tap tap of snowflakes on my hat.
So, while no visual dream elements, this nap does count as rem. I can't remember ever having a non-visual lucid dream before, very cool.
I put on Kid A, and as I often do while listening to this album imagined endless snow-covered plains under gray skies. In a few minutes I actually felt cold wind against my face and the tap tap of snowflakes on my hat.
So, while no visual dream elements, this nap does count as rem. I can't remember ever having a non-visual lucid dream before, very cool.
Polyphasic Sleep Reboot: 1am
Still a dreamless nap.
Right after the nap I began updating my system, as detailed here. I finally got everything shinier and working.
Now for my 3am-ish nap.
Right after the nap I began updating my system, as detailed here. I finally got everything shinier and working.
Now for my 3am-ish nap.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep Reboot: 11pm
No real sleep in either nap attempt.
2.5 more days to get everything running smooth. Come on, amygdala. I will experiment on you like Frankenstein with a poodle and a jar of vaseline.
2.5 more days to get everything running smooth. Come on, amygdala. I will experiment on you like Frankenstein with a poodle and a jar of vaseline.
On SPAMAYL
[17:14] <pookleblinky> I think SPAMAYL should be avoided until a month in.
[17:15] <pookleblinky> It's too tempting
[17:15] <ze> pookleblinky: yeah thats kinda what i was thinking too
[17:15] <ze> its more of a post-adaptation flexibility strategy
[17:15] <pookleblinky> I look back on my first 2 weeks or so, and think that all my tweaks and experiments did more harm than good.
[17:15] <ze> which is cool to have
[17:15] <ze> but probably prolongs adaptation if used early
[17:15] <pookleblinky> It's too tempting
[17:15] <ze> pookleblinky: yeah thats kinda what i was thinking too
[17:15] <ze> its more of a post-adaptation flexibility strategy
[17:15] <pookleblinky> I look back on my first 2 weeks or so, and think that all my tweaks and experiments did more harm than good.
[17:15] <ze> which is cool to have
[17:15] <ze> but probably prolongs adaptation if used early
Polyphasic Sleep Reboot: 11a.m.
Light, hypnogogic images. No real dream.
I don't expect to fall into a dream nap this soon after an oversleep, so I'm going to be happy with hypnogogic imagery.
I don't expect to fall into a dream nap this soon after an oversleep, so I'm going to be happy with hypnogogic imagery.
Polyphasic Sleep: Reboot Plan
I'm resetting my day clock, but I'm not going back to monophasic or even Everyman.
No, this reboot affords me a little freedom to experiment.
Claudio Stampi, in Why We Nap, had a test subject go polyphasic gradually by incrementally replacing 8 hour core sleep with naps. After a few days, the test subject apparently had adapted.
Now, I'm on a modified Uberman. I nap for 25 minutes at 1am, 3am, 7am, 11am, 2pm, and 11pm. I probably can't oversleep 8 or more hours, even if I tried, unless I take benedryl or such. So iteratively applying "subtract 90 minutes and take an extra nap" doesn't apply.
It took me 25 days to get to this point of adaptation, where 5 hours oversleep annoys the hell out of me. I'm not going to start a core nap just to reduce it incrementally.
The plan is simple: these next three days will be perfect. If I have a dud nap, I will treat it like an interrupted pomodoro, wait a few minutes, and try again. If the retry doesn't work, rather than having a nap cluster, I'll wait til the next nap. On the other hand, if I have a nap from which I wake up groggy and in zombie mode, I will entirely avoid nap clusters.
I aim to have a dream within an hour of each scheduled nap, no more, no less.
Rather than having a daily write up during this period, I'll update immediately after each nap. This will give me an extra incentive to analyze what's going wrong and try to fix it immediately.
No, this reboot affords me a little freedom to experiment.
Claudio Stampi, in Why We Nap, had a test subject go polyphasic gradually by incrementally replacing 8 hour core sleep with naps. After a few days, the test subject apparently had adapted.
Now, I'm on a modified Uberman. I nap for 25 minutes at 1am, 3am, 7am, 11am, 2pm, and 11pm. I probably can't oversleep 8 or more hours, even if I tried, unless I take benedryl or such. So iteratively applying "subtract 90 minutes and take an extra nap" doesn't apply.
It took me 25 days to get to this point of adaptation, where 5 hours oversleep annoys the hell out of me. I'm not going to start a core nap just to reduce it incrementally.
The plan is simple: these next three days will be perfect. If I have a dud nap, I will treat it like an interrupted pomodoro, wait a few minutes, and try again. If the retry doesn't work, rather than having a nap cluster, I'll wait til the next nap. On the other hand, if I have a nap from which I wake up groggy and in zombie mode, I will entirely avoid nap clusters.
I aim to have a dream within an hour of each scheduled nap, no more, no less.
Rather than having a daily write up during this period, I'll update immediately after each nap. This will give me an extra incentive to analyze what's going wrong and try to fix it immediately.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 25* Gah
On Sunday I had to go between 11am and 11pm without a nap to fit in with my work schedule.
I ended up oversleeping til about 5:30 in the morning.
Interesting, that the missed naps expanded out the way they did. I'm curious now about missing a nap under somewhat controlled conditions, then seeing how much oversleep is produced. Can I verify Pure Doxyk's nap:90 minutes of sleep relation? Or does it vary by person?
Since this was an annoying oversleep, I'm going to reset my day clock today. I'm going for a perfect 3 days.
After an oversleep, the first three days are the most crucial. You've got a short time to compress all the sleep deprivation until your schedule begins working; mistakes mean you'll have the sleep dep for longer and harder, making adaptation much harder.
Ah well, 25 day months go with 22 hour days.
I ended up oversleeping til about 5:30 in the morning.
Interesting, that the missed naps expanded out the way they did. I'm curious now about missing a nap under somewhat controlled conditions, then seeing how much oversleep is produced. Can I verify Pure Doxyk's nap:90 minutes of sleep relation? Or does it vary by person?
Since this was an annoying oversleep, I'm going to reset my day clock today. I'm going for a perfect 3 days.
After an oversleep, the first three days are the most crucial. You've got a short time to compress all the sleep deprivation until your schedule begins working; mistakes mean you'll have the sleep dep for longer and harder, making adaptation much harder.
Ah well, 25 day months go with 22 hour days.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 24*
More time dilation, for some reason less remembered dreams.
I'm now off alarms. I have a few 25-minute long playlists, each without any ear-raping final song. After the playlist ends I just wake up. I'll see what happens when this screws up. For now, it's pretty nice.
About 20 minutes before each nap I go into condensed zombie mode. This is enough time to make and drink a cup of coffee right before the nap. Awesomely, I didn't have any zombie mode at 7pm: I think my body knows that it has to wait til 11pm.
It's funny that on #polyphasers, people are complaining about oversleeping by 3 or 4 hours. Consider, if you are monophasic, that needing only 5 hours of sleep a day is considered excessive. Ya fuckin' hibernator.
I think on day 30 I'm going to call this series "Polyphasic Sleep: Month 2" and get more rigorous. Basically, pretend like I'm starting over again each month to try removing any remaining bad habits.
I'm now off alarms. I have a few 25-minute long playlists, each without any ear-raping final song. After the playlist ends I just wake up. I'll see what happens when this screws up. For now, it's pretty nice.
About 20 minutes before each nap I go into condensed zombie mode. This is enough time to make and drink a cup of coffee right before the nap. Awesomely, I didn't have any zombie mode at 7pm: I think my body knows that it has to wait til 11pm.
It's funny that on #polyphasers, people are complaining about oversleeping by 3 or 4 hours. Consider, if you are monophasic, that needing only 5 hours of sleep a day is considered excessive. Ya fuckin' hibernator.
I think on day 30 I'm going to call this series "Polyphasic Sleep: Month 2" and get more rigorous. Basically, pretend like I'm starting over again each month to try removing any remaining bad habits.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 23*
Time dilation. Man, this is a weird side effect.
This is no ordinary "man, it felt like forever!"
This is watching the entire world drop into slow motion. Literally on the verge of shouting in impatience as people shamble around you. Long agonizing milliseconds as people formulate responses to you.
What's scary, is that this also works when there's music. Normally music will give you some standard for how fast time is going. Not with polynapping time dilation. A song will come on, and you'll be doing stuff, half an hour's worth of stuff it seems, when suddenly you realize the song is still playing. It has been less than 4 minutes.
I don't want to say this is what being Sarah Goldfarb feels like, because she did not have a superpower but instead a crippling addiction.
This, now. This feels like a superpower. I can now do something for an hour, discover it's only been 10 minutes, and do a few hours more stuff. I have almost literally all the time I need. This is exactly like being five years old again, wondering how on earth you could ever do something for as long as an hour. Remember how long five minutes were? Douglas Spaulding has nothing on the relativistic effect of being five years old.
Now I finally see why five year olds are unemployed. It does somewhat suck working 168 hours a day, then spending approximately 2 months on the way home.
This is no ordinary "man, it felt like forever!"
This is watching the entire world drop into slow motion. Literally on the verge of shouting in impatience as people shamble around you. Long agonizing milliseconds as people formulate responses to you.
What's scary, is that this also works when there's music. Normally music will give you some standard for how fast time is going. Not with polynapping time dilation. A song will come on, and you'll be doing stuff, half an hour's worth of stuff it seems, when suddenly you realize the song is still playing. It has been less than 4 minutes.
I don't want to say this is what being Sarah Goldfarb feels like, because she did not have a superpower but instead a crippling addiction.
This, now. This feels like a superpower. I can now do something for an hour, discover it's only been 10 minutes, and do a few hours more stuff. I have almost literally all the time I need. This is exactly like being five years old again, wondering how on earth you could ever do something for as long as an hour. Remember how long five minutes were? Douglas Spaulding has nothing on the relativistic effect of being five years old.
Now I finally see why five year olds are unemployed. It does somewhat suck working 168 hours a day, then spending approximately 2 months on the way home.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 22*
Today (meaningless) felt like the first day I've really been adapted. I napped without needing an alarm clock, no oversleep, and very vivid dreams.
I hope this means zombie has finally dismounted.
I hope this means zombie has finally dismounted.
Daily Links
In keeping with my attempt to reduce my web procrastination to about 3 pomodoros a day, I installed Daily Links, a Chrome analog of Morning Coffee for Firefox.
