Day 1

I first became interested in alternative sleep patterns based on a strip from xkcd.com regarding a 28-hour day sleep schedule. That got me looking at various other alternatives and eventually I stumbled upon the uberman sleep schedule, which theoretically allows a person to sleep for only two hours in every 24 by napping for 20 minutes out of every 4 hours. I got curious—part of me wonders, is it really possible? Various people claim it is both from their own experiences and from anecdotes of famous people that have done it. It appealed to my natural attraction to extremes, and furthermore struck me in several ways as a real personal challenge. The fact is, I love sleep, and love being asleep. Given the choice i will often and easily get about 9-10 hours of sleep. Furthermore, at some point in my life I developed a very low tolerance to sleep deprivation. All-nighters would cause me to have incredible migaines and stomach upset. In college, I *never* stayed up all night to work, because invariably if I tried, I would end up falling asleep sometime around 4am and would sleep through whatever had seemed so important the night before. As such, it has at times really felt like a liability to be so attached to sleep. Also, I've often felt like my day is so short that I scarcely have time to get anything done. I have a lot of interests: writing, Irish fiddle, reading, traveling, annoying my cats, socializing, that it just never really felt like there was enough time in the day. An extra 7 hours per day...well there's a lot I could do with that.

Toying with the idea for several days, including one thoroughly botched attempt (My first nap time rolled around and I just turned of my alarm and proceeded to sleep for 8 hours), I decided yesterday morning to give it a go. I had woken up from a ver satisfying sleep and proceeded to set my nap schedule. I would be napping at 2:00, 6:00 and 10:00 (note, that because this fits in a twelve-hour cycle, the times are the same AM and PM). Duing the daytime hours, It was hard to say if I was really napping or just lying there with my eyes closed, but there was something that felt truly delightful about taking 3 naps in one afternoon. My day was very productive, despite the fact that I was actually reducing my number of hours at the moment by 1 hour, what with all the napping. Nonetheless, particularly with less pleasant chorse (such as cleaning up after cats that had been somewhat neglected over the past couple of days) it was far easier to motivate myself to get things done when I knew that no matter where I was in the task, I'd be getting a nap in a couple of hours. I may have found my ultimate motivational tool!

Later in the evening, thigns got a bit more challenging. I was feeling great when my 10pm nap rolled around, and i excused myself fom some IM conversations with fiends back in the states to hit the hay. Duing the following block howeve, I began to notice fatigue setting in. I practiced fiddle for about an hour and noticed myself having difficulty with some tunes that previously I'd played a good 20-30% faster. I was, however, able to focus well enough to continue learning a new tune and make some fairly significant progress in figuring out the left hand fo the tune. I got an added energy boost when a close fiend stopped in (she was coming in from town and staying at my apartment) around midnight and volunteered to stay awake with me until my 2am nap. One particularly surreal moment came at 2am, when I went to sleep around the same time she was getting into the shower and ready for bed. When I woke up...she still hadn't gone to sleep!

The 2-6am block was more difficult. I watched a movie (mean girls) and also followed Steve P.'s reasoning and took an additional 20 minute nap halfway through the shift. Since the idea is not sleep deprivation but rather to rain the body/mind to get maximum rest in twenty-minute blocks, during the early stages it may not be a problem to add additional 20 minute naps in order to ease the transition. He seems to have had success with it, so I decided to adopt a similar pattern.

It is now 7:20am, and I am feeling decidedly groggy, but in good spirits. I'd been eating fairly often during the night (perhaps out of wanting something to do, as much as anything else) and now am feeling my usual sleep deprivation nausea and a mild headache (3/10). I may take another 20 minute nap at 8:00, though now that it is morning and places are opening here in J'lem, I can perhaps garner some extra energy or at least momentum by going out and running some errands that need to be taken care of. As far as how tired I feel: if I were driving a car right now, I wold most surely be looking for a place to pull over and get some sleep, but if I were hanging out with a good friend I hadn't seen in years, I'd cetainly be ale to stay awake and keep talking.