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Polyphasic Sleep – Reasons For Failure

Day 17
I am plagued by chronic oversleeping and I have to say that my program is a total mess. All my tinkering is to no avail. I feel like a total failure. When I wake up after my 4 am sleep I feel like death. Worse that death. Death would at least be painless (actually I suspect that death is far from painless). You know what I mean. I don’t know how to explain extreme sleep deprivation any worse than I have already, but it is worse.

Or perhaps I’m just a wuss?

My sleep graph illustrates the roller-coaster ride I have been on.

The dark blue line represents my daily sleep hours. The pink line is a 3 day running average.

I’m currently sleeping an average of 6 hours per day. My last oversleep was 9 hours. I’m sticking to the program one day, oversleeping the next, and so on…. It would be safe to say that at this stage of the game, at day 17, that my attempt to convert to a polyphasic sleep cycle has been a complete failure.

A look at my Stanford Sleepiness Scale graph shows that life has been on the slow side these past few days.

These measurements are an average taken from readings several times during the day and night. As a comparison I think they tell a fairly accurate picture. It shows that I crashed pretty heavily at about day 3. Oversleeping from that point on increased my position on the scale. I always felt good after a good sleep!

Since I was oversleeping anyway, I started to add core sleeps from about day 8. But I kept oversleeping and in fact my position on the scale has declined steadily since then. It seems core sleeping is not the answer for me.

Reasons for my failure
If I look over the Uberman program I can see where I am going wrong.

It is absolutely essential that naps be evenly spaced and regularly adhered to, at least in the beginning of the program. This is fundamental to the program as the body must get used to its new sleeping regime. Thus Uberman is not for everyone as not everyone can accommodate the time needed for naps into their lives, despite the fact that they are adding up to 6 hours of extra time to their day each day.

I thought I could make it go right with a varying schedule. Apparently I cannot. I work shift-work and although I have a stable pm shift the daily start times can vary by up to 2 hours. That means my naps have varied by up to that much. If one were looking for a reason for failure I don’t think you would have to look much further.

The final solution
My final tweak to my schedule is my last hope. If I can’t make it work this time it may be time to give up, to throw in the towel.

I am reducing my naps to 28 mins. 23 mins was too short. 33 mins was too long as I think I may have been entering into deep slumber. I am reducing the number of naps to 5.

This is my new hexaphasic schedule:

• 3pm NAP, before work.
• (Start work average time at 3.30pm, plus/minus 2 hours.)
• 8pm NAP. Dinner time.
• (Finish work average time at 12.30am, plus/minus 1 hour.)
• 1am NAP, after work.
• 5am NAP
• 10am NAP

These times are not perfect. Its the best I can do with my work schedule. If I can’t make it after this final tweak then I can’t make it at all. I will have to give it up. No bout a doubt it. I don’t think I can take this for much longer. 17 days of intermittent sleep deprivation is taking a toll on my performance. I’ve had more time but got less done. I have been able to start this blog and start reading blogs, but overall I’ve been getting less done.

I so very much want this to succeed.

Uni starts in a few weeks…