Life Experiment 01.03 - Preparation 2010.01.16 01

Well I'm getting excited to start tomorrow. Today will be spent getting ready for both tomorrows show and this experiment.

I've made some minor alterations to my plan.

• I've added to the routine I'm making a little bit. Fairly logical things. I'll shower and brush my teeth after the eating and exercising is done. I know this is a LITTLE overly detailed and specific for some of you that might be reading this, but this blog is serving as one of many things that I'm using to help keep myself on the straight and narrow in regards to following the rules. This will improve my teeth brushing frequency and ensure that i do it right after i eat... just a side bonus.

• I've decided in the beginning NOT to exercise after the 11:30a nap. I've tried exercising during the work hours before and ended up feeling anxious about how much time the whole exercise/shower shebang takes in the middle of the day. The other thing I'm speculating anyway is that I'll need exercise for the 12p-5:30p block the LEAST as that's generally the sunniest, busiest part of a normal day anyway. I should have my best energy then. The parts other bloggers have commented is the hardest for energy is the nighttime segment. I'm hoping that exercise and probably fruit as a meal will help combat that. Same thing for the 6a waking... exercise to start the day and probably more fruit.

• I'm contemplating starting with 45 minute naps to increase the possibility of achieving SOME REM sleep, but on the flip side, the point of the naps is to make your body adjust to going into REM sleep immediately... so maybe I'll stick with 30 and see how that goes.

• I'm leaving the option to take an additional 30 minute nap in the middle of the night, as needed. Many of the bloggers that have written about their attempts to acclimate to polyphasic noted this really helped them.

• After talking to my personal trainer friend Aaron, it looks like the energy supplements are not going to work out. They are loaded with caffeine which interferes with REM. I'd hate to prevent acclimation because it simply wasn't possible, so until I acclimate all supplements besides the vitamin supplement are on hold. After the acclimation I will consider a trial IF I find myself unmotivated and unfocused. It prefaces another topic that I will get into over time... the return to my ADD meds (which is another goal). If the polyphasic sleep schedule is going well, and I have every expectation that it will, I don't want the ADD meds to interfere. The GOOD thing about the ADD meds is the have a very short lifespan in the body. Like... short. Measured in hours. Maybe this will allow me to take a lower dosage.

The following is a link to Steve Pavlina's blog where he did a variation of what I'm about to do for 5.5 months. He had great success and I'm going to share some thoughts... specifically the differences between what he did and what I'm about to do, some helpful observations he made that I'm planning on incorporating from the start, some general observations he made along the way (we'll see if I note the same things), and the reasons he stopped and my thoughts on those.

Here's the main page to his blog. Each of his posts are well written and I encourage anyone interested in polyphasic sleep to read them.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/


So. First the differences between Steve's plan and mine.

• Steve is a vegan. If you know me you know I am not. In fact, part of this little experience is to help me improve what I'm willing to admit are poor eating habits. As I mentioned two posts ago, and completely independently from this experiment, I HAVE started to dramatically improve what I choose to eat. But I also really need to improve the regularity and spacing between those meals. Nonetheless, Steve hypothesized that his vegan diet was a helpful start to being able to quickly acclimate to this new sleep regiment. I don't plan on eating vegan, or even vegetarian for that matter. What I will say is this. I'll skip fast food and avoid any heavy meals. I also have already made the commitment to eat much more fish and reasonable quantities (half a filet of a small to medium fish for example). I also intend to stock up on fruit, and not let it spoil. If you read my blog, you'll know what I eat.

• Steve did a variation on the plan I'm doing. He did 6 20 minute naps per day instead of 4 30 minute naps. in addition, he gave an extra 10 minutes per nap for prep. I find that method far more intrusive on trying to create a schedule that minimally interferes with trying to live with all the other monophasic people in my life. It also creates larger blocks of productivity which is something Steve complained about. He was never more than 3.5 hours away from his next nap. There were times he wanted to start a project of some sort but was put off by being within an hour of a nap. I'll have 5.5 hours between naps which is almost 3/4 of an entire work day. I should be fine in that regard. Note: Please note that I am not making my own (re: untried) version of a polyphasic sleep schedule. Mine is strictly patterned off the Dymaxion Sleep System. Look it up. Go on. Steve reported had issues moving to the Dymaxion schedule, which could be because he was so acclimated to naps every 4 hours. I'm going to avoid duplicating that by starting with the Dymaxion and seeing how that goes.

• Steve started this is a social experiment... which is actually one of the reasons he felt it was successful for him. He placed no productivity "goal" which might have influenced his initial impressions of success and minimized the chance that he might become disillusioned if the results weren't what he expected in the timeframe he'd hoped. My goal is somewhat different. Firstoff... let me state that I have NO goal in the next one to two weeks but acclimation. I have three bridal shows to participate in, and with the exception of those, I'm ok with my productivity suffering. My only real goal for that time is to STAY UP when I'm supposed to be up, and GET UP after my naps. Good acclimation to the system is key for me. I'm definitely NOT thinking how great it's gonna be on the second day to be mega productive at 3:30a... cause I know I won't be.


I still haven't cleaned up my living area the way I'd like. I'm gonna tackle that today. The last thing I need is to trip out of the starting gate.

Ok... so I'm off to do that... I may post things like starting weight later today... If not I'll be back to post those things at the official start tomorrow night.