I stuffed it with the sites I go to waste time, set the days, and now I can conveniently compress all the procrastination into a chunk of time. Very nice.
I stuffed it with the sites I go to waste time, set the days, and now I can conveniently compress all the procrastination into a chunk of time. Very nice.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 21*
I'm still sick. I gave myself the full 3am-7am cycle to sleep. I figure if I have to break schedule, I might as well do so by temporarily switching to Everyman (90-minute-multiple longer sleeps).
Screwing around with your schedule during adaptation is a huge obstacle, but Pure Doxyk strongly suggests you should if you get sick while still adapting.
Since I woke on my own, in the middle of a dream, after about 3 90-minute cycles, I take this as a good sign. It means I'm not sleep-deprived, just in need of more sleep to counter this cold.
That should be my metric. Only oversleep if you're sick, and only then by replacing a cycle with a core sleep. If you manage to oversleep that core nap, obviously your adaptation is still not past sleep-dep; just be aware it'll now take longer to get out of adaptation.
Screwing around with your schedule during adaptation is a huge obstacle, but Pure Doxyk strongly suggests you should if you get sick while still adapting.
Since I woke on my own, in the middle of a dream, after about 3 90-minute cycles, I take this as a good sign. It means I'm not sleep-deprived, just in need of more sleep to counter this cold.
That should be my metric. Only oversleep if you're sick, and only then by replacing a cycle with a core sleep. If you manage to oversleep that core nap, obviously your adaptation is still not past sleep-dep; just be aware it'll now take longer to get out of adaptation.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
#polyphasers
I created a page for #polyphasers on FreeNode.
It comes with a nifty google spreadsheet to help us sync our naps with the use of those excellent motivational tools, peer pressure and shame.
If you want to be added, just contact me with your nap schedule, name, and timezone.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 20* Decision
Halfway through PureDoxyk's Ubersleep, I decided to make today a demarcation between pre and post Ubersleep. Blogposts will have an asterisk after the number to indicate this second stage.
No more fiddling and tweaking with my schedule for at least a month or two.
My 7pm nap is moved to 1am, and I'm not moving it back or experimenting with it.
I adapted a big dry-erase whiteboard to be my nap record. Each nap gets marked, and can get an optional note, immediately after waking. I want to see exactly where I have problems, and exactly where I am tempted to make changes.
No more fiddling and tweaking with my schedule for at least a month or two.
My 7pm nap is moved to 1am, and I'm not moving it back or experimenting with it.
I adapted a big dry-erase whiteboard to be my nap record. Each nap gets marked, and can get an optional note, immediately after waking. I want to see exactly where I have problems, and exactly where I am tempted to make changes.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 19
Well, the nap urge has been coming on schedule, even after that giant setback.
Annoyingly enough, I still feel sniffly. Note to self: find out how others successfully dealt with colds/allergies.
Now I'm going to abandon my free-running naps a bit, and go back to strict scheduling for a while. I don't know what effect the benedryl sleep will have had.
Annoyingly enough, I still feel sniffly. Note to self: find out how others successfully dealt with colds/allergies.
Now I'm going to abandon my free-running naps a bit, and go back to strict scheduling for a while. I don't know what effect the benedryl sleep will have had.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 19 decision
To stay up til 7a.m. tomorrow and resume the cycle, or try to get back on the cycle today?
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 18 Aftermath
It turns out that during polyphasic sleep, two benedryl will knock you out for almost 3 full cycles.
This means war, amygdala. You thought you had it bad in the first three days? I will construct nanomachines capable of breaching the blood-brain barrier, identifying the cells involved in sleep, and raping them. With tiny nanoscale dildos.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Amygdala, shit will not stand.
This means war, amygdala. You thought you had it bad in the first three days? I will construct nanomachines capable of breaching the blood-brain barrier, identifying the cells involved in sleep, and raping them. With tiny nanoscale dildos.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Amygdala, shit will not stand.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 18
This is going to be odd.
Over the last day, I got more and more sniffly and sneezy. Allergies or a cold or something.
I don't know what would happen if I took a decongestant, but I may have to. I imagine Sudafed knocking me out for 24 solid hours and such.
I need to approach this carefully. A coffee before each nap, and a decongestant afterwards. Maybe a coffee in the middle of a cycle to counteract the powerful sleepiness.
Over the last day, I got more and more sniffly and sneezy. Allergies or a cold or something.
I don't know what would happen if I took a decongestant, but I may have to. I imagine Sudafed knocking me out for 24 solid hours and such.
I need to approach this carefully. A coffee before each nap, and a decongestant afterwards. Maybe a coffee in the middle of a cycle to counteract the powerful sleepiness.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 17
Nothing much to say. It was a normal day, filled with normal things and activities and the occasional bowel-loosening Lovecraftian horror.
Even without trying to hit naps on schedule, the nap urge still hits with regularity.
It would be interesting to see if it's possible to reclaim the usefulness of nap clusters. Imagine being able to cram all the sleep you need into 5 or so naps packed within a 2 hour period. This is probably impossibly hard to do, though. I may try it once I've actually killed off nap clusters for good.
Even without trying to hit naps on schedule, the nap urge still hits with regularity.
It would be interesting to see if it's possible to reclaim the usefulness of nap clusters. Imagine being able to cram all the sleep you need into 5 or so naps packed within a 2 hour period. This is probably impossibly hard to do, though. I may try it once I've actually killed off nap clusters for good.
coi ba'e tornau
There are around 1,300 gismu (predicates) in Lojban. These were carefully selected to be equally influenced by (or distant from, if you prefer) the analogs in the six major natural languages. That is, there are very few blatant cognates, but each gismu should be slightly recognizable if you speak one of these languages. If you know English or Spanish, you can already read Esperanto. If you know English or Chinese, in contrast, Lojban will not seem to be entirely gibberish.
The pool of gismu was selected to broadly cover as much of human discourse as possible. Each is defined to be as general as possible. The goal is that the language evolve by combinatorially combining gismu to modify each other in precise ways, rather than introduce new gismu which have the potential to fracture the language.
This process of combinatoric modification comes about through tanru and lujvo. A tanru is, simply, two or more gismu placed together which modify each other according to strict rules of grammar in a manner almost identical to function composition. A melbi xanto is a "beautiful type of elephant" or a "beautiful elephant", never "elephantine beauty." To express "elephantine beauty", you say xanto melbi. Tanru allow for awesomely weird metaphors, most of which are accidental yet so striking that you record them for posterity. When you make errors in Lojban, they will often express such strikingly weird imagery that you cannot help but notice them immediately.
A lujvo is simply syntactic sugar for a tanru. You construct a lujvo by combining the elements of the gismu (rafsi) in precise ways. A rafsi is similar to a syllable in that it is a recognizable component of a gismu, yet differs in that each rafsi must uniquely correlate to a single gismu. In other words, it's a hash key. {'mel' => 'melbi', 'mle' => 'melbi', 'puk' => 'pluka' ...}
All lujvo follow the same modification rules as tanru, thus allowing you to form new words which have a syntactically unambiguous meaning. Semantically, they may sound more like Gary Busey on a robo trip (mlatu + xagji = latxagji = "a cat-like hunger"), but your audience will know unambiguously that you did not mean "hungry cat" or "a hungry kind of cat."
lujvo are the second most powerful components of Lojban. They provide awesomely powerful expressiveness, similar to macros in Lisp. You're building the language up (or down) to the abstraction you need.
The most powerful components of Lojban are cmavo. These are connective words, adding structure and specificity to the language. Cmavo express spaciotemporal relationships, emotional states, the epistemological status of prepositions, grammatical relations, the works. Without cmavo, Lojban is a castrated Tarzan strung up on LSD, capable of only expressing crude yet sometimes bizarre propositions. With cmavo, Lojban is capable of expressing any degree of complexity with regard to meta-level discourse, quirks of spacetime and epistemological parodoxes, or grammatical pedantry. Although there are fewer cmavo than there are gismu, mastering them is far harder: cmavo are the means by which Lojban makes explicit things which in natural languages are either implicit, or absent. It takes some time to get used to the notion of explicitly stating some aspect of your thought which previously you did not notice existed at all.
The pool of gismu was selected to broadly cover as much of human discourse as possible. Each is defined to be as general as possible. The goal is that the language evolve by combinatorially combining gismu to modify each other in precise ways, rather than introduce new gismu which have the potential to fracture the language.
This process of combinatoric modification comes about through tanru and lujvo. A tanru is, simply, two or more gismu placed together which modify each other according to strict rules of grammar in a manner almost identical to function composition. A melbi xanto is a "beautiful type of elephant" or a "beautiful elephant", never "elephantine beauty." To express "elephantine beauty", you say xanto melbi. Tanru allow for awesomely weird metaphors, most of which are accidental yet so striking that you record them for posterity. When you make errors in Lojban, they will often express such strikingly weird imagery that you cannot help but notice them immediately.
A lujvo is simply syntactic sugar for a tanru. You construct a lujvo by combining the elements of the gismu (rafsi) in precise ways. A rafsi is similar to a syllable in that it is a recognizable component of a gismu, yet differs in that each rafsi must uniquely correlate to a single gismu. In other words, it's a hash key. {'mel' => 'melbi', 'mle' => 'melbi', 'puk' => 'pluka' ...}
All lujvo follow the same modification rules as tanru, thus allowing you to form new words which have a syntactically unambiguous meaning. Semantically, they may sound more like Gary Busey on a robo trip (mlatu + xagji = latxagji = "a cat-like hunger"), but your audience will know unambiguously that you did not mean "hungry cat" or "a hungry kind of cat."
lujvo are the second most powerful components of Lojban. They provide awesomely powerful expressiveness, similar to macros in Lisp. You're building the language up (or down) to the abstraction you need.
The most powerful components of Lojban are cmavo. These are connective words, adding structure and specificity to the language. Cmavo express spaciotemporal relationships, emotional states, the epistemological status of prepositions, grammatical relations, the works. Without cmavo, Lojban is a castrated Tarzan strung up on LSD, capable of only expressing crude yet sometimes bizarre propositions. With cmavo, Lojban is capable of expressing any degree of complexity with regard to meta-level discourse, quirks of spacetime and epistemological parodoxes, or grammatical pedantry. Although there are fewer cmavo than there are gismu, mastering them is far harder: cmavo are the means by which Lojban makes explicit things which in natural languages are either implicit, or absent. It takes some time to get used to the notion of explicitly stating some aspect of your thought which previously you did not notice existed at all.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 16
Ok, so I'm writing a write up of day 16 on the 17th day. Who cares, I'm off the diurnal cycle.
