0

Stabilizing…

So last night I went to nap at 2am and woke up closer to 4am this time and I wasn’t as tired.

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.

0

Getting on Track Again

Last night: 2 hours of sleep from 2–4 am

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.

0

Need To Adjust My Sleep Window and Alarm

After two nights of over­sleep­ing at the 2am nap, I think I’m going to shorten my sleep win­dow and alarm.

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.

0

Back on Track

Just to let you know that I am totally back on track with Dymaxion.

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?

0

Everything Was Going Fine and Then…

I hit all my naps at the right time yesterday…perhaps that first time that I really made an effort to hit my 2/8/28 sched­ule and I did so successfully…

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.

0

Slept Through Alarm

Well, I cer­tainly wouldn’t be the first per­son to sleep a polypha­sic sleep sched­ule to sleep through an alarm, but I did last night.

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.

0

Tried For A Nap…

For my 8pm nap, I wasn’t able to get to bed until 9:15. I was awake until the alarm went off at 10:00. How­ever, I did rest my body and I felt that I did drift off now and then.

I’m doing this in prepa­ra­tion for my sleep tonight which will be from the time that I feel the most tired until prob­a­bly 3:30am. So, maybe 2 until 3:30?

I have so much more energy by the way. I think it’s just plain awesome.

Is any­one read­ing these? Please leave com­ments below if you are. Thanks!

0

Making Great Progress

So last night I woke at 4:30 instead of 5:30 am and the day went great. The after­noon nap was eas­ier this time; I went right to sleep.

I’m look­ing for­ward to my 8pm nap and tonight I’m going to set my alarm for 3:30 instead of 4:30.

0

Rough Time Napping

So I went to get my Dymax­ion nap this after­noon and I had set my To Bed time at 3:45pm, wake win­dow at 30 min­utes and alarm time at 4:00. I lay down at 3:35-ish.

Well, I lay there and lay there and checked the time at it was 4:00

I real­ized that if I’m going to get a nap that I’m going to need to quiet my mind.

For­tu­nately for me, I invented a method to do this which I devel­oped.

I reset my watch for the alarm at 4:30, To Bed at 4:00 with a 30-minute window.

My watch woke me up at 4:26 and I was very rested.

Hooray!

01

The Clear Mind Method (which I invented)

It can be used to help quiet your mind for sleep, clear your head, pre­pare for a task when many other things are dis­tract­ing you, etc.

Use it in good health:

First, close your eyes.

Sec­ond, either imag­ine you are doing this (and if you can please do) hold out your hands palms up.

Third, imag­ine that the activ­ity of your ver­bal inner voice (the one that you will be using to actu­ally talk your­self through this process and also the same one that says unkind things when you really want to say them out loud) is rep­re­sented by a light. Today I was using a can­dle light image to rep­re­sent the activ­ity; some­times it was red, some­times orange and some­times yel­low. By “activ­ity” I mean that if you have a stereo with an equal­izer and when music plays the lights are very active, I mean active in this way. The more noise or ver­bal activ­ity of your inner voice, the more that this light flick­ers in your palm. Use your inner voice in a con­struc­tive way and announce to your­self what you are mon­i­tor­ing. “Right hand.” “Left hand.” “Right hand.” “Left hand.”

Fourth, imag­ine that the sen­sa­tions you feel are rep­re­sented by a flicker in your left hand. The idea is to actu­ally FEEL with your skin, feel how hun­gry you are, feel any pain in your body, feel any dis­com­fort, feel any kind of sen­sa­tion that you can feel. Feel your own breath. Feel your own weight. Tense up your feet and relax and FEEL that tens­ing and FEEL that relief. Work your way from the bot­tom of your feet up through tens­ing your legs, torso, arms and up to your scalp. Today I was imag­in­ing the the flick­er­ing to be a blue can­dle flame.

Fifth, as you work your way up your body in the fourth step, check in with your inner voice and watch the activ­ity for both as you go. Try to do these alter­nately. Right hand, left hand, right hand, etc. Announce these to your­self as men­tioned before. Watch the activ­ity with your mind’s eye but feel the sen­sa­tions and watch the activ­ity in both palms.

Sixth, as you watch the activ­ity light in one hand, you also watch the other one. You will notice that as you work your way up and announce what you are mon­i­tor­ing, your mind will be calmer. At a point, you will only hear your own inner voice and your body will be float­ing with­out sen­sa­tion. At that point, you tell that voice to stop. If you hear any­thing again, you just watch your palms in your mind’s eye. Watch that activ­ity until it dies out like a fire that has no more fuel to burn.

I’ve been doing this for a year now, so I actu­ally don’t have to hold out my palms and I was able to do it curled up for sleep.

I’m delighted to share this with you.

Enjoy.