My attempt at polyphasic sleep, part 9 - "Task failed successfully, regrouping"

What a big break between updates!

So I have been busy trying a few things, failing most of them - busy with life in general from putting to use what time I have gained until I hit another streak of oversleeps this week. The oversleeps exacerbate with hot weather and dehydration, low electrolytes doing keto, consistent interruptions every time I have to sleep (the situation in my house really sucks at not interrupting me when I'm asleep these past few days) and so on. Mid-cycle wakes have become the norm - it was near impossible to wake after the night core today, took me half an hour and a few microsleeps to realise I'm still not up and out of bed. It's disappointing for sure and clearly a failure to adapt as I cannot seem to control the oversleeps well enough to make more progress. Then again compared to needing 10 hours (12 if interrupted, which is most nights) monophasic sleep to get far less done and feel like dirt, this is some progress at least. Though I feel just as bad as on mono currently, at least I have time to do something being my zombie self from splitting the sleeps.

On top of this trend, today I made the mistake of continuing to try to at least get some light sleep when interrupted by my daughter during my day sleep. It's too easy to oversleep like this - and oversleep I did. At least an hour against my planned time. That's a minimum of three days where every sleep was either an oversleep or an undersleep+oversleep by at least an hour outside of my schedule. No wonder I can barely function today. On the other hand, I am at the point where I can only do the most basic of tasks and even then I take forever from the brain fog and constant microsleeping so not sleeping after being interrupted does not really sound good either.

Since splitting the core sleep, naps are even harder to fall asleep for than on my failed attempt at everyman 3 (and I was ridiculously sleep deprived nearly instantly with E3). Over three quarters of naps mid-day have turned into 90+ minute oversleeps with the rest being no sleep at all - clearly a failure to adapt. I am still working out why exactly this happened - most likely it was all the interruptions, the few days spent doing heavy physical work, and attempting to cut down total sleep time concurrently made it so that I accumulated too much sleep debt too quickly. I stopped fasting and started exercising a little bit more, had a few high-carbohydrate days, all sleep need raisers.

The plan is to recover using a further extended variant and then continue following that, getting 1-7.5 hours of total sleep time across 3 cores or at least 3 naps. Yes, that is a variance of 6.5 hours, this is my life now haha. Minimizing sleep needs has become a question of survival as of today.

Tonight I will go to bed as soon as I finish teaching and not wake up until the kids wake me up in the morning which can be noon for all I care.

Starting tomorrow evening I will sleep segmented 21:00-00:30, 04:00-07:30 two core sleeps for 7 hours total sleep, I will go down for a 20-minute nap if I am interrupted and I feel sleepy, and it is still falls within my scheduled sleep time but will set the full array of alarms at my disposal to make sure I don't oversleep again. This will continue for a week and I will see how I feel. I would rather be fresh throughout my wake time and have less wake time - monophasic doesn't do that for me so a non-reducing poly may just be right.

I will go out of my way to reduce my sleep needs starting Monday:

1. A fortnightly 72 hour salt+water+tea/coffee fast.
2. 20:4 fasting the rest of the time.
3. Only eat my RDA in protein and eat enough fat to stay at maintenance / microdeficit:
• One clean keto-style protein meal per day to get the RDA and free-feed fat like salad with oil or tea with butter (try it, it's awesome), could get some pork belly, the good stuff that's all fat and skin.
• Measure myself at the end of each long fast and see if I need to start changing things to avoid fat gain or excessive weight loss (I can only lose up to 5 more kgs of fat before it turns unhealthy).
  
4. Only do light physical activity:
• Coordination, momentum, and timing over raw muscular strength.
• Work on posture through flexibility not building tons more strength.
• Walking and active sitting whenever not walking.
• "Yoga" (yoga-inspired physical therapy for flexibility and mobility) daily

After restoring my sleep debt I will reassess the situation. Right now the two cores are the most stable sleep times I can afford.

