Polyphasic Sleep, Day 3 | The Probabilist . com

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 3 January 3, 2007

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For the past two hours I’ve been at level 2 on the sleep deprivation scale from 1 to 5. For me this means the occasional yawns, my eyes preferring to stay closed when I’m sitting
comfortably and doing nothing or next to nothing, a sense of minor cloudiness of the mind and a somewhat weak desire to hit the bed for a quick sleep fix that is easy to disregard. So what about the other 22 hours? All very close or equal to level 1, to my delight. While they’ve certainly boosted my determination to carry through my transition, the toughest hours certainly have the power to drag me down a notch.

I haven’t recalled a single dream yet. There were two naps where I noticed that something was going on just before I woke up. I changed my polynap file to the 26 minute one because it still takes me an estimated average of 5 minutes to fall asleep. The midnight and 4 am naps were closer to 10 minutes of sleep instead of the preferred, continuous and fixed 20 minutes. So far I haven’t woken up earlier than when I’m supposed to. At this exact moment my thoughts aren’t working properly because I’m very close to level 3 sleep deprivation. I hope that the following nap will trigger me back to the cycle of full alertness.

Time, it feels, has been passing along at about 2/3 of its normal pace. The naps on the other hand have slowly and only recently started to feel longer. Most of the time I’m feeling refreshed and eager to get up. My previous nap on the other hand felt abrupt and is at least somewhat responsible for my current, stronger than “usual” degree of deprivation. I feel now that I’m closer to level 3 than ever before, because the warm and cosy bed next to me is trying to rob my attention from completing this sleep entry. I’m giving the past 24 hours a verdict of 1.5 though, since I felt excellent during the first 22 hours.

I ate a bit more during the past 24 hours than the 24 hours prior. I don’t know if this has been (partially) causing the even easier adaptation so far or not. But I’ll stick to eating moderately since it obviously hasn’t made my naps tougher to awaken from. Maybe I just had a poorer appetite at the beginning or I was unconsciously holding back on filling my stomach fully during a meal out of cautious behaviour. I’m not keen on doing much experimentation on my diet, exercises or sleeping at this stage partly because results may be hard to pinpoint and verify and partly because everything has been running relatively smoothly to this point. I’ll leave the testing and tweaking to when I feel fully adjusted to polyphasic sleeping.