Progressive everyman

[Nethys]

I'm planning to take those shedules
e1
22:00 - 4:00
15:00 - 15:25

e2
9:30 - 9:55
15:00 - 15:25
22 - 2:30

e3
2:25 - 5:25
9:30 - 9:55
15:00 - 15:25
22:00 - 22:25

This would be the best schedule I could use and still keep my job.
Problem is I have to drive 30 minutes to work then 30 minutes from
work.
I'm hoping to reduce the sleep deprivation by doing it progressively
to be able to drive without endangering anyone.
Is this a good idea? Will it make it harder AND longer or just longer
to adapt?

[Ian Turner]

Nethys,

The truth is that nobody really knows. There has not been enough research done on polyphasic sleep to fully understand what modes of adaptation work, and for whom.

What we do know is that driving while sleep deprived is extremely dangerous both to yourself and others. As I explained earlier today, you can evaluate your ability to drive by checking for microsleeps. Even a single microsleep can be fatal behind the wheel, so you should not drive if any are present.

You can measure microsleeps using
any task which requires constant awareness, such as playing a racing or
fighting game, or even following a line on paper or with your mouse. Just have a friend watch you to see if you stop responding for 5-30 seconds; if you do, that's a microsleep. You can also use a videotape or keystroke recorder if you don't want to bring your friends into this wor
Hope that's helpful. Cheers,

--Ian

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[David]

I would suggest something a bit different (its what worked for me).

Start with a basic siesta (1 hr mid-day nap), and just keep going to
sleep at night when you are tired (make sure to wake at the same time
every day)

After a bit I found that I would wake up after 1/2 hour, so start
setting your alarm for only 30 minutes for the nap.

Add a second nap, shifting the first earlier. Again, keep going to
sleep at night when tired.

Cut the naps to only 20 mins, but add a third. It was about that time
that I started actually regulating the night sleep to 3:00 hours. If
you still feel tired, add a fourth nap.

Note, I did this over the course of the first half of summer, so it
takes a while, but I never really felt zombie-ish. I also don't drive,
so that wasn't a real problem. I started with the siesta immediately
after work (wake up at 7, work 8-4, sleep ~4:30 or 5:00, go to bed
~1:00am).

As always, YMMV

[HalfABrain]

About driving during adaptation...

I found it was totally dependent on what time of day. I had zombie
mode bad, but only during the night time. During work hours I never
had issues falling asleep at the wrong times. I drove every day and
never had a problem.

Err on the side of caution, though, because if you DO have a problem
it could have devastating impact.

[Ian Turner]

The other thing to note is that microsleeps are not consciously observable. It's notoriously difficult to evaluate one's own driving ability under the best of circumstances, which is why 98% of people think they are good drivers (real statistic). Obviously the mere absence of a crash is not itself evidence that one is a safe driver. The only effective way to know if you are too sleepy to drive is via a methodical check for microsleeps, though the honest impartial opinion of another is a decent substitute.

Cheers,

--Ian

On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:06:58 -0500, HalfABrain wrote:
> About driving during adaptation...
>

> I found it was2> mode bad, but only during the night time. During work hours I never

> had issues falling asleep at the wrong times. I drove every day and
> never had a problem.
>
> Err on the side of caution, though, because if you DO have a problem
> it could have devastating impact.
>
> On Nov 25, 2:10 pm, Nethys <arz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm planning to take those shedules
> > e1
> > 22:00 - 4:00
> > 15:00 - 15:25
> >
> > e2
> > 9:30 - 9:55
> > 15:00 - 15:25
> > 22 - 2:30
> >
> > e3
> > 2:25 - 5:25
> > 9:30 - 9:55
> > 15:00 - 15:25
> > 22:00 - 22:25
> >
> > This would be the best schedule I could use and still keep my job.
> > Problem is I have to drive 30 minutes to work then 30 minutes from
> > work.
> > I'm hoping to reduce the sleep deprivation by doing it progressively
> > to be able to drive without endangering anyone.
> > Is this a good idea? Will it make it harder AND longer or just longer> > to adapt?
>

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> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Polyphasic-...@googlegroups.com

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> %d

[polyphasymous]

Does anybody know of an online test for alertness? I've repeatedly
seen those tools in TV, but I couldn't find one on the internet. There
was one with a dot that moved around in a circle. If there was skipped
one position the person should press a key. Such a tool would be great
for adaption, for you can make interesting graphs from this data.

