Friday was the best day of my polyphasic sleep experiment so far which, in summary, involves sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours around the clock (More on my experiment, day 1, day 2, day 3, and “why polyphasic sleep?“).  The most notable improvement was how I felt around 8am. As you know, this has been the toughest time of day for me.  On Wednesday at 8am I nearly gave up the experiment because I felt so wasted. Thursday around 8am I also had a dip in energy level and optimism, but not nearly as bad as Wednesday’s. Friday, as you can see from the chart below, was overall the most positive day thus far, with no large dips or spikes. Progress!

Thursday Evening

• 11:43 pm – My optimism caused me to forget that I’m not totally adjusted yet. I’ve been dragging since I woke up from the 10pm nap.
• I’m doing some aggressive planning though. I’ve broken the day into the six awake periods and categorized what type of work I’ll do during each period. With so many free hours in the day (22), there’s no need to do much multitasking in a single awake period. By limiting which tasks I’ll address during each period, I hope to spend less time switching between tasks and more time focusing on a single category of related items. For example, I’ll do all of my correspondence (email / calls) in the late morning period. By scheduling a specific time to address these tasks, it simultaneously frees me from worrying about them during the other 5 periods – allowing me to better focus on the task assigned to that period. Am I making sense?
  

Friday

• 1:55 am – I spent some time reading online about polyphasic sleep. Found a few great websites (here and here) with a lot of discussion on the topic. (my favorite quote left by a commenter, “If you have a girlfriend, than you are done.”).  I learned that there are various polyphasic sleep schedules people are trying, and that the one I’ve adopted is called “the uberman” haha.
• I’ve been surprised with how negative a lot of people are towards the experiment. I guess…

Some people approach something like this and they feel overwhelmed with all of the possible negative outcomes, while some people feel excited with the unknowns of adventure.

• 4:39 am – Ever heard of HDR photography? HDR is short for high dynamic range and is a digital post-processing technique that can create some stunning results. It is a process that combines multiple images (typically, three) of the same scene shot a different exposures: a normal exposure, a darker shot to capture the details of lighter areas, and a lighter exposure to capture details of darker areas. That sounds confusing but think of it this way: When you take a photo at a normal exposure, very bright areas of the photo (say, clouds on a sunny day) tend to just come out white – while very dark areas of the photo (say, the side of a brick building that is in shadow) come out black. The result is that the light areas are “washed out” and the dark areas lose texture and contrast.   HDR would magically use the clouds shot in the lower exposure image and the shaded building shot in the higher exposure image to create an image that shows incredible contrast and detail across the entire photo. Here’s my attempt at HDR photography below. It’s not very good, but notice the added depth in the texture of the suede and the hard wood floor. This isn’t a very good subject for HDR photography… but it was 4 in the morning so I couldn’t really find much
• Also – my HDR image doesn’t look very stunning for a couple reasons: It’s shot in artificial light, the subject is boring, not much depth to the photo, and I didn’t do any color replacement.

• 8:13 am – Wow, this is usually my toughest time of day… but today? I feel wonderful. I woke up in a small daze, but I got a bowl of cereal and took a shower and now that the sun is coming up I feel amazing. Love it! On Wednesday at 8am I rated my energy level as 2/10, on Thursday 5/10, and today a delicious 8.5/10!
• 9:54 am – I’m feeling fantastic. I want to go skate, but alas, its already time for my morning nap. I feel like skipping, but that might turn out badly. I’ll be surprised if I fall asleep at all. We’ll see. (my throat is feeling every so slightly sore… this could throw a wrench in my plans)

