The fight for time is a hard one indeed, but essentially living a longer (awake) life couldn't be easy.
Except it was.
At least, that's what I thought during the first day of my experiment. I began my journey to sleeping four times a day on the 27th of February, but my first actual "cycle" with all blocks of sleep was that of the 28th. I went to sleep at 11:00pm the 27th, then woke up at 3:00am (a whole hour and a half late), then went to sleep again at 4:30am, woke up at 6:00am and took naps after lunch (1:00pm) and at twilight (5:30pm). My goal schedule looks like this:
The fact is, I felt amazing. Testimonials I'd read online talked at length about how sleepy, tired and fatigued people who tried this started feeling right away. Me, I was fine. I exercised, worked, posted the introductory sleepblog and generally felt alert all day.
What was making it so easy?
After thinking about it a little bit, I came to a realization. I've always been a bit of a night owl, and while I normally tried to get 8 hours of sleep in when I could, more often than not I slept from 4 to 6 hours every night.
With my new schedule, I'm sleeping 5, and I bumped my sleep hygiene up several notches (things like taking a break from screens and bright lights for some time before sleeping and making sure my sleeping space was tidy). My sleep quality had never been so good, and I was only missing an hour of sleep on average.
Then came the unexpected.
I wish I could tell you this unexpectedly easy transition continued in just the same way, but the seams started breaking off pretty fast.
You see, the world doesn't care when you want to sleep. Neither do your friends, or your family, when they need something from you. Try as you might, balancing both acts isn't at all easy. I managed to sneak in naps here and there without that much trouble, but sometimes it was impossible. Most days this last week I pulled off a sort of Everyman (one long sleep at night, several naps), but I haven't reached my goal of regular Dual Core sleep.
And what about the actual sleeping?
As I said, adapting to sleeping less hasn't been hard, however, I've run into trouble falling asleep for the first time in my life. My body seems to be having trouble accepting rationing of sleeping hours throughout the day.
Even so, those made me feel rested as well.
Waking up at midnight was also really hard at the beginning, as I went full zombie-mode the first few days and turned off every alarm without even remembering the next day. I've since enlisted the help of a human alarm, as suggested by the Polyphasic Society, and while I somehow zombie'd them over the phone the first time, eventually it started to work.
Smoke good bud for sleeping?
Some have suggested I use cannabis as a sleeping aid when I'm having trouble, and it was an idea I'd had before, but there's a problem with that.
While it certainly would help me fall asleep, in the case of naps it would be counter productive, as it shortens REM sleep (which is why regular users rarely dream at all). It's not that useful for my core blocks either, because it lenghtens Deep Sleep cycles, thus making it more difficult to wake up after such short periods.
In fact, I've seen a general decrease in usage since I began my experiment, mostly attributable to having to avoid it before naps. I've also almost abandoned coffee as a whole, except for emergencies like needing to skip a sleep block for work.
I don't mind at all, as it makes life cheaper. I've also been more or less able to determine that it's possible to do this while occasionally going the Snoop way, but since I haven't been able to completely transition yet, I'll hold my judgement for now.
My take after a week of challenging the norm.
Society will always influence individual action. We're social animals and it's ingrained deep within our thought structure. That said, our relationship with socierty doesn't have to be one of complacent servility.
As I've covered before, "the norm" is not always "the best", nor "your thing". More often than not, we must challenge it's flow to find growth. Changing the the course of the metaphorical societal river is what we must strive to do.
While many have called me crazy, questioned my decisions, and have generally had trouble understanding my project, I remain convinced that trying is the right thing to do. I feel well, I'm excercising regularly, I'm getting a lot done each day and I'm in a relatively good mood.
Sacrifices have been made, but I feel it'll all be worth it.