2nd try uberman

[Paulan]

Hi all,

As some of you may know I have tried to adapt to the uberman sleep
schedule about 4 months ago.
Back then I started with very little problems, which got worse over
the weeks. I ultimately stopped after about 2.5 weeks, because I could
not stand or sit without falling asleep (maintaining my position
standing/sitting while sleeping).

Therefore, I am now trying a little different approach. This time, I
will first test myself on how long I can stay awake without any naps.
So instead of steadily getting just a little more sleep deprived, I am
speeding up the process and only start the naps after a few days. Now
I am up for 41 hours and I think it's almost time to start the naps.
Probably the first naps won't get me to sleep anyway because
everything is new (even though this is my 2nd try)

I have made the following improvements:
- Programming myself to get up, walk down the stairs (and splash water
in my face?), every time I hear a specific alarm sound.
- Make or find a little program to check whether I'm asleep or not, or
simply use pen and paper.
- No napping in my (warm and comfortable) bed with no clothes on, but
napping on the ground with my clothes on
- Napping in a room with the lights on. At my first attempt I would
darken the room as much as possible to increase my chances of falling
asleep, now I do the opposite.
- Repeat the reasons why I am doing this on a very regular basis
- Telling my body what is happening and how I want it to respond.
- Eating very regularly right after waking up, every 6 times about the
same amount of food.
- No caffeine: no tea, no chocolate and no coca cola (not very sure
about this yet, I might allow some caffeine right after waking up)
- A more active schedule (not much more active though)

Another change is that, this time I am not going to use any help from
other people. At my first attempt to adapt I was used to be woken up
within 5 minutens whenever I would oversleep, except for the worst nap
(at 4 am). I hope now I can create some consistency this way.

I will be reporting here regurlarly about the process, I am curious
about my ability to sleep during the naps (on the floor with the
lights on..) and I am mostly concerned about falling asleep during the
nights.

[Jatin Chaudhary]

Good Luck to you Paulan...I am sure many will be interested in the outcome of your trial :)

 I really love this community... always charting new territory

 

Cheers!!!

Jatin.

[Ken Earl]

Those sound like some really good ideas, I'm very interested to see how this turns out.

-Ken

[Aurelijus]

Hi Paulan,

I'm thinking about similar strategy when I will be going to transfer
to uberman (now on everyman).
Just one thing: I also used to sleep with lights on and it wasn't any
problem at first (as I was sleep deprived I would fall asleep in
1-2min no matter what). But later I found my self lying longer and
longer without getting to sleep. I turns out hormone melatonine
regulates our sleeping/awake time. When we are sleepy it means
melatonine level is hight, and when we are active - it's low. Bright
light (especially natural day light) amongst other things makes
melatonine level drop, so sleeping with lights on may cause problem
sleeping good. Right now I am sleepng with lights on, but with scarf
(or whatever) on my eyes. As soon as my alarm goes of I take it down
and the light really kicks in. Also I'm thinking about timer to turn
the lights on :)

good luck,
Aurelijus

[Paulan]

Thanks for your input.

I know the basic theory about melatonine and I am thinking about
buying a light that imitates natural daylight to use at nights to help
me stay awake.

I also have a strong bright light (150W) with a timer, unfortunately
it did not really help me 4 months ago.
When I was (half-)awake and that light turned on, it was a big shock
to my eyes and I would get up and turn it off.
But the light itself never woke me up, which I still find somewhat
odd. Nonetheless I will still use it as a back-up.

47 hours awake now, I'm actually feeling a lot more awake than 6 hours
ago lol. Maybe I won't be napping for another day

[curiousalexa]

On Oct 12, 11:39 pm, Paulan <paulanv...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have made the following improvements:

> - Repeat the reasons why I am doing this on a very regular basis

This is the question I keep asking myself while yawning - more than a
list of things to do (PureDoxyk's Big Fat List), I think I need a list
of *why* I want to do this! Partly because my big fat list tends to
look more like a chore list, and that's not good motivation when
tired...