I felt surprisingly good today, even though my *nix installation binge replaced a few naps. Between about 10 and 2.pm. I had a napping cluster, maybe getting one hour of actual napping in amidst the zombie mode. I woke up temporarily disoriented from a rem nap; the disorientation went away quickly and I didn't feel the urge to nap again.
After work I took a nap normally, and managed to wake without an alarm clock.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 15
I went on a *nix installation binge at about 11 p.m. last night. I skipped that nap, the one after, and the next one.
I only ended up napping around 10:00 this morning.
I prepared myself for the inevitable nap cluster, by creating a staggered alarm schedule. I figured that one of these alarms would catch me in the decreasing rem sleep in each nap, rather than the deeper sleep that makes you a grizzly bear when you wake up.
It worked, and it didn't. I spent 4 hours alternately zombieish and napping. But on the last nap, the idea worked perfectly. It woke me up right in the middle of a dream, and I didn't feel like going back to sleep.
I feel pretty good now, though still a bit disoriented about time and dates. This seems to happen for a while if something goes wrong.
Hopefully this is the last nap cluster. I'm onto them.
I only ended up napping around 10:00 this morning.
I prepared myself for the inevitable nap cluster, by creating a staggered alarm schedule. I figured that one of these alarms would catch me in the decreasing rem sleep in each nap, rather than the deeper sleep that makes you a grizzly bear when you wake up.
It worked, and it didn't. I spent 4 hours alternately zombieish and napping. But on the last nap, the idea worked perfectly. It woke me up right in the middle of a dream, and I didn't feel like going back to sleep.
I feel pretty good now, though still a bit disoriented about time and dates. This seems to happen for a while if something goes wrong.
Hopefully this is the last nap cluster. I'm onto them.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 14
I'm going to try out free-running naps for this next week.
I think my schedule will remain about the same, with me getting sleepy in 4 to 6 hour intervals. It might shift a bit, but I know I'm able to skip naps and extend cycles if I do it carefully.
I'll also try to consistently wake before the alarm. One way that seems to work is to drink coffee immediately before a nap. In about 25 minutes the caffeine hits your bloodstream, making it hard to fall back to sleep or into deeper sleep. Not only that, but it boosts your alertness until it is metabolized about 4 hours later: just in time for your next nap. So far this has worked pretty well, and lets me continue drinking coffee. As long as it's before a nap, in 4-6 hour intervals, and less than about 6 cups at a time, it can do no harm.
Another thing I'm going to experiment with is my recently heightened lucidity in dreams. I really want to see if I can pick up a dream from the nap before.
Oh, and long term memory conversion. I'm going to experiment and try to find out whether a nap accomplishes the same "ingraining" of memory as a full sleep. From most accounts, it does. But is there a sweet spot of time before a nap where what you learn is most easily stored in ROM? That would be very cool to know.
lo do kerlo ba melbi nenri lo mi kerlo baktu
I think my schedule will remain about the same, with me getting sleepy in 4 to 6 hour intervals. It might shift a bit, but I know I'm able to skip naps and extend cycles if I do it carefully.
I'll also try to consistently wake before the alarm. One way that seems to work is to drink coffee immediately before a nap. In about 25 minutes the caffeine hits your bloodstream, making it hard to fall back to sleep or into deeper sleep. Not only that, but it boosts your alertness until it is metabolized about 4 hours later: just in time for your next nap. So far this has worked pretty well, and lets me continue drinking coffee. As long as it's before a nap, in 4-6 hour intervals, and less than about 6 cups at a time, it can do no harm.
Another thing I'm going to experiment with is my recently heightened lucidity in dreams. I really want to see if I can pick up a dream from the nap before.
Oh, and long term memory conversion. I'm going to experiment and try to find out whether a nap accomplishes the same "ingraining" of memory as a full sleep. From most accounts, it does. But is there a sweet spot of time before a nap where what you learn is most easily stored in ROM? That would be very cool to know.
lo do kerlo ba melbi nenri lo mi kerlo baktu
Posted from phone
Idea: an android app which posts video of cops directly to watchthewatchmen.com or something like this. users can vote and seek legal representation.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 13 thoughts
Since I started counting at zero, this is 2 weeks into my experiment.
I've been having far fewer nap clusters, but it's still annoying to not have 4 full cycles of non-zombie mode.
The zombie on my back is getting lighter, but not fast enough. This is probably due to that skipped nap each day.
On the bright side: even zombie mode for a few hours is a better use of my time than hibernating. At least in zombie mode you can take notes on what you should do, save bookmarks of things you intend to read when alert, etc. You might not be able to study efficiently in zombie mode, but you can damn well note where you're having difficulties. Trust me: you know you have learned something when you still understand it in zombie mode.
I don't know if I want to continue my nap schedule, "reboot" monophasically to start from a blank slate for the next two weeks, or modify my schedule to become somewhat free-running. The first appeals to me, but I think I could improve things. The second makes some kind of sense, but I don't know if it will have the effect I want. The third is, currently, the most attractive.
If I do switch to a looser free-napping schedule, I'll still want to maintain my cyclical activities. I'd like them punctuated by naps, but having a nap mid-reading doesn't seem very harmful.
I've been having far fewer nap clusters, but it's still annoying to not have 4 full cycles of non-zombie mode.
The zombie on my back is getting lighter, but not fast enough. This is probably due to that skipped nap each day.
On the bright side: even zombie mode for a few hours is a better use of my time than hibernating. At least in zombie mode you can take notes on what you should do, save bookmarks of things you intend to read when alert, etc. You might not be able to study efficiently in zombie mode, but you can damn well note where you're having difficulties. Trust me: you know you have learned something when you still understand it in zombie mode.
I don't know if I want to continue my nap schedule, "reboot" monophasically to start from a blank slate for the next two weeks, or modify my schedule to become somewhat free-running. The first appeals to me, but I think I could improve things. The second makes some kind of sense, but I don't know if it will have the effect I want. The third is, currently, the most attractive.
If I do switch to a looser free-napping schedule, I'll still want to maintain my cyclical activities. I'd like them punctuated by naps, but having a nap mid-reading doesn't seem very harmful.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 12
Nothing much new, except my naps have much more vivid dreams.
My 2 p.m.ish nap had a very strange dream. When I woke, I felt refreshed but oddly disjointed. I somehow could not quite understand time for about 10 minutes after waking up. The date and time didn't mean anything to me.
If you intend on trying polyphasic sleep, learn a language at the same time. It doesn't matter if it's a programming language or a moist robot language. You will need a benchmark for your learning retention and cognitive skills. A new language fits the bill perfectly.
For one thing, it's obvious whether you are progressing. You either start picking up words and syntax, or you don't. New text is either gibberish, or makes sense. The success of your adaptation is directly proportional to the ease with which you improve your skills, and these skills are immediately evident. You'll know how much less you go into zombie mode by how much more you can understand.
For another, it provides a definite and visible reward to your new waking time. You are learning a new language while everyone else is hibernating. How cool is that?
Then, there is the fact that you will know exactly when you need a nap. It's naptime when the words become gibberish again.
My 2 p.m.ish nap had a very strange dream. When I woke, I felt refreshed but oddly disjointed. I somehow could not quite understand time for about 10 minutes after waking up. The date and time didn't mean anything to me.
If you intend on trying polyphasic sleep, learn a language at the same time. It doesn't matter if it's a programming language or a moist robot language. You will need a benchmark for your learning retention and cognitive skills. A new language fits the bill perfectly.
For one thing, it's obvious whether you are progressing. You either start picking up words and syntax, or you don't. New text is either gibberish, or makes sense. The success of your adaptation is directly proportional to the ease with which you improve your skills, and these skills are immediately evident. You'll know how much less you go into zombie mode by how much more you can understand.
For another, it provides a definite and visible reward to your new waking time. You are learning a new language while everyone else is hibernating. How cool is that?
Then, there is the fact that you will know exactly when you need a nap. It's naptime when the words become gibberish again.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 11
After the weirdness of the last few days, today was pretty boring regarding sleep.
I ran through a bunch of smart.fm lessons, got reminded of Endgame:Singularity and began playing it a bit, and noticed an odd integer overflow bug in the cash display that I'm going to find and fix.
I felt lucid and pretty normal the entire day. I did shift my naps about an hour back, for no good reason but that I wanted to sync with some Aussies and Italians in an irc channel.
My 8pm nap was odd. Really, really odd. I had an elaborate dream that felt like hours going by. I couldn't believe it when my alarm went off- "I must have overslept. What the hell."
A thing to note: I found a Time article on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion schedule. It turns out his method was to simply nap when he got tired. It just happened to work out that he got tired in 6 hour intervals. This makes me wonder if later generations seized voodoo-like on the intervals, rather than the logic behind them. Six hours was as long as Fuller could go before getting tired and sloppy; there's nothing magical about that number.
Maybe focusing more on the schedule than the reason for it, is the reason why so many polyphasers have failed. I'll have to study their blogs and see if there's a correlation between success (however temporary), and free Fuller-style napping.
I ran through a bunch of smart.fm lessons, got reminded of Endgame:Singularity and began playing it a bit, and noticed an odd integer overflow bug in the cash display that I'm going to find and fix.
I felt lucid and pretty normal the entire day. I did shift my naps about an hour back, for no good reason but that I wanted to sync with some Aussies and Italians in an irc channel.
My 8pm nap was odd. Really, really odd. I had an elaborate dream that felt like hours going by. I couldn't believe it when my alarm went off- "I must have overslept. What the hell."
A thing to note: I found a Time article on Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion schedule. It turns out his method was to simply nap when he got tired. It just happened to work out that he got tired in 6 hour intervals. This makes me wonder if later generations seized voodoo-like on the intervals, rather than the logic behind them. Six hours was as long as Fuller could go before getting tired and sloppy; there's nothing magical about that number.
Maybe focusing more on the schedule than the reason for it, is the reason why so many polyphasers have failed. I'll have to study their blogs and see if there's a correlation between success (however temporary), and free Fuller-style napping.
No more nap clusters
I decided already. No more nap clusters. Why wait til Wednesday when in the coming days I'll have wasted 9 hours as a napping zombie?
