New Conclusions

What better way to officially start off a new chapter in this personal blog than to talk about conclusions? A sense of conclusion doesn’t seem to exist as much anymore. We are always waiting for the next big thing. I want to try to live more now, much like a dog does. I think some of my everyday stress, believe it or not, comes from TV shows more than work.

I am the kind of person that likes to see things through. I generally complete all projects, even the bad ones. Lately, I’ve been trying to play triage and trying to make more cutthroat decisions about what is worth my time and what is not. It’s been a lot less stressful. One such area of distraction, as I said, was TV. As is, television is certainly a big enough drain on my productivity, but I had become much more overwhelmed lately. There has been this looming idea that I could complete my ever-growing Netflix queue. I felt the need to complete shows I began even when they were horrible.

As a kid, some of the people around me would criticize something without truly understanding it and I would always be upset by this. On top of that I recall those people harassing me if I attempted to speak knowledgeable about a topic I clearly knew little to nothing about. Both of these things frustrated me so much that I wanted to keep learning more and more about a wide array of topics. I became dedicated to being able to speak confidently about things because I had experienced them first hand. And if I had not genuinely experience those things, I would admit it instead of pretending to know something.

I thought I truly knew movies well and that I wasn’t addicted to them but rather I was a connoisseur. In reality all I had was a collection of about 300 dvds (only 20 of which were pretty good movies). I would rewatch the good ones over and over again. I became so aware of these movies that they could become background noise while I worked. I eventually got this twisted idea that having a movie in the background helps me work just as well as music. Of course, this is only true when I have already seen the movie. But if it is a new movie or TV show it would just be far too distracting for me.

I feel this need to give it my full attention. And the increase in quality serialized TV has required even more unending commitment. And with Netflix, it’s not like I can just let it go, live my life and actually tune in next week anymore. I can almost always find what I want to watch and download it or stream it from somewhere. There is nothing stopping me from Binge watching an entire series.

I began writing this entry about a month ago and at the same time was concerned about being distracted from work that needed to get done. The good news is that I have finally weened myself off this addiction. Also while the pursuit of knowledge is a good thing, knowing what is worth time and energy and what is not is even more crucial.  In a recent sleep study, I enjoyed the aspect of the strange sleep pattern that actually divided my sleep pattern into smaller and more manageable segments. I was far more productive during the smaller blocks of time than a vast unorganized block. But I realized that my productivity is not really based on actual usable time in day, but rather the perceived time.

Now, I simply organize my day out as if I am very busy with a many small chunks of time doing simple tasks with allotted time for random things or non-work related activities. I used similar way of organizing my schedule when it was at its busiest in high school and undergrad and it worked very well. It seems that when I transitioned into the “real world” I lost sense of that order and organization that kept me motivated, interested, productive, and happy. Now I have finally regained control of my time and I feel much more balanced.

Jaded Joy

The First Weekend

On Friday I slept a little longer in the morning, so again to compensate, I intentionally chose to skip my 1st nap (11:00-11:30am). I had the time to take it and everything I have read said to try to stay on your routine. But I also read that if you miss a nap or you shift times a little here and there it doesn't make a huge difference. I decided to embrace the slight accident for the sake of this experiment and as of Sunday morning I was feeling fine. I do recall that about an hour after my missed nap I did start feeling a little off and weaker/more tired than usual. But that feeling was brief. It quickly went back to normal after my following nap and it did no big damage as far as I could tell.

Saturday and Sunday were going especially well considering that it was the first weekend and I had a few more things to juggle than I did during the week. But on Sunday, I was filming some clips for an upcoming extremely short film project, which I was very interested in, so I ended up skipping another nap. I stayed awake through Nap #2 (4:30-5:00pm). I thought it would be similar to Friday and not necessarily a big deal. And my day ended up being one of my more productive ones yet so I was one top of the world!

Dangerous Mistake

However, when I went to sleep during my 3rd nap I may have overslept a little bit… UNTIL 1AM! I was such an idiot! My alarm went off at my 10:30pm just fine but I somehow decided to put my head back down thinking I needed an extra minute to adjust to being awake or something. You can see the entire rollercoaster week’s trends in the updated graph below.

