Polyphasic Sleep, Day 4 | The Probabilist . com

Polyphasic Sleep, Day 4 January 4, 2007

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The first 22 hours were again great. This has started to appear and feel like a given pattern already and I’ve gotten quite accustomed to polyphasic sleeping. An hour before my noon nap I started to build up some tiredness. I put both my cell phone alarm on as well as my polynap file on my computer. I woke up three hours later. Here’s what happened.

Apparently I’ve unconsciously turned off my cell phone alarm and walked to my computer to stop my winamp player. There’s a couple of minute’s delay or separation between the alarms by the way. At about two hours into my sleep I was asked why I’m sleeping at this time. My answer was reportedly: “What do you mean, at this odd time?” To this I was asked for how long I’ve been sleeping and my answer was “About five minutes.” I then kept on sleeping for another hour until I was woken up by a phone call to which I answered and was able to reply to with accurate clarity.

I knew that the noon to 4 pm time frame would mark the toughest hours of the day, but the risk of oversleeping had left my attention maybe a day or two ago. For being so clear headed and energetic during this whole experiment I wonder why this occurred. I suspected that I was getting enough REM sleep because I’ve felt so little sleep deprivation thus far. Apparently my mind and body had a debt to settle and while doing some hour counting I can relate to why it was appropriate. I don’t recall having a single dream during that period either.

When I woke up, I felt pretty much like waking up from any other usual nap both in regard of how much time I felt had passed and how clear-minded I was. My body was a bit more relaxed than usual, which gave me a small hint that things probably didn’t turn out as usual this time around. It’s now little past 3 pm as I’m finishing this entry and I’m skipping the 4 pm nap. I think all will play out as usual until tomorrow noon again. By this I mean that everything will run smoothly and feel like a level 1 alertness on my 1 to 5 scale. Maybe this semi core sleep that I now experienced will help to make the same time frame easier to surmount tomorrow. In the past 103 hours I’ve now slept for 9 hours so I’m on the right track since I’m still averaging 1/12 of sleep time compared to overall time. At 120 hours, or 5 full days I’ll have slept 10 hours, give or take half an hour for when I actually fall asleep at the start of nap times. Final verdict: 1.5, obviously since this was again a really easy day to complete.