I will be resuming the Dymaxion schedule after getting accustomed to this new workout routine.

By the way, it’s really working. I’m thinner and stronger! I’ll post pictures in a few day!

This morning, in fact, I woke up early than normal and I believe if it weren’t for the Sleeptraker watch that I wouldn’t be up right now getting a few things done and I’d be asleep right now.

I’ve been setting it so that I get a forty-minute nap. I set the alarm to go off an hour from now, tell it to wake me 20 minutes earlier and it does the rest. It’s really great!

We have moved to a new apartment and I’ve just been super-busy. I’m glad I had this time to check in and blog.

Well, guess what? That cold was caught by me and my wife and then it kinda changed and then my daughter caught it again and then I was the last one who had it. And then, guess what, it almost cleared up for me and then turned into an ear infection and then it’s turned into a cough and now my daughter has it again. Oh my.

Needless to say, I’ve been so paranoid about not getting well that I have gone back to my normal sleep schedule and still taking naps most times just to keep my body semi-conditioned.

I have learned two things.

One is that it’s NOT that hard to do a Dymaxion schedule and the other is that you can’t drink alcohol and expect Dymaxion to work. It just puts me under and I can’t get a short nap.

However, I’m having a tough time getting up after my 2am nap. I often wake up at 4 or 5:30 or even later on some days.

I think the reason is that some mornings I just have less work to do than others. I think if I were a bit more inspired to get up and work on something that this would be good.

Just so that you know, the watch is great. It does wake me up. However, I’m a bit too tired to get up and get out of bed every time in the middle of the night. During the day is just fine.

I think I’m still adjusting since it’s been about two weeks now although I thought I would be completely adjusted.

I do think that alcohol is really messing things up a bit as when I do share some wine with my wife one or two and sometimes more nights per week. I seem to certainly not get up when my alarm goes off by 2:45 am.

Anyway, I think I’m still getting used to the schedule and on those days when I have no alcohol in my system, I get up earlier after my 2am nap.

By the way, I must admit that much of the problems of late that I have been having are tightly related to my daughter still being sick. We’re taking her to the doctor tomorrow to check out her lungs. She’s had some issues with raspy lungs and difficulty breathing at times. When we moved from LA, we were pretty convinced that these issues had disappeared, but it looks as though they may be persisting. When I take my 2am nap, I find that I am listening to her breathing (or not breathing for a few moments) and so I’m not really SLEEPING as it were. I think that by the time that I’ve settled in for a nap that my alarm goes off 45 minutes later when I have entered into my deeper sleep.

I’m going to maintain my nap schedule but I’m not going to expect any real breakthroughs with this until she is well and I can nap in our bed at night without me having to worry/watch her when she is sleeping with mommy and daddy.

I remember waking up after the 2am alarm went off at 2:30, but man was I tired. My core sleep still isn’t being distributed yet.

So I’m going to hang with this for a while and treat this as part of the adjustment.

I’m still getting less than four hours of sleep during the day, though. Yesterday it was more like 3 and I’m only tired about a half an hour before my planned sleep time, so this is good.

Naps are on time and normal at about 20 minutes.

Altering my watch settings did help at least.

Will keep working on it. My body doesn’t really want to switch my REM times of day yet, but it’s heading that way.

I have had it set at 30 minutes so that if I fall asleep before, say 2am, and my alarm is set for 2:45 that I should wake up between 2:15 and 2:45. Well, last night my alarm went off at 2:38 and I was still quite tired and didn’t get up.

I think that I just need to not sleep quite so long (from just before 2am to 2:38 is probably over 45 minutes). That’s too long I think. I think that my body is just too comfortable sleeping and doesn’t want to get up. My mind is alert but tired still.

I think that what I’m doing for earlier in the day might be fine for these kind of 45 minute naps, so I’m going just shorten it for night.

I think that the idea here is to get my body to make the leap into going into REM sleep throughout the day instead of just at night and I think that this adjustment will get it to happen.

I think this is the easiest schedule to maintain than any other to be quite frank.

I’d much rather sleep four times per day for about 20 minutes or so (1–2 hours per day) using my Sleeptracker than to try and squeeze in six sleep periods of 20 minutes each. Four sleep periods is so much easier to deal with.

The day flies by to be perfectly honest. I have a lot of work that I get done and that’s great. Without this sleep schedule, it seems that I can never move forward on what I am doing. I always seem to be getting behind.

Let me summarize what this is like:

Imagine taking a nap in the morning, just afternoon and just after dinner; is that doable? What if you could then stay up until 2am, take a nap and then get up at 2:20, 2:30 or 2:40 and then do it all again? I generally only feel tired about an hour before each nap and that’s certainly not bad. What can you get done that isn’t getting done now?

And then when I went to bed last night at 2AM for my first full day of naps that are about 20 minutes in length, I hear my daughter cough. Well, she’s been having this dry cough for a few days and we’re waiting for it to clear up as it hasn’t gotten worse after it started.

Anyway, I hear the cough and then go back to sleep. And then I hear it again. This was about a minute later.

Off to sleep again and then I hear it again.

Each time I heard it, I was convinced that this was the last time. I also figured that she must be partly awake and that is why she’s coughing and if she would just go to sleep and then I could just go to sleep and…she coughs again.

So, I get up and go to her and have her drink some of her water from her bottle.

Five minutes later, the coughing returned.

Well, let me cut to the chase here. I didn’t sleep until 2.5 hours later than my sleep time.

Angelina had started asking to go to nap with mommy and daddy so I brought her to bed for mommy to deal with her and so I went to the living room and slept until 7 am.

I feel totally wiped out and feel like I’m not going to be able to get back into the groove fully, but off I go.

I went to bed at 2 and had set the alarm for 3:30. My watch went off at 3:16, but I don’t remember it at all.

My daughter has a bit of a cough and so she woke me up because she was crying for mommy to come nap with us.

I got her into our bed and looked at the time and realized what happened. It was almost 4:30am.

Well, no worries. I did only get 2:30 hours of sleep which means that I will be getting that sleep later this morning at 8.

I have to go into work (my only actual “work” schedule is Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00am to 1pm and I work from home the rest of the time) and so I need to get that sleep before I go and then do any necessary catch-up when I get back.

The weather has been really bad lately and I didn’t go into work on Tuesday; there was a tornado/waterspout that had done some damage only in the city where I do on-site work, so it’s a good thing I didn’t go in. I don’t mind driving in the rain, but I have pretty bald tires right now and it’s no fun in the rain, but it’s very dangerous with high winds.

I think I may have to do the same thing this morning unless the weather clears up or if magic elves replaced my tires during the night.

This was my first serious alteration to my sleep schedule so I don’t feel bad. I feel like I could use some sleep but I will play catch-up throughout the day.

I think this will certainly work if I get the sleep I missed from the 2am sleep in the morning and possibly afternoon and am able to get a 10pm sleep to ward off the need for lengthy 2am sleep.

Last night when it was 8pm, I did feel the desire to get a nap, but I was attending a meeting in town with the Lompoc Photographers Guild where my wife and I are members. Now I wish I had got that sleep when it was calling.