This was one of the more devastating errors I have made. I was doing so well and I sincerely felt like I wasn’t very tired much of last week. Now it seems clear that my body was getting more and more tired every day b/c I need the sleep. Or conceivably it was that I had slept through Nap #2 during the day and I was still catching up on that one. But that still would’ve only justified sleeping an extra 30 minutes (until 11pm), which is obviously not what I ended up doing. I wouldn’t have been as upset if that is what happened but instead I awoke at 1am. Now I am struggling with what to do to resolve it. Should I just attempt to get back on my ‘normal’ polyphasic routine and go to sleep from 3:00-6:00am or should I focus more on always averaging about 4.5 hours of sleep per day?

As much as I think sleeping from 3:00am-6:00am would be better for my getting back to normal, it feels too much like cheating. After all, if I did that I would end up with almost 6 hours of REM sleep time in one night (and that doesn’t even include the naps for the day). 7.5 hours with the naps is basically the same as a monophasic routine and I cannot see myself using that shortcut. Were this simply a slight amount I don’t think it would matter as much but it is too important of a mistake. I think this is the part of the 1 to 2 week transition period difficulties that originally read about. I need to power through them or else my body is going to keep trying to get back to a monophasic schedule. I have decided to essentially swamp my nap #3 with my REM sleep just for this one night. It will make tomorrow a very, very long day, but I believe that is the only way for me to stay on track from here on out.

New Weeks Resolutions

I will be more strict with my naps from now onward! Toying with them this weekend was very cocky of me. I was beginning to think after just 1 week that I really had a complete handle on this and really, I hadn’t quite adjusted. I need to focus more on consistency throughout the next few weeks in order to have the best long term results. As I have said before, the 10:30pm wake-up call is the most difficult of my day. When I wake up it is so much darker than during any of my other sleep times that it makes it easy to continue sleeping. Even the 6am wake-up has a little ambient light streaming through the blinds and the knowledge that Liz will typically be waking up within the hour.

No more skipping nap experiments. I shouldn’t intentionally do this again. Obviously errors happen, but if I use up my only “Skip a nap without huge consequences” card up for something like that, it is going to only hurt my progress when I really need it. Perhaps if had not skipped another nap a mere 2 days prior to skipping mine on Sunday, I would not have been so thrown of course. I will try to be stronger this next week and hopefully by the time you read my next post, I will have conquered another week and I will be back to my ‘normal’ polyphasic pattern without too many missteps. “Onwards and Upwards!”

Inevitable Transition

I have decided to officially stop posting my sleep patterns on two blogs and instead transition 100% of the Polyphasic Sleeping discussion to tumblr.dantonspina.com. If that is why you started reading this blog, then I encourage you to just make the switch to my tumblr. If you got bounced here for some other reason and you are just interested to see what other crazy things I will attempt then stick around. The Polyphasic discussion will disappear, but not this page. Instead the focus of the content will change to be more or less my random observations about the world around me (That is what the subheading was originally supposed to be about anyway). Tune in soon if that is something that interests you.

Quixotic Quandry

Tiredness Flip

Much to my surprise my tiredness trend has almost completely reversed. I’ve included the graph below but basically I have now been feeling more tired after the earlier naps and feeling less and less tired after the later nap. It is very strange and not what I expected. Perhaps my body is experiencing some sort of sleep deprivation see-saw and it is trying to balance itself out.

The nice thing though that is coinciding with this flip is that I have actually been able to fall asleep more quickly, especially during those earlier naps which I had felt completely awake for. Though, nearly all the naps I have felt some level of awareness. It is akin to meditation when I have to empty my brain for the naps. I was never much of a napper before this experiment and it appears as though my body typically needs a cool down as I fall asleep. So when I try to dive into a nap with no cool down beforehand, it is a little more difficult to empty my brain of thoughts and just sleep. That said it looks as if I am adjusting and it will likely even out soon.

