Fast Adaption

[Oki]

This is partly a response to Daniel's question: How Bad is it?

Let's face it - adaption is one of the biggest barriers to a
Polyphasic life. Everyone makes mistakes during adaption and Daniel's
(oft repeated) question is a good one.

Here's my theory: extra core sleep is *very* bad for your adaption,
but extra power naps are good for it! Take 12 a day if you want to!

Blasphemy! How dare I say such a thing!? Here me out, here's my
logic and my proposed experiment:

What is the point of adaption? Why do we sleep deprive ourselves so
severely (especially during Uberman adaption, which I am going to
focus on here for simplicity)? The point is that we are learning how
to nap. The reason you are sleep deprived is that you haven't learned
how to drop into a deep (phase 3, 4, and REM) rejuvenating sleep
quickly enough, so you aren't getting anything out of your naps at
first. Well maybe all you need is a little more practice.

Let's think about it in terms of the so-called formula. Core sleep is
inefficient, but it allows you to stay awake for "long" periods of
time (eg 16hrs on a "normal" monophasic lifestyle). Power naps are
about 20 mins in length, but are worth an hour of core sleep (once
you've learned to do them right). You can't take 3 power naps in
quick succession and then stay up for 14 hrs though - it doesn't work
that way. You have to use up your energy and then recharge. Thus if
you take too many power naps you just wont feel like taking the next
one as soon. At worst you'll get addicted to taking a lot of naps and
need to ween yourself off them.

If, on the other hand, you overdue your core sleep you are really
setting yourself back. You are reducing your need for sleep during
the rest of your cycle, making it harder to nap. This is why it takes
longer to adapt to an Everyman schedule than Uberman.

Also, if you are well into your schedule and are still sleepy or
oversleeping every once in a while, my guess is that you are sleep
deprived. Go back to the formula. How many naps do you take on
Uberman? 6? that is only "worth" 6 hrs of sleep per night. How much
sleep did you need before polyphasic? 7 or 8 hrs / night? Then you
probably need 7 naps a day. Polyphasic isn't a way to get away with
sleep deprivation - it's a smarter way to sleep. So if you feel like
you need more sleep then sleep more - just do it in a smarter way.

My theory is that I'll adapt faster if I take more naps because I'll
be getting more sleep and more practice napping.

Well I had a wonderful 3 months on polyphasic last summer and I've got
some polyphasic time coming up again soon. I'm thinking of attempting
a 'fast adaption' of this sort.

Thoughts? Feedback? Criticism? Advice? I'd love to hear it.

Oki

[JudithMeyer]

I'll be interested in seeing how you fare.

Right now I'm debating the wisdom of sleeping extra myself. The reason
is that afaik sleep deprivation has done its part - I have adopted a
standard Uberman schedule, I can now fall asleep very quickly and
(since this morning) get REM sleep nearly every time I nap. Yet I'm
feeling worse than ever, also because of a minor health issue.
Obviously I don't want to risk losing my progress at this point, where
I'm supposedly just waiting for sleep deprivation to recede. I would
love to hear from someone who has deliberately slept longer or more
often at this point in the adaptation. What was the outcome?

Judith

[Daniel Smith]

Wow, I had this exact same idea yesterday! Starting tonight and through at least sat. night, I'm planning on forgoing core sleep in favor of naps every 2 or 3 hours at night (and every 4 hours during the day). The theory being the more opportunities I have to get to REM in 20 mins, the faster I will learn how to do so. (also, I feel so horrible after getting up from core sleep--motivation to learn quickly)

Currently, after a nap I feel good for two hours and then get really sleepy. I think this means that they are half as efficient as they could be.

--
Daniel Smith
http://www.schaumburggoclub.org/

[Daniel Smith]

This is a question I have, too: once you're adapted, how do you pay off your sleep debt from the adaptation phase?

[Nicky Hajal]

I have had this idea as well, and would love for someone to try it, but my thinking has changed more recently.

Until your body has made that adaptation, your naps are primarily cues to your body about when it is appropriate to sleep and opportunities to oversleep.

I am all about finding ways so accelerate adaptation, but we are talking about adaptation. It must be difficult and lasting to result in an adaptive response.

Once you are getting restorative naps though, I do like the idea of adding naps.

But, this is just my thinking now and I can't stand naysayers so I look forward to someone giving this a shot.

-Nicky

---
Challenge is the Opportunity for Greatness

[Nathaniel Talbott]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 4:54 PM, Daniel Smith<luken...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Wow, I had this exact same idea yesterday!

Same here - really weird!

A few rules that I'm going to adhere to when "extra napping":

* Obviously, all naps must be strictly 20 minutes (I set my timer for 21)
* There must be a set schedule for sleep times regardless of whether
there are extra naps. So I still have to lay out a schedule for 6 naps
(or 3+3 for Everyman) and *always* take a nap at those times.
* No napping within an hour of another nap. So if I get up from a nap
I have to be up for at least an hour before laying down again. Also,
if I'm less than an hour from my next schedule nap I have to wait and
nap then.
* Always prefer sticking it out to taking an extra nap, especially
during adaptation.