I expect that giving up nap clusters will bring me right back to the sleepdep of day 3, a raging illucidity distributed throughout the day. But that should go away in a few days of strict scheduling.
I expect that giving up nap clusters will bring me right back to the sleepdep of day 3, a raging illucidity distributed throughout the day. But that should go away in a few days of strict scheduling.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 10
After finally killing off that 17 hour stretch of wakefulness with a nap cluster at 7 a.m., I felt normal throughout the rest of the day. Another nap before work, another after, skewed an hour later, mainly to accommodate #storytime rather than work.
During all of this I didn't feel especially energetic or sleep deprived.
I then had an idea which may turn out disastrous, or really helpful.
I resisted the urge to "reboot" my sleep cycle: just staying awake as long as I could, then crashing monophasically. Apparently many polyphasers have tried it once every so often. Unfortunately, most of them are no longer around the polyphasic community to recommend it.
Instead of rebooting, I simply set my alarm 25 minutes later. Lay down, get up at the alarm, and do something. Set alarm again, repeat. I did this until I actually fell asleep during a nap.
But, I noticed that my nap clusters have a regular feature: I experience four of these 45 minute nap+pomodoros before the zombie mode disappears. That's 180 minutes, three hours.
Three hours of zombie mode and naps, just to get 100 minutes of naps.
Clearly this is annoying the hell out of me.
There are a couple things I'm thinking of trying:
1. Simply man up. Either stay up normally til the next cycle, or set an alarm 3 hours later and sleep the whole way through. This way is basically wasting, regularly, one cycle a day. Granted, it's 3 hours of stumblenapping zombie mode, versus 8 hours of a monophasic hibernator. But still, the principle of the thing.
2. "Reboot" not into monophasic sleep, but the Everyman cycle. Simply remove the waking from a nap cluster and I've got a 3 hour core nap right there. This seems fishy though, because I will be replacing 100 minutes of low-deep-sleep naps with 3 hours of unregulated wild sleep. If I can guarantee that such a reboot once in a while won't exacerbate things, I may try it.
3. Try out Steve Pavlina's free-style naps. Ensure that each 24 hour period contains 6 naps, and leave it at that. This may initially distribute that sleep-dep zombie mode throughout the day, but then the naps may also migrate throughout the day as well. I don' t know about this.
I'll continue what I'm doing now until wednesday and the end of week 2. Then I'll decide what to do.
During all of this I didn't feel especially energetic or sleep deprived.
I then had an idea which may turn out disastrous, or really helpful.
I resisted the urge to "reboot" my sleep cycle: just staying awake as long as I could, then crashing monophasically. Apparently many polyphasers have tried it once every so often. Unfortunately, most of them are no longer around the polyphasic community to recommend it.
Instead of rebooting, I simply set my alarm 25 minutes later. Lay down, get up at the alarm, and do something. Set alarm again, repeat. I did this until I actually fell asleep during a nap.
But, I noticed that my nap clusters have a regular feature: I experience four of these 45 minute nap+pomodoros before the zombie mode disappears. That's 180 minutes, three hours.
Three hours of zombie mode and naps, just to get 100 minutes of naps.
Clearly this is annoying the hell out of me.
There are a couple things I'm thinking of trying:
1. Simply man up. Either stay up normally til the next cycle, or set an alarm 3 hours later and sleep the whole way through. This way is basically wasting, regularly, one cycle a day. Granted, it's 3 hours of stumblenapping zombie mode, versus 8 hours of a monophasic hibernator. But still, the principle of the thing.
2. "Reboot" not into monophasic sleep, but the Everyman cycle. Simply remove the waking from a nap cluster and I've got a 3 hour core nap right there. This seems fishy though, because I will be replacing 100 minutes of low-deep-sleep naps with 3 hours of unregulated wild sleep. If I can guarantee that such a reboot once in a while won't exacerbate things, I may try it.
3. Try out Steve Pavlina's free-style naps. Ensure that each 24 hour period contains 6 naps, and leave it at that. This may initially distribute that sleep-dep zombie mode throughout the day, but then the naps may also migrate throughout the day as well. I don' t know about this.
I'll continue what I'm doing now until wednesday and the end of week 2. Then I'll decide what to do.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 10 All good
I finally fell asleep at about 7:30 a.m, about 17 hours after my last nap. I then clustered my naps til noon.
I feel fine, now. Even though I don't remember dreams from any of the naps, and the interstices between the naps turned me into a zombie.
I think I'll be able to hit my next nap normally, without any oddness.
I feel fine, now. Even though I don't remember dreams from any of the naps, and the interstices between the naps turned me into a zombie.
I think I'll be able to hit my next nap normally, without any oddness.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 10 a bad start
This is going to be Chinese Interesting.
In my last post, I described how I skipped my 7 nap without grogginess or zombie mode.
A bit before 11, my friend came over and we talked for a few hours. During the conversation, I ended up skipping my 11 nap. It has now been over 12 hours since my last nap, and I don't really feel groggy or deranged.
Oh, I'm going to pay for this somehow.
In my last post, I described how I skipped my 7 nap without grogginess or zombie mode.
A bit before 11, my friend came over and we talked for a few hours. During the conversation, I ended up skipping my 11 nap. It has now been over 12 hours since my last nap, and I don't really feel groggy or deranged.
Oh, I'm going to pay for this somehow.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 9
This morning I felt like utter shit, a side effect of my caffeine experiment yesterday.
Oddly, my 2 p.m. nap completely refreshed me. I didn't experience a 7 p.m. descent into a zombie. I've still feel normal and energetic, even though I skipped the nap.
Hopefully that zombie grogginess served the purpose of making that 2 p.m. nap more effective. Even more hopefully, having already had such an beneficent nap will make it easier to repeat.
Oddly, my 2 p.m. nap completely refreshed me. I didn't experience a 7 p.m. descent into a zombie. I've still feel normal and energetic, even though I skipped the nap.
Hopefully that zombie grogginess served the purpose of making that 2 p.m. nap more effective. Even more hopefully, having already had such an beneficent nap will make it easier to repeat.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 9 Middle
Odd morning. Through the night I read about Lojban and studied it using smart.fm and mnemosyne.
A little before my 7 nap, I started getting groggy and fuzzy. Sometime after my 7 nap (dreamless), in the middle of a mnemosyne sequence on numbers, I was smashed by a wave of grogginess. Powerful grogginess.
To prevent another nap cluster, I went out and waited outside a nearby bookstore until it opened. It's odd to feel like a lurching zombie out in public. The temptation to simply beat on the windows with my hands while moaning was great.
I browsed a while. Moved a copy of Emoto's water-memory crap from the science section to the gay and lesbian section. All the while this utter fuzziness was buzzing around in my head.
Even the 11 nap didn't help much. For the past few hours I've been in a groggy jamais vu state pretty much fit only for reading offline.
Note: I directly blame my coffee experiment yesterday. It did keep me from crashing due to skipping the 7 p.m. nap, but I'm feeling the effects today.
I've got work in a while. I'll try to figure out some way of getting in another nap, and mitigating the work-induced nap shift.
A little before my 7 nap, I started getting groggy and fuzzy. Sometime after my 7 nap (dreamless), in the middle of a mnemosyne sequence on numbers, I was smashed by a wave of grogginess. Powerful grogginess.
To prevent another nap cluster, I went out and waited outside a nearby bookstore until it opened. It's odd to feel like a lurching zombie out in public. The temptation to simply beat on the windows with my hands while moaning was great.
I browsed a while. Moved a copy of Emoto's water-memory crap from the science section to the gay and lesbian section. All the while this utter fuzziness was buzzing around in my head.
Even the 11 nap didn't help much. For the past few hours I've been in a groggy jamais vu state pretty much fit only for reading offline.
Note: I directly blame my coffee experiment yesterday. It did keep me from crashing due to skipping the 7 p.m. nap, but I'm feeling the effects today.
I've got work in a while. I'll try to figure out some way of getting in another nap, and mitigating the work-induced nap shift.
mi na cikna
My last few naps were pretty good, full of dreams.
I still feel a bit groggy, but nowhere near as bad as previous days. I'm spending this cycle talking in #lojban, reading the Lojban Reference Grammar, and having fun making an ass out of myself in such a precise language.
When I get a hang of it, I think I'll make a habit of switching to thinking in it when sleepy or groggy or distracted. Lojban makes it very obvious when you are slipping a cog, and that little bit of effort spent almost literally compiling your utterance is a godsend for avoiding sloppy sleep-deprived speech.
I still feel a bit groggy, but nowhere near as bad as previous days. I'm spending this cycle talking in #lojban, reading the Lojban Reference Grammar, and having fun making an ass out of myself in such a precise language.
When I get a hang of it, I think I'll make a habit of switching to thinking in it when sleepy or groggy or distracted. Lojban makes it very obvious when you are slipping a cog, and that little bit of effort spent almost literally compiling your utterance is a godsend for avoiding sloppy sleep-deprived speech.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 9
I managed to avoid the 7 p.m. wooziness by having a cup of coffee at 3 p.m., and one when I would otherwise be taking that nap. By the time my 11 p.m. nap rolled around my system was clear and I had a normal nap.
Not much else to report. I hope my lucid dreams continue, and spread throughout every cycle.
Not much else to report. I hope my lucid dreams continue, and spread throughout every cycle.
Friday, June 11, 2010
.ui
From #lojban on irc:
[23:25] <pookleblinky> How would you say "polyphasic sleep"?
[23:25] <pookleblinky> luvjo I would imagine would be "many short sleep" or such.
[23:26] <selckiku> hmm interesting question
[23:27] <pookleblinky> Perhaps a literal translation: "equally divided short naps throughout the day"
[23:27] <selckiku> many short sleep --> sortorsipna
[23:27] <teilr> .i mi bredi lo sipna ku
[23:27] <selckiku> i like "sortorsipna", it's pretty!
[23:28] <teilr> .i mi tatpi
[23:28] <pookleblinky> sor + tor + sipna The tor comes from tortei?
[23:28] <selckiku> pookleblinky, you basically came up with that lujvo, i just translated the parts for it! congratulations, you're a jvofi'i
[23:29] <selckiku> pookleblinky, tor is tordu
[23:29] <pookleblinky> And the sor from so'i
[23:25] <pookleblinky> How would you say "polyphasic sleep"?