Projected Projects

One of the primary reasons for switching to this sleep pattern was to pursue my many projects. This is my focus during every very long day and it is starting to feel a little daunting but I’m still so excited by what I can do in a day that I have been powering through any second guessing of my personal drive. I still am very happy with how this is going. I am still shocked but I have eased right into this as though it were meant to be my natural state. Of course, this weekend should be more interesting because my awkward nap times will probably end up making it more difficult to make plans but other than that, life is good. I shall keep on working on things. Aside from the initial transition, I’m finding less and less significant events to post about already. I know I said I would try to post every night, but at this point, it’s honestly been pretty smooth sailing. I think I’m going to make the switch to a weekly post which will go up on Monday mornings starting now. It’s a better use of my oh-so-precious time, right?

Triage

That brings me to Triage. I want to translate the concept of Triage to how I decide what to use my time for through my awake phases. Triage, for those who are unfamiliar, is the medical term describing the process of determining the priority of patients’ treatments based on the severity of their conditions. Real world triage is much more serious than me deciding what to do each day, but it is an interesting concept to have in your mind when trying to prioritize in your own life. When it comes to various intriguing events or taking in new forms of entertainment I have learned that I really need to evaluate how much value these things are actually adding. Yes, there is a small chance that by doing A I will gain some insight into something new. But if I do B, perhaps I will have more time and energy to dedicate to something that is ultimately more important to me. This is a concept that is worth exploring whether you are changing your sleeping patterns or not.

Final thoughts

Perhaps I am unrealistically optimistic about how perfect this situation is right now. I have a feeling I will reach a point at which many of my friends and family will want to extricate me out of this way of living and I will be stubborn and frustrated. I will inevitably question why everyone has to fit into the standard way of sleeping.

It is funny how accepting we are of many very different cultures and intellectual concepts but when it comes to something so primal and instinctual as sleep, people get very upset and defensive not for their own sake but for sleep itself, as though it were some living and breathing best friend. It is intriguing to me that people hold it with such high regard. Whenever I’ve brought up this experiment, there are some people who are downright insulted. How could you do that to SLEEP? And it is not as much a lack of open-mindedness as it is a pure and simple love for sleep. I really do enjoy sleeping. Every once in a while (specifically back in my monophasic days) I would oversleep for way too long. And I loved and embraced it for what it was. However, that is not the norm for me. I usually can pop right out of bed, especially when I have something exciting to do. That was really the turning point for my relationship with sleep. When I had a horrible job, of course I didn’t want to wake up. Sleep was this amazing world that kept me away from that. But then I realized that when there is either an exciting job or you add a greater level of excitement to your daily life, you have more reason to get out of bed and do fun things, regardless of how tired you think you are.

Productive Procrastination

Health

In my first post I mentioned as my 2nd commandment that “I shall not sacrifice my health.” I did not go into all the details but for me that means more than just being careful not to get sick or taking care of myself if I become sick. It should also include maintaining a healthy diet and eating habits, which I have managed to do so far, as well as working out occasionally. I do not work out as often as I would like but I generally do something pretty physically strenuous at least once or twice a week at the moment. This is not ideal, but I would like to maintain that as I progress and I generally feel that working out keeps me from getting sick, so I think it is in my best interests to be consistent with that.

There is one other thing that affects my health that I haven’t really addressed yet and I think I should. It might not be obvious but most of my creative pursuits involve creating or working on something that is on the computer. Many studies have been conducted on how much time people should be on the computer and most of them involve typical work usage (8 hours during a day) plus an encouraged typical minimal 1-2 hours of usage at home. There is evidence that extended use too close to the screen can damage eyesight and that if you don’t take consistent breaks you could get carpel tunnel. There are also the possibilities of back strain if you sit weirdly in your chair and hemorrhoids are believed to be caused by a combination of things, one of which includes prolonged sitting. So the moral of the story is that everybody should try to not be on the computer all the time.