I lay there for maybe 30 seconds… just listening to my alarm blaze

• 10:54 am – Despite not feeling tired when I lay down for my 10am nap and only setting my alarm for 40 minutes I fell right asleep, had a couple of detailed dreams, and even woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off. I momentarily debated about getting out of bed early, because I woke up naturally, but that thought quickly passed haha. I didn’t pop out of bed at my alarm… instead I lay there for maybe 30 seconds… just listening to my alarm blaze (can you relate?).  I feel fairly alert, despite having only woken up 4 or 5 minutes ago.
• 12:52 pm – Still feeling really good today! I’m feeling noticeably more creative than normal – and my language skills are sharp right now – lots of good conversations going on twitter and I’ve already written a couple pages worth of thoughts that might turn into future blog posts.  (I’d say that for every page I actually publish I write about five). I am thinking very clearly – positive and creative – but not very focused. I’m finding it difficult to focus on accomplishing large tasks such as web development projects. Maybe the perception of having an abundance of time is causing me to ramp up the procrastination? I can tell already that I won’t be tired in an hour for the 2pm nap. It feels like an inconvenience at times but I know it’s worth it to ultimately sleep fewer total hours in the day.
• 2:19 pm – I was doing really great – almost better than I have since I started the experiment – I went out on a beautiful bright crisp clear (yay adjectives!) day and shot some photos (my favorite one below) and now that I’m back and 20 minutes late for my 2pm nap I can feel the fatigue coming in pretty strong. Interesting…

"Urban Command Station"

• 5:53 pm – Still feeling great. I worked on a large project for a couple hours so I’m feeling nice and accomplished at the moment. Very positive right now (slap happy?). I’ll postpone my 6pm nap because my 2pm nap started 30 minutes late.

This lightning fast sensation that starts behind my eyes, fills my entire head and then drops though my body…

• 7:24 pm – For the first couple of minutes after I wake up from a nap (normally the tough ones like the early morning naps) – as I walk around my apt to turn on the lights and get a drink I can actually feel waves of sleep attempting to shoot through my body. I never lose consciousness when this happens, but there is this lightning fast sensation that starts behind my eyes, fills my entire head and then drops though my body all the way to my feet – it feels like the razor’s edge between consciousness and sleep. It only takes about a tenth of a second for this entire sensation to shoot through me, but it catches me off guarge and makes me twitch and then blink rapidly for a few seconds. It sometimes happens 2 or 3 times during the first couple minutes when I’m trying to wake up.
• 8:57 pm – I’m feeling pretty chilled out and slightly zoned. Earlier I was hyper! I’m spending my time now working on projects that I need to be moving forward. Today was a really artistic day! Lots of writing and photos taken which feels great.
• 9:50 pm – I was just reading an article about time management using fixed schedules (via a Tim Ferriss tweet) and I noticed my eyes sort of tripping out – kind of like vertigo but nothing was spinning – just a shift in how I was perceiving the plane of my computer monitor. Wow, tired all the sudden. Right on cue – it’s 9:50

At midnight I decided to do something a bit more exciting…

• 12:42 am (Saturday) – I spent a couple of hours working on a website project and made some great progress. I now have a better grasp on the project instead of feeling like the project had a grasp one me (does that make sense?).
• At midnight I decided to do something a bit more exciting. I thought, ‘enough coding, I want to skate.’ I was psyched! I haven’t skated (or done any physical exercise) since the start of the experiment. I walked out my front door and jumped on my board and, this is awesome, immediately hung up on the sidewalk and stumbled awkwardly into the street laughing at myself. (the bricks on the sidewalk make it easy to hang up – give me a break ).
• After that I felt right at home – very comfortable and relaxed as I tore through the quiet streets around the courthouse. I felt surprisingly coordinated and had a lot of pop in my tricks. I cruised over to one of my favorite spots – two parking lots with a bank between them – and ollied the gap, landing it first try which always feels great (I wonder if I actually skated better because I wasn’t over thinking? hmm).  Overall I had a blast. It was about 40 degrees so jeans and a long sleeved shirt felt perfect. It was the kind of night where your breath creates a bright white cloud – lit up by the streetlights.
• I could tell that I hadn’t done any physical exercise in a while, however. At one point my stomach had the tiniest hint of a cramp just from breathing harder than I have in a week. It will be interesting to see if I sleep better in my net nap and then to see if this makes me tired later on. Now I’m watching some skate videos (Epicly Later’d – “Andrew Reynold’s Madness”) then I’ll shower and crash.

EXPERIMENT INDEX:

• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day Zero
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day One
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day Two
• Why Polyphasic sleep? | A simple and compelling answer
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day Three
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – Day Four
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – The Epic Napstake (nap + mistake)
• Polyphasic Sleep Experiment – The Success, Conclusion, and Addiction