[HalfABrain]

> The other thing to note is that microsleeps are not consciously observable.

I beg to differ. I have personally consciously observed many
microsleeps. You must mean something other than what you're saying.

> It's notoriously difficult to evaluate one's own driving ability under the best of circumstances, which is why 98% of people think they are good drivers (real statistic).

That may be, although I don't know how one would know.

> Obviously the mere absence of a crash is not itself evidence that one is a safe driver.

Uh... I don't think that's obvious at all. It would seem to me to be
obvious that the absence of crashes is great evidence of a safe
driver. My buddy the truck driver who has logged over a million miles
without a crash is in demand because he's such a safe driver. Maybe
the absence of crashes isn't PROOF of a safe driver, but I'd
definitely say it would qualify as evidence.

> The only effective way to know if you are too sleepy to drive is via a methodical check for microsleeps, though the honest impartial opinion of another is a decent substitute.

Huh?!? How about if I start to drift across the road and I FEEL
sleepy? I think that would be a very effective way to know that I'm
too sleepy to drive. Again, you must mean something other than what
you're saying.

Let me see if I understand what you MEANT to say...

Not all microsleeps are consciously observable. There may be times
when I fall asleep for a few seconds and don't know it. Just because
I drove for a couple of weeks and didn't have any accidents doesn't
mean I didn't have any problems. I may have had some microsleeps and
didn't even know it. I could have been tempting fate. The fact that
I didn't have any accidents could have been blind luck. The only way
to make sure I wasn't really too sleepy to drive safely would have
been with some methodical monitoring system that could ensure the
absence of microsleeps. Having someone watch me would have been the
next best thing.

OK, you have a point. You don't need to tell me how dangerous
microsleeps can be. I know I have posted here about falling asleep
while WALKING down the road and waking up when I ran into the fence
along the side of the road. Of course that was in the middle of the
night at the height of zombie mode so I was quite aware of the
probabilities. I had observed microsleeps before, and I was out
walking in the cold and the dark in an attempt to minimize them. I
kept a pretty good record of how sleepy I felt on an hour-by-hour
basis, and could make a pretty good prediction how sleepy I was going
to be.

Perhaps I had a microsleep or two that I didn't know about. But if it
didn't even affect me enough to know about it, it certainly didn't
affect me enough to cause an accident. If I had had even one
occurrence of drifting out of my lane or suddenly realizing my buffer
zone from the guy in front of me was too close, that would have
registered as problem. So when I say I didn't have any problems, I
really didn't have any problems. Maybe I was lucky. Or maybe I was
just cautious enough to not drive when it COULD have been a problem.

In any case, in my opinion the blanket statement "You should never
drive during adaptation" is an exaggeration.

[Ginny]

I'm with Ian here. What he said is that if you know you're having
microsleeps, don't drive. That's it. It seems like pretty logical and
safe advice to me. To back that up, I run statistics on injury death
rates on a regular basis as it's part of my job. Many are related to
foolish behaviours (risk behaviours). If you know you are
uncontrollably falling asleep for moments at a time, then driving is a
foolish behaviour. It's for this reason that we don't allow epileptics
to drive unless they have been seizure free for a proscribed amount of
time. If you know there's a higher than average chance that you might
lose consciousness behind the wheel, bloody well don't drive.

If you happen to know that for eight hours of the day, you have
ABSOLUTELY NO microsleeps or other inexplicable losses of
consciousness, and you know this to be the case because you can back
it up with a long period of observation, then go ahead and drive.