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!”
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