Friday, June 22, 2012

Polyphasic Sleep

I have long since believed that sleeping was a necessarily evil. Yes, it felt  great, but I always wish there were more hours in the day. I envy Stephanie Meyer's non-vampires who don't ever need to sleep at all, on top of already having an infinite amount of time to live. I think that may be the appeal to me; the less I sleep, the longer my conscious life may be. Life is so short anyways.
Since I have begun working an occasional overnight job and an occasional day job with short, sporadic hours, I have officially decided to start a polyphasic sleep cycle. I'm going to go bold and try the Dymaxion cycle which means I will take a half hour nap every six hours, for a total of 2 hours of sleep per day. How productively awesome would that be? So productively awesome!
So here's the scoop: I slept for 4 hours yesterday afternoon and worked the overnight, with a 15-minute nap on my break at 12:00 AM. This morning I slept from 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM (1.5 hours - this was before I knew this sleep cycle existed). And I just woke up from about a 20-minute nap 3:40 PM to 4:20 PM (it took me ten minutes to fall asleep, then I got woken up by a text in the middle of it). So I am due for a 30-minute nap at 9:15 PM to 9:45 PM, which will be perfect for right before I go to work. If we have enough staff for breaks, I will take my break at 3:00 AM, or as close to it as I can get for another 30-minute nap. Then I will finish up work, go home and take a nap at 9:00 AM. I have a chunk of work until 3:30 PM so I will take my nap as soon as I get home.
Let me try to organize this:

6/22/12

12:15 AM - 12:30 AM  (15 min) - I was over-tired from excessive sleeping the day before and not being                 used to being up so late. I needed my trusty friend, Caffeine to keep me up.

8:30 AM - 10:00 AM (1.5 hours) - Very easy to fall asleep and I had a vivid dream of suffocating (how nice). I felt so comfy in my bed I did not want to get up, but I found it easy to do so. I was kinda tired at work, but not drowsy.

3:50 PM - 4:20 PM (30 min) - I felt I was cheated because it was interrupted by a text (I will have to find a way to ameliorate this situation for the future), so I feel the same tired-but-not-drowsy as before I took the nap.

Eh, I do better with diagrams. I am very looking forward to my 9:15 PM nap, and I am really hoping it's going to be  the power nap I need to get me through the first half of my shift!

So, if you're still reading and you haven't been confused away by all these times and rambling, I will keep up with this schedule no matter what it takes for at least one week. I'm not sure how well 2 hours of sleep is going to work out, so I don't really want to promise longer, in case it turns out I'm insane for trying and I want to destroy all mortal lives I come in contact with. But if it doesn't work out, then I will switch to a cycle that has more hours of sleep. I will keep updating regularly.

No comments: