Update / More info for Uberseekers

Hey peeps! I am still updating my new blog at www.puredoxyk.com daily, so fly over there if you want the latest, the greatest, and the grittiest.

However, if you're just landing here, you should know that I'm not doing the Uberman schedule this time - it turns out that, in fact, mommin' and workin' and livin' in a crowded house DOES actually pretty much nix your chances with Uberman. (The answer to that question was the subject of my latest sleep experiment, which is described in detail on the rest of this blog.)

Uberman is just a very, very strict schedule and if your life is going to mess with your naps at all, then no amount of badass (at least no amount that I was able to muster) is going to make it work. I kept getting "almost there" and then having something knock me off schedule, and after re-adjusting a couple times, man, that'll do anybody in.

I decided to experiement with the core-nap schedules rather than give up, since I hadn't seen any really good research on what those were like and if they could work in the long term. Now I'm approaching four months on "Everyman" with good results. All the details on that are on my current blog.

Here are some more places to look if you're seeking info about Uberman or polyphasic sleep in general:

The biggest one is the Yahoo! "Uberman" group. There's always several people actively going through adaptation on the group, usually quite a few different sleep schedules represented (though mostly Uberman / Dymaxion), and a great list of resources plus phenomenal archives. Highly recommended.

Also, if you're interested in a great blow-by-blow of a successful Uberman adaptation, I highly recommend Steve Pavlina's. He did Uberman for as long as I did, but he actually kept good records. Yay!

I've also been notified of a new forum for Ubersleepers at www.ubermanschedule.com. It's *very* new, so I can't comment about the content, but the site looks to be good quality at least.

You can email me with any other resources you want listed here: puredoxyk at puredoxyk dot com.

Happy napping!

Goodbye Cruel World!

Okay, this be it -- No more Blogger posts. Why? Well, I tried out Blogger on a whim, and it was worth about that -- a whim. I have a domain at www.puredoxyk.com, and decided after futzing with this teenager-worthy interface for a while that it was worth it to upgrade to something more flexible. Anyway, I have lots of other ambitions, projects and blatherings, and it'll be nice to keep them all in one place. (They're categorized, so you can always just click "polyphasic" if all you want to read about is the sleep stuff.)

Lately I've been powering through setbacks, something Everyman seems well-suited to, finishing up my adjustment and squeezing out some research in the cracks (much more research is forthcoming, once finals are over for this semester!). I think I've got an interesting lead on the "structure" of polyphasic schedules, which might give us a good hint about how to successfully modify them. More on that soon.

Thanks to everyone who read this blog; please do hop over to puredoxyk.com and leave your thoughts! The comment interface is much friendlier, I think, plus the new site does a really nice RSS feed if that makes things easier for ya.

Ta, and happy 20-minute dreams!

-PD

Everyman Morning 9 - Undersleeping? Okay...

Post mirrored from http://www.puredoxyk.com...please update your brain and/or bookmarks...this is or is approaching the last entry to be duplicated here!

Well, that was interesting. Went to bed on time, but darn tired as missing that 10:00 tends to do; was very careful to set up the alarm so I thought I couldn't miss it. Actually, I laid down at 1:30 with a book, figuring that after missing a nap, getting a few extra Z's wouldn't kill me. I don't know when I passed out exactly, but I woke up once at 2:15 when the book fell on my face or something.

Sleep, gorgeous sleep--like pizza, it's SO much more appreciable when you're not overdoing it. Then, next thing I remember, I'm standing in the middle of the room, blinking my eyes and looking around, vaguely pissed off because there's no alarm going off so I figure I must have overslept. Gah dangit!

I go pee. This rouses me enough so that when I come back to my area, I actually can read the clock and comprehend it. It says...3:00. I woke up, for whatever reason, after not quite an hour. And by the time I realized this, I was feeling pretty awake, and kind of shocked that I could--nay, must--go back to bed.

I didn't oversleep that time either; the alarm bounced me right up at five. I have to admit, having a downright silly amount of time to get ready for work is kind of pleasant...I just took a leisurely shower and sat on the back porch a while, and I still have plenty of time to eat breakfast. Neato.

Thus begins day 9. I'm a little groggy now, no differently than I usually am when getting up for work after a full night's snoz. Not worried about driving or anything, though.

-PD

You're ALL ON NOTICE!

This blog is being moved, to http://www.puredoxyk.com. That site is still incomplete now, but it's functional and all the old posts from this blog are over there, so please update your bookmarks as soon as it's convenient. Very soon now, new posts will begin appearing there instead of here. There's more on that site than just Uberman, but all the polyphasic sleep posts are categorized for easy finding. (I need to consolidate the number of websites I keep, argh!)

Last night I couldn't sleep during my 10:00 nap -- no doubt a side-effect of the six-hour snooze the night before -- BUT I did get up at 5:00 without incident, and while I'm tired now, it's not terrible. If this is recovery on Everyman, it's no worse than recovery on monophase! But we shall see how the rest of the day goes.

-PD

Dumber than a Brick, or just the Will of Fate?

In retrospect, I feel like *such* an idiot.

After having a good day yesterday, I wasn't prepared to crash out during my core last night, and I slept right through my alarm (didn't set a backup). Slept for six hours -- yikes. Ruined any chance of getting my 9 a.m. nap, either; I didn't even bother trying.

I know what's in store for me now -- almost a full readjustment, probably at least 3-4 days of being tired again, and just as I was really starting to get the hang of it, too. I just so expected the result of my oversleeping a bit to manifest itself during the next couple naps (as it does with Uberman, generally), that when they went by without incident, I thought I was in the clear. D'OH.

Aggravating to lose that time, when this is Hell Week with school and I don't have it to lose; and aggravating to have to go backwards when I was right on the brink of seeing what really adapting to Everyman was like. However, no silverliningless cloud and whatnot, it is true that I would have had to oversleep at some point, in order to be able to report the results in the book. And at least I know that readjusting, while not fun, won't ruin me this week; I expect it to be less uncomfortable, but maybe take longer, than an Uberman readjust (which takes 24-48 hours for a fully-adapted person, IIRC).

Some notes on the book - Obviously I haven't made any real progress on it, but I hadn't planned to until this godsawful semester was over. However, I had thought I'd be limiting my study to Uberman alone, and obviously that has changed. I had thought I would title it Uberman:ZZZ (it was gonna look really neat in the layout, a big silver "Uberman" with three chunky black Z's behind it) -- but that doesn't seem appropriate now. I'm leaning towards "Polyphasic Revolution", since, yes, the more I learn about this, the more I lean towards the evangelical (much as the word makes me shudder--talk about negative connotations). But ideas are welcome, if anybody likes that sort of thing. (If nobody does, no biggie, since *I* like it. ;)

Well, I'm sure I won't be tired today, so I'd better use it to the best of my ability and bash out good chunks of these papers, since I bet I'm *wasted* tomorrow. Le sigh. Live and learn, I guess.

Ta,
PD

Aftermath / End of Day 6

Well, oversleeping this morning didn't throw me off the schedule, or kick me into crash-mode. I slept fine all day, even at 9:00 and in spite of some scheduling weirdness during the afternoon.

I've been tired, but mostly just tired like I would be on a monophasic schedule if I missed some sleep, say only got 5 or 6 hours. I'm more tired than that now, but it's 1:13, and I usually get sleepy between 1-2. It's not actually too difficult to deal with though; I wind down for my core by reading or watching tv for half an hour, which is pleasant and I fall asleep lightning fast.

Everyman does give you one thing I really wanted out of Uberman this time, too: The ability to "stay up late" and "get up early", both. I like nights *and* mornings, and I always hate missing one to hang out in the other!

Good luck tonight to all the people I've talked to today who are starting new, or bullying through one of the dreaded Rough Patches. Hang in there, ya'll. Who's in charge, you or your meat? You can do it!

-PD

...And so will Day 6

So, time to find out how easy/hard it is to recover from an oversleep on Everyman. This will be my first one.

I didn't *have* to oversleep. But I was upset over family crap and couldn't sleep for my 10:00, and it's Saturday, so I talked myself into going to bed at 1 and sleeping until 7 (though I could have gotten up at 5, actually; I just felt like being lazy).

So now we get to learn what the payment on such practices is. I'm a bit groggy now, but nothing terrible; I'm stying away from coffee or showers so that I can get my 9:00 in, hopefully. Will report on the rest.

It is pretty funny to sleep until 7 on a Saturday and subsequently beat yourself up for being so lazy. ;)

-PD

Day 5 Produceth a Lesson

...And that lesson is: Thou Shalt Not eat too soon before a nap.

I'd been waking up on my own for a few naps, a couple minutes ahead of the timer, and feeling good, even at 5 a.m. today. Then my lunch appointment got started late, and I ended up eating at about 1:15, finishing about 1:45, and getting my nap at 2:15. I slept, but I woke up crazy groggy. I had to drink a cup of "real coffee" to wake up, and this from someone who's down to 1-2 cups of half-caff in the morning and that's it. (It's rather funny, since I quit I can "feel" real coffee again. I haven't gotten a buzz from coffee since I was like, 13!)

There was another time I though I could trace the grogginess to having eaten, but this is much more conclusive.

All of this is hilarious on a very strange level...Now I'm on the "Eat, Activity, Sleep" cycle that's how I was advised to raise babies, and which advice probably saved my butt because my daughter was an *awful* sleeper. As soon as the baby wakes, you see if it's hungry and feed it if it is. Then you set up something for it to play with or do (at least once a day, by itself--but supervised, of course). When it starts to fuss, you know it isn't hungry again yet, so if the butt's good and it's been a few hours, you put the little bundle back to bed, and--even if it's a lovely bundle like mine that wakes every 2-3 hours around the clock for seven months--it will sleep. It was called the "EASY" schedule, the "Y" being "your time", a much-needed reminder to new mothers to chill while the baby naps.

And now I'm the one on it. Freaky.

By the way, if you ever wonder why some parents seem to develop a psychological problem where they relate almost everything to the experiences their children have provided for them, I'll tell you: It's a trauma, from the extreme sleep-deprivation some of us go through. I was nearly hospitalized for hallucinations. So I have an excuse. ;)

Alrighty, naptime.

-PD