My attempt at polyphasic sleep part 8, resuming the experiment

Finally addressed the situation that led to pausing the adaptation attempts. What was funny is that in the interim I was rarely able to get a full night's sleep - I usually ended up with around 6 hours at night and had to nap at some point or crash after a few days of only 6 hours monosleep a night with my activity level and sleep interruption frequency. There were frequent wakes between 1am and 4am regardless of interruptions (unless I was very tired) so taking this into account now.

My current schedule doesn't really allow for a lot of nap rigidity nor for long stretches of monophasic sleep so it's either "something that flexes naps reasonably under my control" or eternal sleep deprivation.

I'm opting for a dual core schedule this time with a 4.5 hour long activity window at night (mostly work, but will benefit academic stuff later when my masters course starts in September if I can adapt). The first core is an early 20:30-01:00 and the second core is a short 05:30-07:00.

I'm also limiting the coffee intake to a small amount before 2am to last me the 4.5 hours and restricting the time I drink coffee to 07:00-12:00 during the day (the earlier the better, but may extend to two coffees and no naps potentially depending on how my schedule will be in a few months).

I've been naturally on a similar schedule for about a week since my work hours shifted. While testing different core lengths: "4.5h core + 1.5h core + 20min afternoon nap" is the longest set I have tried and I'm just after the first core. I'm just about my usual sleep-deprived self so this will be curious. I should be fine after another drop of coffee...

Body recomposition: monitoring bodyweight workouts

05/07/2020	push-ups 3x10, pistol squats 3x2/leg, ring bent-leg L-sit 3x20s, fat grips bar hang 3x20s
03/07/2020	push-ups 3x10, pistol squats 3x2/leg, ring bent-leg L-sit 3x20s, fat grips bar hang 3x20s
02/07/2020	ring bent-leg L-sit 3x20s
01/07/2020	push-ups 3x10, pistol squats 3x2/leg, ring bent-leg L-sit 3x25s
30/06/2020	ring bent-leg L-sit 3x20s
29/06/2020	push-ups 3x10, pistol squats 3x2/leg, ring support hold 3x20s, hanging leg raises 3x4
26/06/2020	push-ups 3x8, hanging leg raises 3x5, heel-supported floor L-sit 1x60s, pistol squats 3x3/leg

Notes:

05/07/2020 - finally was able to support myself with the rings only touching my palms and not touching the straps at all, for L-sit still can't straighten legs

21/07/2020 - taking a break for about 1.5 weeks now, work shifting to a long term night schedule and still need to do stuff during the day so re-adapting to exercise gradually (messes me up paired with night shifts)

My attempt at polyphasic sleep, parts 6 and 7 - why I'm pausing the experiment

Log for days 6 and 7:

• Due to external factors I suddenly need to do a lot more physical work for the next few weeks so I am reverting to monophasic sleep. Using night hours productively is beyond cool but I need to be physically well rested and can't risk any sleep deprivation just yet. I may as well take the opportunity to recover any sleep debt if there was any and work out my monophasic sleep length properly - silver linings, right?
  
• Having said that, here are my takeaways so far:
  
• A six hour core at night is amazing - I have two young kids and get woken up at least four times a night and am considerably more refreshed after six hours sleeping like this than doing shorter cores or even monosleep before normalising my sleep schedule.
  
• I can get REM naps in the mornings when I can sneak them in. They're short and I barely sleep 5 out of the 20 minutes sometimes but even then it's still nice. While it feels like that should be a core in its own right time does not currently permit much sleep during described REM peak hours. Afternoon naps for me are hit and miss, it's hard to actually make time for them due to my life commitments and such.
  
• None of this could have happened due to adaptation due to the short time frame - maybe some sleep deprivation assisted in having REM naps but anything else occurring from adaptation is unlikely. I think actually having a sleep schedule and sticking to regular sleep times made the biggest difference so far.
• I usually work at a computer either teaching, working on projects or studying myself so the extra night hours polyphasic sleep unlocks are beyond perfect. I can actually work with clients in far away time zones more conveniently because of that so, literally, polyphasic sleep upped my bottom line this week. Definitely coming back to this once I catch up with things in a few weeks time.