[23:25] <pookleblinky> luvjo I would imagine would be "many short sleep" or such.
[23:26] <selckiku> hmm interesting question
[23:27] <pookleblinky> Perhaps a literal translation: "equally divided short naps throughout the day"
[23:27] <selckiku> many short sleep --> sortorsipna
[23:27] <teilr> .i mi bredi lo sipna ku
[23:27] <selckiku> i like "sortorsipna", it's pretty!
[23:28] <teilr> .i mi tatpi
[23:28] <pookleblinky> sor + tor + sipna The tor comes from tortei?
[23:28] <selckiku> pookleblinky, you basically came up with that lujvo, i just translated the parts for it! congratulations, you're a jvofi'i
[23:29] <selckiku> pookleblinky, tor is tordu
[23:29] <pookleblinky> And the sor from so'i
Schedule for Week 2 of Polyphasic Sleep
As I described before, this second week of being polyphasic will focus on more rigor.
The plan is simple: each cycle must contain something to keep me active, excited, and royally pissed that it must be interrupted by biological maintenance.
23:00 - 3:00 Lojban. At 4 hours a day or 2 full pomodoro cycles, this is plenty of time to become fluent quickly.
3:00 - 7:00 Reading. When do you get a chance to read for 4 hours, uninterrupted?
7:00 - 11:00 Coding. I figure that this is my problem cycle, and the best solution is to be doing something that punishes me for illogic and mistakes, rewards me for clear thinking, and, best of all, trains me in the vital art of prioritizing. If something is taking more than 4 hours to code, I am doing something wrong. Either I need to read up on things, discover a better design, or rethink the current design. This should be a great way of both keeping me occupied, and teaching me how to program effectively.
11:00 - 14:00 General studying. The emphasis here is on fluffless reading. This is the time to follow up on documentation I didn't have time for during my coding cycle, textbooks, tutorials, etc. Again, this is a task that punishes mistakes and fuzzy thinking, while rewarding clarity and logic; falling toward the end of my problem cycle it should be very useful.
14:00 - 22:00 Work.
22:00 - 23:00 Anything else I didn't get to.
While I don't expect to be able to rigorously isolate each cycle, the emphasis on a single mindset in each cycle should be easy to follow. I hope this will both keep me occupied, and have a side-effect of dropping me into the proper mindset.
The plan is simple: each cycle must contain something to keep me active, excited, and royally pissed that it must be interrupted by biological maintenance.
23:00 - 3:00 Lojban. At 4 hours a day or 2 full pomodoro cycles, this is plenty of time to become fluent quickly.
3:00 - 7:00 Reading. When do you get a chance to read for 4 hours, uninterrupted?
7:00 - 11:00 Coding. I figure that this is my problem cycle, and the best solution is to be doing something that punishes me for illogic and mistakes, rewards me for clear thinking, and, best of all, trains me in the vital art of prioritizing. If something is taking more than 4 hours to code, I am doing something wrong. Either I need to read up on things, discover a better design, or rethink the current design. This should be a great way of both keeping me occupied, and teaching me how to program effectively.
11:00 - 14:00 General studying. The emphasis here is on fluffless reading. This is the time to follow up on documentation I didn't have time for during my coding cycle, textbooks, tutorials, etc. Again, this is a task that punishes mistakes and fuzzy thinking, while rewarding clarity and logic; falling toward the end of my problem cycle it should be very useful.
14:00 - 22:00 Work.
22:00 - 23:00 Anything else I didn't get to.
While I don't expect to be able to rigorously isolate each cycle, the emphasis on a single mindset in each cycle should be easy to follow. I hope this will both keep me occupied, and have a side-effect of dropping me into the proper mindset.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 8ish
Gah.
Around 7 p.m. I began feeling incredibly shitty. Woozy, groggy, aimless. My sleep center was asking me why I wasn't taking a nap. Then gently poking me in the eyeballs. The pre-work nap + caffeine apparently didn't help.
When I got home, I took my scheduled 11 p.m. nap. And had a grand goddamn lucid dream. Woke up still feeling like toasted shit. Read for a bit, then took my compensatory mid-cycle nap. The lucid dream resumed. Woke up remembering it, but feeling almost as shitty as I did around 7.
All I was good for in those hours was reading NAND playing with my cat. Anything else threw an exception.
My 3 a.m. nap was disappointing, I couldn't continue the lucid dream. I woke up still feeling like crap.
This "crap" feeling I keep referring to is complex. It's more than just feeling groggy and incapable and exhausted. It's almost, in fact, exactly how my computer would feel if I booted into Fallback Mode: technically godlike powers but little to no multitasking, no real compartmentalizations, and no GUI.
It's very much a sense that you're operating in a temporary, restricted, protective limbo. You don't feel the urge to just lay down and take a nap. Yet you also don't feel the urge to do anything except what you're already doing. There's an odd, jangly abrupt flow to the world, jarring in the discontinuities. It's like going from GNU Screen back to a single shell and not being able to & a process.
Around 7 p.m. I began feeling incredibly shitty. Woozy, groggy, aimless. My sleep center was asking me why I wasn't taking a nap. Then gently poking me in the eyeballs. The pre-work nap + caffeine apparently didn't help.
When I got home, I took my scheduled 11 p.m. nap. And had a grand goddamn lucid dream. Woke up still feeling like toasted shit. Read for a bit, then took my compensatory mid-cycle nap. The lucid dream resumed. Woke up remembering it, but feeling almost as shitty as I did around 7.
All I was good for in those hours was reading NAND playing with my cat. Anything else threw an exception.
My 3 a.m. nap was disappointing, I couldn't continue the lucid dream. I woke up still feeling like crap.
This "crap" feeling I keep referring to is complex. It's more than just feeling groggy and incapable and exhausted. It's almost, in fact, exactly how my computer would feel if I booted into Fallback Mode: technically godlike powers but little to no multitasking, no real compartmentalizations, and no GUI.
It's very much a sense that you're operating in a temporary, restricted, protective limbo. You don't feel the urge to just lay down and take a nap. Yet you also don't feel the urge to do anything except what you're already doing. There's an odd, jangly abrupt flow to the world, jarring in the discontinuities. It's like going from GNU Screen back to a single shell and not being able to & a process.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Lucid nap
Odd. I had a lucid dream during my 7 a.m. nap. At one point I was hopping on furniture in a room full of sleeping people, trying to get to the highest point. And I had a reason for this. I purposely teleported just so I could wake everyone up by smashing a table full of newly-imagined glassware full of kittens.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
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.
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.
Light anomie, brainfart on polyphasic resources
I feel off today. Not sleepy, not bored, just a bit apathetic.
Around 2 p.m. and right now, I could feel a vague desire to nap, but I know it's just a decoy. Maybe I'll nap at 11 p.m.
I don't know if this morning was a quirk, caused by my schedule yesterday, or something ingrained in my sleep center. I think the former, given my ability to do things between the naps. Maybe I just didn't have enough to do.
The adjustment phase usually continues for 2 weeks, so I should be able to continue tweaking things and noticing the effects of changes I make.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to entering a polyphasic schedule is that there is no bug database. There is damned little documentation. When I install Arch, I can look up the most esoteric bugs, find people submitting patches for tiny quirks, submit my own bug reports, and browse seemingly endless guides on getting things set up right. Yet for hacking the human operating system, there is no analogous source. I can't look up a central place to find out the statistically most probable effects of doing X, Y, and Z, followed by precise advice on minimizing those effects.
Normally in this case a wiki would be the solution. But there is already a polyphasic wiki, and that seems to contain little data and links to long-dead blogs.
Well. If there's no FogBugz or Github for polyphasic sleep, I guess I'll have to hack one of my own.
The features should be simple:
1. Projects. It should be easy to submit your own announcement of entering polyphasic sleep, with links to your blog and the resources you are following.
2 Forking. Users should be able to fork existing projects. Bob Foo might really like the way Jane Bar is trying polyphasic sleep, so he should be able to easily fork her attempt and submit the diffs.
3. Bug database. Users should be able to submit replicable steps for producing bugs. No "I couldn't take a nap on schedule," but instead a list of activities they did prior to the bug, the details of the project they're following, etc. When I experience a bug in Xorg, I can instantly find out other users experiencing my exact same bug. This should also be possible for polyphasic sleep.
4. Community incentives. Badges, karma, voting, collaborative wiki howto's, irc channels, etc. Anything but the current state of affairs, which is a few uncoordinated sites with little concrete information and a Freenode channel seemingly tacked on. If it works for getting people to commit frequently, getting people to offer quality advice, and for getting people to filter informative hacker news, it will definitely work for establishing a committed community of polyphasers.
I'm thinking of thus forking Tricycle's Less Wrong repo as the best platform for this. It has everything needed except for an integrated bug database, which can be hacked out of the community wiki framework.
Around 2 p.m. and right now, I could feel a vague desire to nap, but I know it's just a decoy. Maybe I'll nap at 11 p.m.
I don't know if this morning was a quirk, caused by my schedule yesterday, or something ingrained in my sleep center. I think the former, given my ability to do things between the naps. Maybe I just didn't have enough to do.
The adjustment phase usually continues for 2 weeks, so I should be able to continue tweaking things and noticing the effects of changes I make.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to entering a polyphasic schedule is that there is no bug database. There is damned little documentation. When I install Arch, I can look up the most esoteric bugs, find people submitting patches for tiny quirks, submit my own bug reports, and browse seemingly endless guides on getting things set up right. Yet for hacking the human operating system, there is no analogous source. I can't look up a central place to find out the statistically most probable effects of doing X, Y, and Z, followed by precise advice on minimizing those effects.
Normally in this case a wiki would be the solution. But there is already a polyphasic wiki, and that seems to contain little data and links to long-dead blogs.
Well. If there's no FogBugz or Github for polyphasic sleep, I guess I'll have to hack one of my own.
The features should be simple:
1. Projects. It should be easy to submit your own announcement of entering polyphasic sleep, with links to your blog and the resources you are following.
2 Forking. Users should be able to fork existing projects. Bob Foo might really like the way Jane Bar is trying polyphasic sleep, so he should be able to easily fork her attempt and submit the diffs.
3. Bug database. Users should be able to submit replicable steps for producing bugs. No "I couldn't take a nap on schedule," but instead a list of activities they did prior to the bug, the details of the project they're following, etc. When I experience a bug in Xorg, I can instantly find out other users experiencing my exact same bug. This should also be possible for polyphasic sleep.