I think the danger with extra napping is stringing them too closely
together and them amounting to nothing more than badly interrupted
monophasic sleep. Also, the one time I took two naps really close
together (< 30 min) I overslept the second nap, which is the only
oversleep I've ever had.

I think some kind of strategy like this is important to deal with
extra tiredness and sleep dep. If you're monophasic and really tired,
you sleep longer or take a nap. There has to be some kind of similar
release valve when polyphasic, even during adaptation. The goal is to
train the body, not kill it :-)

With this strategy in hand I'm thinking about switching to Uberman
from Everyman (which I'm feeling pretty comfortable with now). I'd
space my naps closer together at night and spread them out during the
day to accommodate my work schedule, which it seems like others have
done successfully. Since I'm still feeling tired when waking from core
(though not as bad as before), it's appealing to eliminate that in
favor of a few naps - naps which are universally restful for me at
this point.

Thanks so much for sharing this - it's encouraging to see I'm not the
only one thinking along these lines!

--
Nathaniel Talbott

<:((><

[Daniel Smith]

Alright, well, I did this last night, no core sleep and naps every other hour. I finally had a dream during a nap, so it succeeded! There's no way I would have been able to make it 4 hours between naps, it was pretty brutal. Hopefully it's all downhill from here. I wish I'd thought of this earlier, it seems like you could significantly reduce the time to adapt to everyman by doing this until you got REM consistently in naps, and then switching to your desired schedule. Now, with any luck I'll be able to pay off some sleep debt over the weekend with extra naps, too.

[HalfABrain]

Let me suggest an additional idea. Two really, but related.

1) Plan your extra naps ahead of time.

It's kind of a good idea whenever you're dealing with sleep
deprivation, to plan as much as possible while your mind is clear.
Well... clearer. If you intentionally leave some of your decisions to
be made when you're sleep deprived, you're setting yourself up for
irrational results. You know how your brain makes things up when
you're asleep? That's what will happen. You'll come up with all
sorts of rationalizations for doing things that made perfect sense to
you at the time. Later when you try to remember what the heck you
were thinking...

Even if you have a lot of will power, it won't be effective if you
leave yourself options.


2) Be as consistent as possible.

Your body will actually get used to whichever schedule you give it.
If you take the same extra naps at the same time every day, you'll
adapt. Then when you're ready, you can plan to remove them.

If your naps are random, you'll adapt to chaos. Maybe. But then when
you encounter problems, how will you know how to fix it? It's hard
enough to adapt to order. If you throw random extra naps into the
mix, how will you know if it's the oversleeping that was the problem,
or the random extra naps?


I'm still not sure if part of the magic of Uberman isn't the symmetry
of the schedule. The simplicity is so beautiful. Evenly spaced.
Evenly timed. Your body can count on getting those 20 minutes every 4
hours. It hates it at first, but at least it can count on it.

I'm interested in hearing your results as well.

On Aug 14, 4:30 pm, Nathaniel Talbott <ntalb...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Oki]

wow, that's awesome - thanks for trying that and letting us know. Let
us know if you continue and what your experience is w/ finishing your
adaption and moving to your stable Everyman.

Oki

[Daniel Smith]

(feel free to skip the first paragraph if you don't need all the gory details)

Saturday I took a lot of extra naps. Saturday night/sunday morning I went back to a core sleep because I was quite tired, and I took an extra nap sunday morning, too. I did not feel like I slept much/at all for my afternoon and evening naps on sunday. I was feeling pretty crappy for reasons unrelated to sleeping schedules and was just going to give up on sunday night, but I woke up without an alarm at 4 (went to bed about 1) and figured I might as well continue. I didn't feel tired at noon today and skipped my nap (I'd like to take a nap before and after work, leaving my lunch hour free) but I started to rapidly feel very tired not long afterward and went and took one late. I wish I had just taken it now, but now I know to take naps at the specified times even if I'm not tired. I also realized I slept differently just now, drifting in and out of dreams instead of in and out of consciousness.

I guess it appears that my experiment made my naps a lot more efficient. It wasn't very fun and messed my schedule up for that day, but my body appears to have remembered the schedule I was attempting to keep before that.

If I were recommending this to someone else, I think I'd suggest keeping the schedule you want to keep for a few days first until you're good and sleep deprived. Then take a day and take a 20 min nap every other hour through the night and into the morning, skipping your core sleep. This will suck hard at first but will both train you to sleep usefully in 20 mins and let you catch up on missed sleep. If you're trying uberman, this probably doesn't really apply.

I'm not sure how to go about moving my noon nap, but I should probably wait to be fully adapted before doing so anyway.