So I'm curious - why are you doing/trying polyphasic? Not just more
time - what do you want that time for?

some of mine:
top priority: wanting to awake refreshed, not groggy.
bonus: more project time - knitting, tanning, building, etc
nice: plurality of time spent of FUN things, not just labor things!
(i.e. not more time on cleaning house)
nice: I love to read. Currently I'm getting at least an hour a day of
non-fiction - I'd like to bring back fiction! (sci-fi/fantasy - yes
I'm a geek.)
nice: more time/flexibility for slower work, i.e. cooking from scratch
instead of boxed food (Pavlina mentioned cooking a lot during his
trial)

What are your motivators?
-curiousalexa

[curiousalexa]

On Oct 12, 11:39 pm, Paulan <paulanv...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,

>
> Therefore, I am now trying a little different approach. This time, I
> will first test myself on how long I can stay awake without any naps.
> So instead of steadily getting just a little more sleep deprived, I am
> speeding up the process and only start the naps after a few days. Now
> I am up for 41 hours and I think it's almost time to start the naps.
> Probably the first naps won't get me to sleep anyway because
> everything is new (even though this is my 2nd try)
>

I am amused - I'm taking the exact opposite approach!

This is my second try as well. First go was in Jan(?) '09. I was
able to catch up on some SF TV I had missed (haven't owned a tv since
mid-90s), but a couple life disruptions aborted the experiment.

Now I've moved halfway across the continent (Illinois to Maine), and
am living my dream life and want MORE of it [laugh].

Current approach: using Placebo's soundtrack, I'm taking naps as
frequently as they seem desirable. Due to frequent napping, I have
less need for night sleeping. I'm tired, because my body isn't used
to getting refreshed in only 20 minute increments, but I'm hoping this
will avoid the zombie stage while re-training.

I've been doing the nap thing for a few days; last night was the first
night I was more awake than asleep. I took a core nap between 5:30
and 7am. So I'm not sure what to call the 'start date'. But I'm
pretty excited about the idea of waking up NOT GROGGY plus having more
time to do the fun and exciting projects I call life.

-curiousalexa
lurking for the last 6 months - thanks for the inspiration of
continuing conversation!

[Paulan]

My motivators are not anything special, but here it goes:
- More time in general, get more things done and enjoy life.
- Feeling clear-minded all day, or just a few hours more per day would
be awesome.
- Less time-pressure, for example when a project is nearing a
deadline, because I'll have enough time for it.
- It would be an incredible feeling to have beaten monophasic sleep

The extra time I want to use for:
- Working a few hours per week (I study fulltime, definitely no time
for that now, partly because I go to my parents every weekend)
- Studying with more flexibility. I am behind schedule partly because
I am missing some critical information/connections from last study-
year. It's probably not much, and I don't know what this is, so it
probably takes me a lot of time to find out what I am missing.
- Reading for fun, I really enjoy reading fiction but I only read
about 1 fiction-book per year on average
- Healing (e.g. Reiki)
- Random surfing the web, playing computer games, watching movies,
(..).

Anyway I should be heading to university now, I'm curious if I can
follow it. See you all later

[Paulan]

My first nap I took at around 11 pm (3.5 hours ago), and I was very
unsure about whether to use a regular alarm or the placebo soundtrack.
I decided to go with the placebo soundtrack and I gave napped +- 15
minutes, I woke up while there was still 'white noise'. Maybe I put
the volume too high, I don't know.

It seems my body wanted to get some 'real' sleep on the couch and I
just slept a little more than 2 hours. It was pretty stupid because I
knew I was probably going to fall asleep there, I don't know why I
didn't just sleep all night, but I'm happy for it :)

Anyway now I will really start. I do not have to go to university
often but the times that I do, don't go well with any kind of
polyphasic schedule (except if I can take a nap in 15 minutes..).
Therefore I have to move 4 or 5 naps per week by one hour. I hope this
won't have a too big effect. I tried fitting the schedule as best as I
could, but what to do when you need to be awake between 13.45 - 16.30,
the next day 14.45 - 17.30 and the day after 16.45 - 19.30... The best
seems to be 1,5,9,13,17,21. I'll have to move the 17-nap twice by one
hour. The worst day schedule is this: 1,5,9,14,16,21, I might change
it into something like 1,4,7,11,15,20.

I'm unsure about the effects of these shifts, I hope it allows my body
to adapt a little more flexible, time will tell.

[Paulan]

I am using the placebo soundtrack so far and I find the white noise
rather disturbing and I keep reminding myself to look up what purpose
it has.
But so far it did not let me oversleep, by either keeping me awake or
waking me up.

I did have some more unplanned sleep though, the night after the 2
hour sleep, I slept for +- 1.5 hours, and I had a difficult block of 2
hours in which I repeatedly kept nodding off. I set an alarm every 5
minutes, and I have found myself waking up about 6 times, after which
I slept for another 30 minutes..