4. Community incentives. Badges, karma, voting, collaborative wiki howto's, irc channels, etc. Anything but the current state of affairs, which is a few uncoordinated sites with little concrete information and a Freenode channel seemingly tacked on. If it works for getting people to commit frequently, getting people to offer quality advice, and for getting people to filter informative hacker news, it will definitely work for establishing a committed community of polyphasers.
I'm thinking of thus forking Tricycle's Less Wrong repo as the best platform for this. It has everything needed except for an integrated bug database, which can be hacked out of the community wiki framework.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 7 morning
A setback. I pushed my 3 a.m. nap to about 5. Following that was basically a long sleep interspersed by my 25 minute nap alarms. I would wake up, read something on HN, then slip back to sleep. Wake up, check my mail, have a conversation on irc, then fall back to sleep.
This odd limbo of pseudo-wakefulness lasted til 11:30 a.m. At that point my 11:30 nap alarm went off and I woke feeling normal.
So, 2 cycles were wasted. Not by an entirely monophasic chunk of sleep, but by a weird half-way point of total uselessness.
I'm curious to see what the after-effects will be. I'm skipping my 2 p.m. nap because there's no point in closing my eyes for half an hour.
This odd limbo of pseudo-wakefulness lasted til 11:30 a.m. At that point my 11:30 nap alarm went off and I woke feeling normal.
So, 2 cycles were wasted. Not by an entirely monophasic chunk of sleep, but by a weird half-way point of total uselessness.
I'm curious to see what the after-effects will be. I'm skipping my 2 p.m. nap because there's no point in closing my eyes for half an hour.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 6
Nothing really to report. Today was a perfectly normal day except for sleeping in the form of 20 minute naps. No illucidity, no grogginess, no odd side effects.
Boring, really. The pre-nap meditations work well. I find the best way to get a successful nap is to meditate about 20 minutes before taking the nap. Meditate, then write down all the odd brainfarts you got, stretch, piss, and settle down for a nap. It clears the head of all the crap that would otherwise be flying around while trying to sleep, and seems to send a powerful "SLEEP NOW" signal to the body.
I may experiment now with bright lights after each nap. During the day, maybe go outside for a walk after each nap, etc.
Boring, really. The pre-nap meditations work well. I find the best way to get a successful nap is to meditate about 20 minutes before taking the nap. Meditate, then write down all the odd brainfarts you got, stretch, piss, and settle down for a nap. It clears the head of all the crap that would otherwise be flying around while trying to sleep, and seems to send a powerful "SLEEP NOW" signal to the body.
I may experiment now with bright lights after each nap. During the day, maybe go outside for a walk after each nap, etc.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 5
Odd day. I spent most of it at my friend's house helping him watch his son while the other son was in the hospital.
I had decided on skipping all naps til 11:00 this morning, but couldn't do it. It seems I'm on this 4-6 hour cycle already whether I want to be or not.
Oddly, my naps were mostly synchronized with those of his toddler.
Overall the day was lucid. The naps seemed deeper and more refreshing, and I very rarely babbled.
Right now is the time during which for the last 5 days I've been sleepy and groggy, yet my 7 a.m. nap has completely dispelled that. I don't feel sleepy at all. This is probably a big development, as I seem to have now become unmoored from that vestige of a monophasic urge.
I had decided on skipping all naps til 11:00 this morning, but couldn't do it. It seems I'm on this 4-6 hour cycle already whether I want to be or not.
Oddly, my naps were mostly synchronized with those of his toddler.
Overall the day was lucid. The naps seemed deeper and more refreshing, and I very rarely babbled.
Right now is the time during which for the last 5 days I've been sleepy and groggy, yet my 7 a.m. nap has completely dispelled that. I don't feel sleepy at all. This is probably a big development, as I seem to have now become unmoored from that vestige of a monophasic urge.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Sparta
Since it appears that outside of the 8 to noon window, I need half an hour of meditation pre-nap to achieve a REM nap, I'm going to fully embrace this madness.
No naps today. I'm going to try to stay awake until my 7 a.m nap tomorrow morning. One nap, then nothing until 11:00 p.m.
The idea is that I really would rather nap when I feel sleepy. But I only feel sleepy in that 8 to noon window. This measure should break that rhythm, providing me with two consistently successful nap points. After maybe two days, I'll be able to extend the schedule with more evenly spaced naps.
This means, of course, that for perhaps two days my sleep deprivation will be even greater than it is in a normal attempt at adjustment.
And any readers of my blog will delight in seeing me report as I devolve.
No naps today. I'm going to try to stay awake until my 7 a.m nap tomorrow morning. One nap, then nothing until 11:00 p.m.
The idea is that I really would rather nap when I feel sleepy. But I only feel sleepy in that 8 to noon window. This measure should break that rhythm, providing me with two consistently successful nap points. After maybe two days, I'll be able to extend the schedule with more evenly spaced naps.
This means, of course, that for perhaps two days my sleep deprivation will be even greater than it is in a normal attempt at adjustment.
And any readers of my blog will delight in seeing me report as I devolve.
Reading
It's about 2:30 p.m. now. I spent the the morning of this day off reading through a few of my new books, browsing qntm's fiction section, and generally being a lazy bastard.
Tangible books:
P.J. O'Rourke's "Give War a Chance"
Monte Cook's "The Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy Theories"
Damon Knight's "The Best From Orbit"
Intangible books:
Qntm fiction
Martin Fowler et al's "Refactoring"
Russ Olson's "Design Patterns in Ruby"
Note: still lucid, feeling well rested, and I haven't touched caffeine at all today.
Tangible books:
P.J. O'Rourke's "Give War a Chance"
Monte Cook's "The Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy Theories"
Damon Knight's "The Best From Orbit"
Intangible books:
Qntm fiction
Martin Fowler et al's "Refactoring"
Russ Olson's "Design Patterns in Ruby"
Note: still lucid, feeling well rested, and I haven't touched caffeine at all today.
A nap test
My next nap is supposed to be at 3 a.m., but I don't feel tired or sleepy at all.
I'm going to try something different. After I post this, I'm going to set an alarm for an hour ahead. At the same time, I've got another alarm set to play, at low volume, Harry Nilsson's "Coconut" in half an hour.
I'm going to try meditating for exactly half an hour, and, importantly, not allowing myself to descend into sleep until I pass the half hour mark.
If this works, I can try pushing the meditation down as far as possible while still inducing a nap.
Update after the nap.
I'm going to try something different. After I post this, I'm going to set an alarm for an hour ahead. At the same time, I've got another alarm set to play, at low volume, Harry Nilsson's "Coconut" in half an hour.
I'm going to try meditating for exactly half an hour, and, importantly, not allowing myself to descend into sleep until I pass the half hour mark.
If this works, I can try pushing the meditation down as far as possible while still inducing a nap.
Update after the nap.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 4
I spent the morning reading, went to a book sale and got a shit ton of books, worked, and skipped all my naps.
I figure that it doesn't do any good to lay down with my eyes closed and pretend it's adjusting my sleep schedule. I may get one REM nap, that way the entire day.
Since I started, the only consistently deep naps were in the late morning. Between 8 a.m. and noon, it seems, I can consistently take a 20 minute nap whenever I want. I can also wake easily from them, do things, and then take another nap.
Since this is my sleep center I'm hacking, I'm going to try something. I'm not tired at all now, despite having had maybe 6 hours of sleep in the past 96 hours or so. I've drastically cut my caffeine consumption since the beginning to one coffee before a shift of work. At this point, my only source of sleep is a few naps in the early morning, totalling about 2 hours.
Well, it's obviously possible. I may not be distributing those naps around the clock as I want, but at this point it's just a matter of waking from one nap, doing stuff for a few hours before the next, and thus distributing them around the clock.
Surprises: a few. I noticed that I really can't distinguish the last 4 days from each other. I have to check to divide them. Today, right now (12:48 a.m. on a Monday) feels indistinguishable from last Wednesday. This doesn't interfere at all with work, except that I'm completely unable to make sense when talking about recent events. "I don't know, it was either yesterday or 3 days ago."
My eyes have a bit of a problem adjusting to new light levels. Today (there it is again) I stepped outside for a cigarette, and came back in to find the indoors sheathed with a veil of darkness. This isn't just a matter of my pupils being constricted, taking in less light. It wasn't like going into a dark room and feeling the initial blindness gradually recede. I could see perfectly fine, but as if through a black filter. It felt, in fact, exactly like that scene in the Dark Tower where Roland and company have a disturbing sensation that underneath a bright spring day the world is darker than it should be. I was forcibly reminded of the neuroscientific studies on how the mind re-calibrates under different lighting conditions to provide the illusion of consistent colors. I have no idea why this should be so, and I plan to experiment with this.
As I mentioned before, I've long had an odd sleep schedule. I know what sleep deprivation feels like. Have you ever noticed that sleepiness can pass a threshold beyond which it suddenly disappears? Stay awake long enough and you'll pass through a period of utter tiredness, which then disappears. You'll find yourself completely unable to sleep til the next period.
This now happens every few hours. I'll be hit with a sudden sleepiness which passes just as suddenly. A few cycles ago, this happened about 20 minutes before a nap. I looked at my alarm, content that this time I'll sleep like a baby (literally). By the time my nap alarm popped up a window "naptime. See you in 20" I was back to normal alertness and entirely unable to sleep. Since this seems to occur every 4 hours or so, it might be worth it to drop timed schedules and simply set an alarm when they occur. I note that this is what Steve Pavlina did; at some point he simply began napping when he felt the urge rather than follow a strict schedule.
Motor skills. My typing speed seems the same, and I haven't been falling over. In fact, I seem to have slightly faster reflexes than usual. Today I dropped a mug and caught it with the same hand. My reading speed seems the same. I haven't noticed any of the usual severe sleepdep problems like rereading a sentence over and over. problems like rereading a sentence over and over.
By the end of the week I should be consistently achieving REM sleep on each nap. And, each nap should be spaced by hours of alertness. I'm definitely seeing this through. I've already probably outlasted a large percentile of bloggers who attempted this; the distribution is almost certainly a Poisson distribution with a very long tail after maybe 2 days.