Since I am awake roughly 20 hours instead of the average of 16-17, it would be very bad for me to use all of that time for computer related activities.  As you can imagine, most of my creative projects require a computer. In order to head off this problem I have so far been balancing everyday errands, some work duties and other non computer related projects with more of the computer heavy work. Yesterday I actually spent time cleaning the Vanton (Van + Danton = Vanton) which severely needed to be cleaned, especially after my road trip to Yosemite this past weekend. I also repaired some broken things in the house and started reading the ARE (Architect Registration Exam) review manual. I also typically read books or plays as well as write in a physical journal or notebook and I have been building furniture in the CalPoly fabrication shop lately, so that is also something I would like to continue doing. There is certainly a benefit of having a dog in that I usually take him out on walks a few times a day. And I may sound like a house-husband by saying this but I like getting the chores and things done during the day so that even more of my time with Lizzy is spent enjoying each other’s company instead of stressing out about things that still need to be done.

While I did not include physical activity/avoiding computer overuse on my original list of commandments, I think it should perhaps be the 11th commandment. It is one that I try to abide by most of the time but didn’t quite make it into the top 10, so it doesn’t need to happen all the time. I will continue to try using at least 1 entire block’s worth of time per day on activities that do not involve a computer.

Dreams

I still haven’t had any memorable dreams upon waking up from either the naps or the REM sleep. What is really weird though is the cognitive awareness that occurs while I am napping, particular during my first and second naps. It is as though I did not sleep at all because my brain never really stopped thinking about something. But I certainly feel more well-rested than when I have slept only 3 hours during a day in the past, without the naps. I must be successfully napping, but I don’t recall ever napping in the past yet basically feeling awake the entire time. Again, this me be the problem I mentioned yesterday of observing my own habits so closely that I inevitably affect the interpretation of my results. I will keep making note of it.

Another note regarding my rest during naps is that my upstairs neighbor seems to like playing music directly above my bed midday. He or she usually seems to turn it on right when I lay down for my first nap each day. And it’s not something soothing either, it like techno dance music or something with a reverberating bass beat every second “BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM” Who listens to that at 11:00 on a weekday? As frustrating as this is the music though, it is actually relatively low. I just have the unfortunate luck of being located directly below where he or she must work. And I can’t really criticize someone for playing music at 11:00am. Most people are no longer sleeping. To resolve this issue, I bought a couple pairs of industrial strength earplugs. I’ll be keeping one pair in the car, in case I need to nap on the road and one pair for daytime naps.

I used them yesterday and finally silence. The only thing I could hear was the alarm on my phone and my own breathing or heartbeat. The earplugs created a very Zen-like state. It reminded me of being underwater. It was very peaceful, even if I could hear my own internal sounds. In fact, I enjoyed noticing my heart rate slowing as I fell asleep. It was very relaxing. I think the $3 I spent on the earplugs were a worthwhile investment.

Difficulty

So far, I still have not had much difficulty. I am waiting to repost the chart from yesterday, which I am continuing to update each day. But I am still putting entries in daily and my tiredness when waking up seems to be balancing itself. The only minor difficulty so far was that I finished cleaning the Vanton yesterday at about 4:29. So instead of going home to nap, I just napped in the car under a shady tree with the windows open. And when I woke up, I was actually close to where Liz works, so I was able to pick her up. It was actually a very peaceful nap.  I imagine this will still get more difficult but I really think my years of little to no sleep in Architecture have help me transition into this lifestyle quite easily thus far.

Creations

I wanted to focus the entry on what changes occur with regards to how quickly I can finish a creative project. My friend Alex (http://www.alexcoulombe.com/) actually asked me to compare a project I’ve worked on in the past and the amount of time it took (in terms of hours per day over how many days) to a project I am working on during this experiment. While I like his proposal, the difficultly in accurately creating this chart lies in the variety of the projects I have been working on. How do I compare the time it took me to build a bed frame to how long it takes me to make an architecture rendering? Even when comparing similar things I see some potential issues. How long did it take me to write one play versus another? Even though they are the same format, they are also difficult to compare because there are so many varying factors. As I move forward I will look for ways to compare specific projects that I am doing now to ones I have already done, but for now I will focus on productivity in a more general sense.