Since then I have been feeling a lot better, but I have not gotten
much sleep during my naps. During monophasic awake hours I felt like I
slept bad last night, not even one night no sleep but just not enough.
Maybe nodding off and waking up within 4 minutes is working very good
(might be worth trying to do that instead of napping lol)

The next 7-8 hours will probably be hard again, but this time I hope I
won't be allowing myself nodding off. This night I will try to use
music to keep me awake, last night the main thing I tried to do was
thinking and writing down what I thought.

[Daniel Smith]

I guess I'm a little late now, but you'll probably have better luck staying awake if you do something physical.

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

[Paulan]

I know that but I don't have many physical stuff to do. At night it's
freezing outside so it's not really fun to go outside for a walk. Of
course when I get really in trouble with my sleep-dep I will have to
do such things.

The music worked for me (with some sort of 'dancing' which is physical
^^), I only accidently had a 55-minute nap instead of a 20-25-minute
nap. This was probably because I set the volume too low on my phone/
alarm.

Feeling pretty good still, reminds me of my first attempt lol. I was
not really sleep deprived untill 2 weeks after I started taking naps.
I was hoping that getting sleep deprived before taking any naps would
get me faster in the critical phase, but I am recovering from the naps
I take now.

Maybe I am communicating with my body so well that it won't fight and
let me adapt easily, but I'm not yet convinced. I did tell my body to
prepare very well this time, would be awesome if it really did :)

[Paulan]

I just had an unplanned 2-hour sleep. While watching tv on a comfy
couch my body told me it was going to sleep several times but I
ignored the signal because 'the fun programme was about to begin and
then it would be no problem staying up' and I slept for about 2 hours.
Of course I should've done something else at least untill the fun
programme started. The rest of the naps went pretty good and I'm
feeling as if I did not sleep enough last night. Also I have not been
very strict with the times of the naps.

I am living as if I was already fully adapted and as if I could handle
those non-perfect naps very well (and it seems it does so except for
the occasional 1.5-2-hour sleeps). The weekends I go to my parents and
hang out with family and such, they were really surprised when I told
them about my 2nd attempt because they did not see me take my naps and
I was not sleep-deprived or groggy at all. Actually half of them don't
even know it yet, I was kinda waiting for them to notice something is
different.

Even if I would not adapt I am seriously considering to live part of
my days this way, it gives me 4-6 hours per day extra with
surprisingly little side-effects. Maybe it would be a very easy but
long way for me to eventually adapt to uberman. I would perfect my
naps and might be able to live on uberman longer each trial.

[Paulan]

Whoever is interested more thoroughly in my adaption process can
follow me on my blog:
http://paulan.trypolyphasic.com/

After having a very bad day I crashed and slept for a total of 13.5
hours, mostly on purpose.
Nonetheless I will not give up! I have not felt real sleep
deprivation, and maybe I won't ever, but I will adapt eventually =)
In about 24 hours I will start taking the naps every 4 hours again,
untill then I think only 2 naps at night to keep me focused.
This is mainly because I have a very busy schedule friday afternoon.

[Paulan]

Since the crash I have been staying with my mom in her house, so I've
been taking naps there also. Unfortunately there is no perfect place
to nap here, as I don't want to nap in beds anymore. Nonetheless I
can't be unhappy about the napping, I had 2 periods of 1-1.5 hour
sleep instead of the usual 20-27 minutes.
All other naps were near perfect, it's morning now and I feel somewhat
tired (every day it seems to get a little bit worse) but it could be
far worse.

Currently I am wondering about the perfect nap length for me. I keep
track of the duration of my naps and the effects, but it seems there
is no (clear) relation between them. I aim to nap anywhere between 20
and 27 minutes, most of my naps There is a clear 24-hour cycle of my
tiredness and mood, and when I wake up it's pretty much always 'better
than before napping, but a little worse than 24 hours ago'.
I will try to experiment some more with this.

Again I blame this slow sleep deprivation partly on resting while
awake, when I feel too tired to study (and comparable activities),
there is not much to do so I watch some tv or listen to music. While
doing so, parts of my brain seem 'disabled' and they seem to recover.
The line between sleeping and being awake is thin. I can communicate,
keep my balance, think and even walk while asleep, and while I'm awake
I can let my brain recover as if it were asleep.

I defined sleeping as 'not memorizing', so whenever there is a time
gap I slept, even if I functioned as if I was fully awake.

[Paulan]

I am still adapting :)

Since my last post on 27-oct I had 3 oversleeps totalling 4 hours (1x
30 min. 1x 2,5 hours, 1x 1 hour).

Sometimes I have a hard time staying awake, but most of the time I
feel alert and I can function normally. I keep napping for about 27
minutes.

My main problem is that sometimes I'm half-depressed. When I'm in this
state of mind I don't want to sleep as that would surely mean
oversleep.
The day I had the 2.5 hour oversleep I had such moment I felt half-
depressed. That being said I made sure I stayed awake but I did not do
anything interesting, I stared watching the telly all night, and put
an alarm every now and then to ensure no (over-)sleep. By doing that I
'accidently' napped 10-15 minutes 3 times in 12 hour, after which I
got in a little better mood and overslept by 2.5 hours.

I kind of allowed the last oversleep of 1 hour, because somehow I
managed to damage my left eye so that it couldn't focus at all. Right
before I went to sleep
I noticed everything I saw with my left eye was blurry, and I could
not do anything about it. I was really afraid I damaged my eyes, and I
told my body not to wake up
untill it had resolved the issue with the eye. I am very glad I have
no problems at all anymore now :)

I feel that I will adapt completely easily when/if I can get myself to
not be (half-)depressed.
I am adapting 3 weeks already and I have not felt anything near zombie-
mode. I have had an occasional period of falling asleep every few
minutes but I could handle that by setting an alarm every 4 minutes,
just because I was too lazy to get up and take a walk in the cold
outside, jump like crazy, splash water in my face, suck on ice cubes
or whatever (I have not yet taken any 'drastic' measurements like
that). But that's it, overall I'm feeling very good.

[jerry1962]

Paulan, I think the idea of a light box is great, and I'll tell you
why.

Light stimulates the production of seratonin, and darkness stimulates
the production of melatonin, which makes us drowsy and stimulates
sleep.

If you have noticed, adaptors have the worst oversleeping problems at
night, almost without exception. I believe the use of a lightbox might
short-circuit this series of events; this is why people in Alaska have
such a terrible time sleeping in the summer.

I know from previous research that at least 25 lux of light is needed
for seratonin production. This is why your previous attempts at light
manipulation have been unsuccessful--not enough light!

Please let me know if this at least helps.

[Paulan]

Sorry for the late answer, I wanted to reply a lot earlier..

Your post did help, because of your post I further researched the
light impact and I have ordered a two new lights. 25 lux seems very
low to me, since sunlight is at least 100.000 lux and indoor light (at
home or office) is normally something like 400 lux.

As for the experiment I am not really motivated enough anymore to hold
on strict to the schedule. I sleep a lot less than I did before, I
feel better and sometimes I still take naps at the usual times. My
schedule is more like everyman now but it's not really a schedule,
it's some sort of free running sleep, but I do like to take naps at
the usual times.

[jerry1962]

You are quite right about the amount, Paulan. I'm not sure were I got
the 25 lux figure but some research on my part has led me to the
inescapable conclusion that it is wrong.

The correct figure is probably 10k lux, based on what I'm finding on
the topic of light boxes. (Light boxes are used in Alaska to combat
depression during the winter). At any rate, I am convinced that the
use of these light boxes might be a tremendous help in adapting to
Uberman, since you'll notice that everybody's worst enemy regarding
oversleeping is the night.

In any case, my direct source of the information is the book
"Biological Psychology", in case you want to research this any
further. You will be able to get the exact amount of lux needed to
stimulate seratonin in that book.

Good luck.

Jerry

[John Litborn]

Shouldn't you also put the lamp outside to shine throuh your window?
That way you might even have to walk outside to shut it down unless
you have a timer on it.

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[Paulan]

In this second attempt I haven't really had problems waking up from my
naps (probably because I use placebo sleeptracks and I haven't been
very very tired), and I sleep in a different room (2 storeys high)
with just a little window, so putting a lightbox outside a window is
not really useful for me. Actually for now I won't purchase a lightbox
of 10klux, but I have purchased 2 'daylight lamps' which give 1200
lumen and they have a full color spectrum.

Normally these lights are used by people or companies who need
daylight to work with, like artists. But I figured if it could imitate
daylight in offices and have a great influence, it could probably
imitate daylight at night as well.

I found a lot of information in dutch, not so much in English. I am
talking about the lights sold here:
http://www.wellness-shop.com/true-light_full-spectrum_bulb.html
(I have absolutely no interest in others buying there, I bought my own
at a dutch store)

Viva-lite lamps seem similar and it's more easily to find information
in English about them (viva-lite.com).

On Nov 19, 10:36 pm, John Litborn <john.litb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Shouldn't you also put the lamp outside to shine throuh your window?
> That way you might even have to walk outside to shut it down unless
> you have a timer on it.
>