I figure that it doesn't do any good to lay down with my eyes closed and pretend it's adjusting my sleep schedule. I may get one REM nap, that way the entire day.
Since I started, the only consistently deep naps were in the late morning. Between 8 a.m. and noon, it seems, I can consistently take a 20 minute nap whenever I want. I can also wake easily from them, do things, and then take another nap.
Since this is my sleep center I'm hacking, I'm going to try something. I'm not tired at all now, despite having had maybe 6 hours of sleep in the past 96 hours or so. I've drastically cut my caffeine consumption since the beginning to one coffee before a shift of work. At this point, my only source of sleep is a few naps in the early morning, totalling about 2 hours.
Well, it's obviously possible. I may not be distributing those naps around the clock as I want, but at this point it's just a matter of waking from one nap, doing stuff for a few hours before the next, and thus distributing them around the clock.
Surprises: a few. I noticed that I really can't distinguish the last 4 days from each other. I have to check to divide them. Today, right now (12:48 a.m. on a Monday) feels indistinguishable from last Wednesday. This doesn't interfere at all with work, except that I'm completely unable to make sense when talking about recent events. "I don't know, it was either yesterday or 3 days ago."
My eyes have a bit of a problem adjusting to new light levels. Today (there it is again) I stepped outside for a cigarette, and came back in to find the indoors sheathed with a veil of darkness. This isn't just a matter of my pupils being constricted, taking in less light. It wasn't like going into a dark room and feeling the initial blindness gradually recede. I could see perfectly fine, but as if through a black filter. It felt, in fact, exactly like that scene in the Dark Tower where Roland and company have a disturbing sensation that underneath a bright spring day the world is darker than it should be. I was forcibly reminded of the neuroscientific studies on how the mind re-calibrates under different lighting conditions to provide the illusion of consistent colors. I have no idea why this should be so, and I plan to experiment with this.
As I mentioned before, I've long had an odd sleep schedule. I know what sleep deprivation feels like. Have you ever noticed that sleepiness can pass a threshold beyond which it suddenly disappears? Stay awake long enough and you'll pass through a period of utter tiredness, which then disappears. You'll find yourself completely unable to sleep til the next period.
This now happens every few hours. I'll be hit with a sudden sleepiness which passes just as suddenly. A few cycles ago, this happened about 20 minutes before a nap. I looked at my alarm, content that this time I'll sleep like a baby (literally). By the time my nap alarm popped up a window "naptime. See you in 20" I was back to normal alertness and entirely unable to sleep. Since this seems to occur every 4 hours or so, it might be worth it to drop timed schedules and simply set an alarm when they occur. I note that this is what Steve Pavlina did; at some point he simply began napping when he felt the urge rather than follow a strict schedule.
Motor skills. My typing speed seems the same, and I haven't been falling over. In fact, I seem to have slightly faster reflexes than usual. Today I dropped a mug and caught it with the same hand. My reading speed seems the same. I haven't noticed any of the usual severe sleepdep problems like rereading a sentence over and over. problems like rereading a sentence over and over.
By the end of the week I should be consistently achieving REM sleep on each nap. And, each nap should be spaced by hours of alertness. I'm definitely seeing this through. I've already probably outlasted a large percentile of bloggers who attempted this; the distribution is almost certainly a Poisson distribution with a very long tail after maybe 2 days.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Book sale of death
I was remarkably lucid today. I went to a $3/bag booksale run by suspicious old ladies, and stocked up on pulp scifi. I also found a copy of ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". Very nice.
I decided to skip my 7:00 nap, and wasn't able to take a 2:00 nap. I'll make it up in the wee morning.
I decided to skip my 7:00 nap, and wasn't able to take a 2:00 nap. I'll make it up in the wee morning.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 3
I can't think in terms of days.
After work on Friday (the day before yesterday that still feels like today, and would have even monophasically because damn it 3:30 a.m is an edge case in human language), I went over to my sister and her fiancee's house.
And then I proceeded to slowly go deranged, as described in my last post.
At one point in the morning (saturday morning), we went to a flea market. Then the oddness started.
Gripped in the terrible impression that life is an independent movie of which I am only an extra, I began stumbling about the clutter pretty much speaking to myself. I remember at one point picking up and carrying around a lamp in the shape of a grizzly bear holding in its grizzly paw a tinier grizzly bear. At another point I was waving a $4 machete around while searching for a sharpei I had befriended moments earlier.
I ended up only buying the book "The Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy Theories". I still regret putting down my lampish grizzly friend.
Afterward I tried to take a nap in the car on the way to work, but simply couldn't. Instead, I argued at length, with passion, about Danny DeVito. Other than DeVito, I have no idea what I was arguing about.
Work passed by in a pleasant delirium with interruptions of hebephrenic giggling and sudden moments of terrible gravity and sobriety. Stuff got done whether I giggled or reflected on the nature of the uncaring universe.
After work, I got ready to take my 11:00 nap. Basically by holding my cat as I wandered about the house singing "If I were a Deep One". Then I slept.
And slept right up until the alarm for my 3:00 a.m. nap.
I don't consider this a setback in the schedule, though. Even an obviously severe case of sleep deprivation went entirely away in 4 hours of sleep. Really, I feel completely refreshed. This might not be a good example of Uberman, but it shows that the Everyman schedule should definitely be possible for regular people.
Now I'm going to read until my next nap.
After work on Friday (the day before yesterday that still feels like today, and would have even monophasically because damn it 3:30 a.m is an edge case in human language), I went over to my sister and her fiancee's house.
And then I proceeded to slowly go deranged, as described in my last post.
At one point in the morning (saturday morning), we went to a flea market. Then the oddness started.
Gripped in the terrible impression that life is an independent movie of which I am only an extra, I began stumbling about the clutter pretty much speaking to myself. I remember at one point picking up and carrying around a lamp in the shape of a grizzly bear holding in its grizzly paw a tinier grizzly bear. At another point I was waving a $4 machete around while searching for a sharpei I had befriended moments earlier.
I ended up only buying the book "The Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy Theories". I still regret putting down my lampish grizzly friend.
Afterward I tried to take a nap in the car on the way to work, but simply couldn't. Instead, I argued at length, with passion, about Danny DeVito. Other than DeVito, I have no idea what I was arguing about.
Work passed by in a pleasant delirium with interruptions of hebephrenic giggling and sudden moments of terrible gravity and sobriety. Stuff got done whether I giggled or reflected on the nature of the uncaring universe.
After work, I got ready to take my 11:00 nap. Basically by holding my cat as I wandered about the house singing "If I were a Deep One". Then I slept.
And slept right up until the alarm for my 3:00 a.m. nap.
I don't consider this a setback in the schedule, though. Even an obviously severe case of sleep deprivation went entirely away in 4 hours of sleep. Really, I feel completely refreshed. This might not be a good example of Uberman, but it shows that the Everyman schedule should definitely be possible for regular people.
Now I'm going to read until my next nap.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Late night ennui, saved by Dogbert
My 3 a.m. nap was useless, I couldn't sleep. Four more hours til the next nap. I'm at my sister's place, and her fiancee has every Dilbert book ever published.
What's better than 4 hours of Dilbert in a sleep-deprived, illucid state?
4 hours of Niven, Pournelle, and Asimov.
About that "illucid" state: I appear to be lapsing into Hunter S. Thompson cadences.
They made me watch an episode of Hoarders. At one point I mumble-staccato'd "they should put out lit cigarettes on her face, the crazy cow, every time she tells them she values something over a 2. That'll teach her the errors of materialism, or at least not storing thousands of pounds of your own feces without adequate Mexican labor."
I then proceeded to elaborate a fully formed theory for why Logan's Run should be made the basis of public Health policy,. expounded on the nutritious benefits of Soylent Green, and ended with a call for the return of Zardoz man-diapers as the daily clothing of proles.
There are times when a man has to stare into the void. And then there are times when a man has to drop trou, piss into the void, and bellow "Nature abhors a vacuum, asshole!"
That time is now, and those trousers mine. The piss belongs to someone else, though. This is something that has never ceased to amaze me.
Edit: I initially texted a sentence from my phone, then decided the terseness would not adequately illuminate the deranged depths of my wee morning mind thoughts. I fleshed out the general themes, deconstructed the contextual clues in a manner reminiscent of a Tannaic scholar, parsed nuances with the skill of a politician caught mid-coitus, and generally banged away on the keyboard with little to no regard for the future.
Consider this post a warning to those so eager to hack their minds that they forget to commit and backup a non-broken version. Damn. I just envisioned the idea of putting my mind under version control, and it is AWESOME.
In entirely unrelated news, this must be what Ryan North feels like every minute. If T-Rex starts talking to me I may just blush and have the vapors, clutching my man-bosom like Scarlett O'Hara shortly before she escaped the thermonuclear devastation by hiding in a bunker full of dwarves. The magma got them, but that is only to be expected when your head engineer is a daft Southern débutante.
What's better than 4 hours of Dilbert in a sleep-deprived, illucid state?
4 hours of Niven, Pournelle, and Asimov.
About that "illucid" state: I appear to be lapsing into Hunter S. Thompson cadences.
They made me watch an episode of Hoarders. At one point I mumble-staccato'd "they should put out lit cigarettes on her face, the crazy cow, every time she tells them she values something over a 2. That'll teach her the errors of materialism, or at least not storing thousands of pounds of your own feces without adequate Mexican labor."
I then proceeded to elaborate a fully formed theory for why Logan's Run should be made the basis of public Health policy,. expounded on the nutritious benefits of Soylent Green, and ended with a call for the return of Zardoz man-diapers as the daily clothing of proles.
There are times when a man has to stare into the void. And then there are times when a man has to drop trou, piss into the void, and bellow "Nature abhors a vacuum, asshole!"
That time is now, and those trousers mine. The piss belongs to someone else, though. This is something that has never ceased to amaze me.
Edit: I initially texted a sentence from my phone, then decided the terseness would not adequately illuminate the deranged depths of my wee morning mind thoughts. I fleshed out the general themes, deconstructed the contextual clues in a manner reminiscent of a Tannaic scholar, parsed nuances with the skill of a politician caught mid-coitus, and generally banged away on the keyboard with little to no regard for the future.
Consider this post a warning to those so eager to hack their minds that they forget to commit and backup a non-broken version. Damn. I just envisioned the idea of putting my mind under version control, and it is AWESOME.
In entirely unrelated news, this must be what Ryan North feels like every minute. If T-Rex starts talking to me I may just blush and have the vapors, clutching my man-bosom like Scarlett O'Hara shortly before she escaped the thermonuclear devastation by hiding in a bunker full of dwarves. The magma got them, but that is only to be expected when your head engineer is a daft Southern débutante.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 2
I found that allocating about 15 minutes before a nap to meditation helps, and doesn't seem to risk waking during deeper sleep. I woke from my afternoon nap feeling pretty good, and still feel energetic.
This actually isn't that hard. The biggest problem I seem to be having is that late-morning tiredness that leads me to take a cluster of naps. I'd rather those naps be dispersed. This may simply be because I've purposely shifted a nap downwards, and moved another upwards, to accommodate work. Steve Pavlina mentioned repeatedly that his maximum, with coffee, was about 8 hours apart, and it screwed up his schedule in much the same way.
Interestingly, he also described the ease with which he returned to monophasic sleep. He wondered how easily one could switch between phases after initially de-anchoring one's cycle. I may try on alternate days shifting my naps a few hours. This can either completely destabilize my cycle, or loosen it to allow for greater flexibility.
I'll try that experiment after week 2, I think.
Update: my cat ruined my 23:00 nap by screaming at and headbutting me the entire time.
This actually isn't that hard. The biggest problem I seem to be having is that late-morning tiredness that leads me to take a cluster of naps. I'd rather those naps be dispersed. This may simply be because I've purposely shifted a nap downwards, and moved another upwards, to accommodate work. Steve Pavlina mentioned repeatedly that his maximum, with coffee, was about 8 hours apart, and it screwed up his schedule in much the same way.
Interestingly, he also described the ease with which he returned to monophasic sleep. He wondered how easily one could switch between phases after initially de-anchoring one's cycle. I may try on alternate days shifting my naps a few hours. This can either completely destabilize my cycle, or loosen it to allow for greater flexibility.
I'll try that experiment after week 2, I think.
Update: my cat ruined my 23:00 nap by screaming at and headbutting me the entire time.
It feels weird to say this
Friend: You free today? Want to come over and help watch the kids?
Me: I can come over, but I'll need to be able to take a nap at 11.
Me: I can come over, but I'll need to be able to take a nap at 11.
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 2 Morning
My 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. naps worked.
I am having moderately excruciating caffeine withdrawal, but I'm not zoning out.
I am having moderately excruciating caffeine withdrawal, but I'm not zoning out.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Polyphasic Sleep: Day 1
Usually I have lots of coffee a day. Between today and yesterday, I had only one cup, before going to work today, where I wouldn't have an opportunity to take a nap for over 8 hours.
I felt surprisingly energetic between 15:00 and 22:00. No trace of drowsiness or clumsiness.
I'm about to take a nap in a few minutes, and continue this post.
Back, with disappointing news. I couldn't sleep at all. I just laid there with my eyes shut for half an hour. Now I'll have to wait til either I feel sleepy, or 3:00 a.m.
The big problem I'm having is not sleepiness, but insomnia. Since Day 0, I have had only three naps where I actually fell fully asleep and woke remembering dreams. So, I've had only maybe one hour of sleep in the past two days. And those naps were the cluster I had around noon today, after being awake over 24 hours.
I wonder if I should just stay awake until I actually feel sleepy. I don't know how much "training" of my sleep schedule I'm getting by laying down with my eyes closed for half an hour.
On the other hand, the only time in the past 48 hours I've slept, have been when I actually felt sleepy. And it appears one hour was all that was needed after more than a day of being awake.
If I'm not tired by 3:00 a.m., I'll skip the nap and wait til the 7:00 a.m. nap. I have a feeling, though, that I won't actually fall asleep til 11:00 a.m., and will again have a cluster of 2 or 3 naps in the few hours before going to work.
I felt surprisingly energetic between 15:00 and 22:00. No trace of drowsiness or clumsiness.
I'm about to take a nap in a few minutes, and continue this post.
Back, with disappointing news. I couldn't sleep at all. I just laid there with my eyes shut for half an hour. Now I'll have to wait til either I feel sleepy, or 3:00 a.m.
The big problem I'm having is not sleepiness, but insomnia. Since Day 0, I have had only three naps where I actually fell fully asleep and woke remembering dreams. So, I've had only maybe one hour of sleep in the past two days. And those naps were the cluster I had around noon today, after being awake over 24 hours.
I wonder if I should just stay awake until I actually feel sleepy. I don't know how much "training" of my sleep schedule I'm getting by laying down with my eyes closed for half an hour.
On the other hand, the only time in the past 48 hours I've slept, have been when I actually felt sleepy. And it appears one hour was all that was needed after more than a day of being awake.
If I'm not tired by 3:00 a.m., I'll skip the nap and wait til the 7:00 a.m. nap. I have a feeling, though, that I won't actually fall asleep til 11:00 a.m., and will again have a cluster of 2 or 3 naps in the few hours before going to work.
Polyphase Day 1: middle
Just woke from a nap, feeling normal.
I took an extra nap around 11 a.m. which turned into 3 naps. I say "turned into" because I had set alarms to wake me every 25 minutes after the main alarm, in case I oversleep.
Now I leave for work in a bit, and ought to already have packed enough sleep in the day to last til after I get back home.
I took an extra nap around 11 a.m. which turned into 3 naps. I say "turned into" because I had set alarms to wake me every 25 minutes after the main alarm, in case I oversleep.
Now I leave for work in a bit, and ought to already have packed enough sleep in the day to last til after I get back home.
Steve Pavlina
I'm reading Steve Pavlina's log entries on his 5.5 month experiment with polyphasic sleep. Very good advice, as he seems to have spent a lot of time researching the attempts of others.
I note that he immediately began fiddling with extra naps, varied schedules, etc. And, he started while he had pretty much no constraints such as having to show up at work on time.
One thing I'm getting from him, so far, is that it seems a bit more involved than telling your body, "you're getting enough sleep each 24 hours. Who cares how I give it to you?"
I've got (let me check kalarm) about 20 minutes til my next nap. I'll spend that time reading more of his entries.
Although Piotr Wozniak gives a really strong impression of Gene Ray, I do get disturbed by his argument that most polyphasic bloggers descend into describing mindless physical activities and content consumption rather than the productive work hoped for.
Taking a page from Oscar, I'm going to limit my internet procrastination to 4 pomodoros a day. One hour during the wee morning is more than enough to read everything interesting on HN; around this time of night I always find that I've followed every link and read every interesting discussion. The remaining time ought to be enough to check up on some blogs, etc. Luckily I hate humans, so I don't have to desperately figure out how to still an addiction to Facebook and Twitter and all the other ways people waste time trying to communicate. This is a blog: you get what I type when I decide to post. Also, I don't watch TV. Or play video games.
My only non-work activities are reading, reading HN, studying code, and hacking. Granted, I could spend less time reading code and more time reading human language, but that's still a damn sight better than vegetating in front of a sitcom.
So I should be safe from the lure of consuming idiocy just to pass time. As for physical activity: what am I going to do, take up Extreme Sneezing?
I note that he immediately began fiddling with extra naps, varied schedules, etc. And, he started while he had pretty much no constraints such as having to show up at work on time.
One thing I'm getting from him, so far, is that it seems a bit more involved than telling your body, "you're getting enough sleep each 24 hours. Who cares how I give it to you?"
I've got (let me check kalarm) about 20 minutes til my next nap. I'll spend that time reading more of his entries.
Although Piotr Wozniak gives a really strong impression of Gene Ray, I do get disturbed by his argument that most polyphasic bloggers descend into describing mindless physical activities and content consumption rather than the productive work hoped for.
Taking a page from Oscar, I'm going to limit my internet procrastination to 4 pomodoros a day. One hour during the wee morning is more than enough to read everything interesting on HN; around this time of night I always find that I've followed every link and read every interesting discussion. The remaining time ought to be enough to check up on some blogs, etc. Luckily I hate humans, so I don't have to desperately figure out how to still an addiction to Facebook and Twitter and all the other ways people waste time trying to communicate. This is a blog: you get what I type when I decide to post. Also, I don't watch TV. Or play video games.
My only non-work activities are reading, reading HN, studying code, and hacking. Granted, I could spend less time reading code and more time reading human language, but that's still a damn sight better than vegetating in front of a sitcom.
So I should be safe from the lure of consuming idiocy just to pass time. As for physical activity: what am I going to do, take up Extreme Sneezing?
Kalarm vs remind
I'm going to try out kalarm and remind to set my nap alarms.
Remind has the strength of complete hackishness and portability of its data. Kalarm has the benefit of ease of use, and its .ics data format can be easily parsed as well.
I'll see which one I prefer. I may chose kalarm simply because I can tell that I'll spend far too much time playing with .rem files than an alarm application deserves.
Remind has the strength of complete hackishness and portability of its data. Kalarm has the benefit of ease of use, and its .ics data format can be easily parsed as well.
I'll see which one I prefer. I may chose kalarm simply because I can tell that I'll spend far too much time playing with .rem files than an alarm application deserves.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
T-Rex Moment
My equihexaphasic sleep cycle is going to either turn me into Kramer, or Superman.
I don't know which is more awesome.
I don't know which is more awesome.
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.
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.
Polyphasic Sleep Experiment
Oscar at Freestyle Mind listed polyphasic sleep as a personal challenge few would accept.
Well, I already subsist on little sleep, and spent many summers during my teenage years completely ruining my sleep cycle with experiments. I'll take up this challenge.
I'll try out the Uberman cycle for a month. I'll use the preparation guide at Everything2, and will spend some time on the plentiful irc channels dedicated to this craziness.
I have a feeling, though, that I will end up like this:
But everyone who knows me says I am already Kramerish.
I set my cellphone alarm for 3:20 a.m., 7:20 a.m., etc.
Let's see how this descent into insanity works out.
Well, I already subsist on little sleep, and spent many summers during my teenage years completely ruining my sleep cycle with experiments. I'll take up this challenge.
I'll try out the Uberman cycle for a month. I'll use the preparation guide at Everything2, and will spend some time on the plentiful irc channels dedicated to this craziness.
I have a feeling, though, that I will end up like this:
But everyone who knows me says I am already Kramerish.
I set my cellphone alarm for 3:20 a.m., 7:20 a.m., etc.
Let's see how this descent into insanity works out.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
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