Productivity

How do I perceive my productivity levels during the Normal (Monophasic) Sleep pattern I used to follow as compared to those same levels during my Current (Polyphasic) Sleep pattern?

Before I dive into explaining the graphic I want to explain how I typically work on any project or responsibilities. There is a small of me that is an early riser who begins cranking out work on a project early. But this typically fades if there is a substantial amount of time between said early morning and the deadline, perceived or actual. Then, like many people, I procrastinate or get distracted and off task but eventually I get back into a high-powered productive trance where I could seemingly complete almost any amount of work in a window of only a few hours. I think that work cycle is relatable. Even if you are not an early riser, most people experience some kind of procrastination followed by an intense amount of working fueled by that looming deadline and all the pressures that come with it.

When I have long chunks of time I actually tend to be less productive with that time. There is little to no pressure and binge watching the entire 4th season of Arrested Development on Netflix might look more appealing to me. But when I have less time I work more efficiently. I’m going to actually refer to my friend Alex again with a short story that involves him. Back when we were in college together we created a theater group for people with busy schedules. In fact it started out specifically for architecture students. It is called Warehouse Architecture Theater (WhAT for short) and when we were involved with it, we almost always got asked the same questions. How do you find time to work on multiple plays a semester while still doing architecture school? Isn’t that too much? Don’t you also have a job? And we would both respond with similar answers. Theater is something we both love and we will make time for it however we can but it doesn’t make architecture work more stressful. If anything, the opposite is true. Being involved in this theater group is the reward that pushes us to work harder on our studio projects everyday so that we can finish them in less time. Then we can use that time to do the theater work.

Where am I going with having less time to work on things? You are probably thinking I am confused or pining for the days when my schedule was busier. Nope. Even though I have more time to work on things in a single day, the naps provide the perfect deadline that gets me pushing harder and working at a higher level than I thought I could work at. And instead of the end of the day being my only deadline, each nap provides a small deadline for me to which I excitedly work toward. That gives me 4 deadlines a day and it condenses my schedule into roughly 5-hour manageable segments. And by having my duties separated into different categories of work, I don’t experience the same lulls I would during a normal uninterrupted day.

I know that these deadlines are in my head, but its just the way that I am wired to work I guess. I tend to wake up with many ideas I want to work on and then I get really serious about doing something productive before my window of time has closed. The infographics I created should clear up what I mean in a visual way. Each circle represents a 24 hour period. The space between each radial line represents a 30 minute block of time. If you think of the graphic as having peaks and valleys, then the peaks are the most productive times and the valleys are the least productive time (which is when I am sleeping). The colors also divide the productivity into smaller chunks of time where I have felt a surge or drop in productivity throughout the day.

Closing Thoughts

I am still very much enjoying this pattern. Earlier I was reading several blogs about how to make the most of the time in your day or how to lifehack your way to saving time. I have always pretty much done most of the things on those lists and I like to think I have used my time wisely but it is astounding the kind of emotional boost this extra 4 hours a day is giving me. I feel like my goals are more attainable than ever and I am really enjoying my late night awake phase. From 10am-3am PST (Or 1am-6am) for all my friends on the East Coast) I have been in a really good groove. I think I like that time because there are so few distractions, as long as I avoid the black hole that is internet stumbling. But other than that possibility, I have very little to take away from my productivity or any creative train of thought I may be on. Some people don’t like this part of polyphasic sleep. They don’t like the loneliness. But I don’t feel loneliness. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with my friends and family, but it is also really nice to have my own personal time to focus my thoughts. I only worry that if/when I eventually switch back to a monophasic schedule I would lose that wonderful time.

On a similar note regarding using my time wisely, I think that once the transition phase is over (1-2 weeks) I will probably be posting weekly instead of daily. I think it will be a better use of my time and I don’t think the same revelations or wild new experiences will be happening so regularly.

As you may or may not be aware, I have been posting this blog to two separate blog pages (the other is http://tumblr.dantonspina.com). For now, I will continue to do this, but I think I will eventually faze one out or more likely I will keep using it but change the content. Be well and good night/good morning/good afternoon!