Polyphasic Sleep, Day 2 | The Probabilist . com

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 2 January 2, 2007

Posted by The Probabilist in : [News], Sleep , trackback

Everything is going according to plan and although I’m still in an early phase of the transition, a surprise already occurred. Last night between midnight and 6 am was my best time period so far when fighting off the sleep deprivation. It was a level 1 on a 1 to 5 scale. No fatigue, no dizziness, no aches in the body or eyes, only total alertness and a high level of energy. How could this be? I have no idea. I simply decided to align with it and enjoy this pleasant, positive outcome regardless of why I felt so alert.

As for the naps, all six were successful except for the one at 4 am. I just couldn’t fall asleep when I was feeling so brisk. However, ever since 6 am I’ve been feeling moderately tired. I even added another nap this morning since I had the option of making up for that prior lost sleep time. The overall verdict for day 2 is therefore a 2 out of 5. It seems I’ve managed to overcome the challenge of falling asleep quickly, as long as I’m tired when attempting to. I’ve got a gut feeling that the next night will again be easier than this morning has been. I’ve now slept for 3 hours during the past 48 hours.

I found my favourite form of exercise to be 30 minute strolls around my new neighbourhood. Usually at this time of the year there’s an average temperature of -10 degrees Celcius where I live, but it’s been between 0 and +5 the past days. So even though it has been raining a lot, I’ve really enjoyed the time spent outdoors. I focused on reading and writing when I was at my highest level of alertness because they are activities so much harder to carry out when I’m at the brink of reaching scale 3 sleep deprivation. Fortunately, I haven’t had to experience that level yet.

As I’m writing this, I feel I’m again heading back to level 1 alertness, which is great. It’s no odd occurrence that I’m feeling different levels of clarity and fatigue depending on the time of the day, but the current dispersion doesn’t make much sense. There’s only about 7 hours of daylight per day so this distribution works great in practice. But the following days are still open and prone to drastic changes so I’ll refrain myself from drawing any major primary conclusions yet about how this is all turning out. So far I’m enjoying the ride.