Witty catchphrase,
Dif Pol the Differentiative Polynomiality

My attempt at polyphasic sleep, part 5

• Log for day 5:

• So this one is weird. I was not sleepy for the nap times whatsoever and unfortunately was too busy to take time out to lay down so no napping was out of the question - both today and yesterday. I will move posting my updates to the afternoon or late evening as it makes better sense time-wise and mornings now are a bit more hectic with early wakes and work right after.
• What I have noticed so far is that a 6 hour core and no naps, presuming I actually got the full six hours in without being woken up, leaves me refreshed and not really wanting to nap until presumably the next core. I had a similar schedule two years ago with a later six to seven hour monosleep and occasionally napped on my train ride home when I felt tired which worked okay. As did coffee or alcohol (go figure, it's energy boosting for me in low enough doses, e.g. drunk enough to still test as zero alcohol in 15 minutes or so, so not drunk in the slightest, don't drink and drive - take the train). To be honest sleep tastes the worst of the three.
• Got the wife on board with the idea of a sleep schedule so we worked out a feasible arrangement for the two of us as well as moving the kids' sleep time another hour earlier to prep for school time. Current plan is for both to adapt to a sane schedule with enough sleep time to cover a long time. This should lead to having the energy to restructure the day more for better nap time access.

Witty catchphrase,
Dif Pol the Differentiative Polynomiality

My attempt at polyphasic sleep, part 4

Log for day 4:

• Yesterday's naps were hard for me to fall asleep due to external noise. Fell asleep for core very easily, woke up easily at 02:30 but felt a little sleepy, went downstairs to stretch and wasn't sure why my chest suddenly hurt and face was sore - magically it was 04:00 and I was face down on the living room carpet having crashed (guessing I microslept while stretching lying down?). Clearly crashing like this is dangerous and I was lucky this was in a safe and controlled situation with no one else put at risk but I'm altering the schedule to something more forgiving today onwards (settled on E2-ext moved earlier and planned naps to coincide with train commutes during the academic year in the freak chance this is the only time I can nap) - 21:30-03:30 08:10-08:30 17:20. The new plan is to adapt to something much more forgiving and to be able to flex the naps within the commute window (or to learn to nap standing like a horse would lol). I reverted to mono for the rest of the night to be functional for today's tasks and plan to return to adapting from tonight onwards as 6+ hours would normally be my usual mono sleep time.
  
  

Witty catchphrase,
Dif Pol the Differentiative Polynomiality

My attempt at polyphasic sleep, part 3

Log for day 3:

• Switched schedules to E3 as the math worked out to give more achievable total uninterrupted sleep with a reduced core allocation and an added nap (23:30-02:30, 05:00-05:20, 08:40-09:00, 14:40-15:00) when I factored in the most likely times the kids wake up randomly at night based on past trends. Testing a theory that adaptation would be easier without interruptions given slightly shorter total planned sleep instead of constantly interrupted longer planned sleep (being a zombie after a night of interruptions is basically what made me experiment with polyphasic). Waking up now had about 20 minutes of sleep inertia as opposed to over an hour last night, 3 hour core without interruptions, fell asleep semi-quickly. Yesterday's naps were weird, nap one was difficult to fall asleep (likely from needing too much coffee to stay awake, likely after interrupted core sleep the night before) and nap two was moved 20 minutes due to external factors after which I woke up around 5 minutes early feeling amazing (which lasted all until the next core). Only had 2.5 cups of coffee throughout the day, kind of low for me but I'm getting a feeling too much coffee messes with the naps' effectiveness making falling asleep harder. Starting this morning with 1/3 the usual amount of coffee.

Witty catchphrase,
Dif Pol the Differentiative Polynomiality