Stories of a shifting Sleep Schedule

[Amethyst]

A long time ago, as anyone who's known me for that long can attest to, I was pretty heavy into the research of exactly how sleep works, and how it can be restructured to suit the needs of a person's body and life.

I should back up further.
A longer time ago, there was this thing called preschool, in which kids like me were forced to take things called naps.
Well I said fuck that and dropped out of preschool because I didn't wanna take naps. It was boring and stupid and boring and a waste of time and boring.
Moral of the story is I hate sleep.
I really, really, really hate sleep. With a passion. Every time I wake up, I feel depressed and miserable and like I've basically just wasted my life. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. The likely explanation is that I have a chemical imbalance, and thus naturally need less sleep than the average person. I'm okay with that.

Back to our original point. Four years ago, 'bout the time that I met Saya, little bit after, I started do a bunch of research into these things, Oneirology, the study of sleep and dreams. Polyphasic sleeping- sleeping in more than one chunk, the everyman schedule... Anybody in my high school class could probably tell you I had eccentric sleeping habits, and I did briefly attempt to switch into these alternative sleeping schedules, which I'll explain in a bit. Some of them may have even believed I was successful. I was not, nor did I try very hard, because I realized that such pieces didn't exactly fit around my high school timing- at least, not the one that I was so ambitious to jump into at first. And so, whatever.
Note to self: Run on sentences prevalent. Work on that.

[i]Anyway[/i] due to various conditions and failures on my part recently (coupled with the fact that I promised myself I'd wait until college before trying again, and then I would go for it like all hell) I am restarting this endeavor.
And so, I'm going to keep track of my progress here for a couple reasons.
-Firstly, because I am Mr. Tl;dr.
-Secondly, because I have shit to say and my diary file is already clogged enough without me flushing a whole new category of random crap into it.
-Thirdly, most importantly, because [i]I really need your guys help with this[/i]
In a few ways. Firstly, foremost, I have heard [i]rumours[/i] about people being altered by doing this. Of course, this was from people who were doing a more intense version of what I'm going to try, and there's a good chance they were doin it rong. Still, as a safety precaution, you guys need to spot me. If I experience a dramatic shift in personality, functionality, etc, for the worse after a few weeks, make me stop. I may not be aware of it. And yet, I don't see why that would happen.
I also need y'alls help if anyone can spare it... To like, give me wake up calls at 0 in the morning? I'm lucky to not be [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSo5SYRMjv0&feature=related"]Nayuki,[/url] as to whom there was an allusion made earlier- in that a single alarm will always wake me up with out fail. My problem lies not in [i]waking[/i] up, but [i]getting[/i] up. I fall back asleep like, boom. Sooooo if there's any kind, generous, nocturnal person who wants to like, call me at a certain time every night and make sure I actually get MOVING I would greatly greatly appreciate it.
Finally, I'm kinda just using this to socially pressure myself into maintaining the schedule. That part's all me through you though, so don't worry about it.

So.
Yeah.
Why am I doing this? Because I have a lot to do, a lot I want to do, and not a lot of time to do it. Time. Time is my moral enemy, which is funny, because it's not mortal. Still. This is my private counter strike against its flow. I'll take back the time the human body naturally wants to spend sleeping, and put it to better use. I'm sure there are some of you reading this who think I'm insane, and you're right, because you value your sleep and don't know what to do with your bored self half the time you're awake anyway. Well. To these people I say, sweet dreams. But that's not how I work. Kinda the opposite.

So, what exactly am I doing?
There are a couple options within this realm of shifting schedules, and by a couple, I mean a lot. But the core, general concept is [b]polyphasic sleeping[/b].
Polyphasic is not a word I expect anyone to know, if only because it's not in any dictionary I've seen. But if we take it apart, Poly, being the common prefix for Multi, and Phasic, refering to Phases, it should be understandable. Multi-phase sleeping, or sleeping in more than one chunk.

In contrast, most humans naturally take on a monophasic schedule, meaning having only one phase. We sleep all at once. In between, is biphasic, two chunks of sleep, triphasic, so on and so on. The natural human circadian rhythm (meaning the times in 24 hour period where your body is at its most tired) is actually [i]biphasic[/i] though, not monophasic. Which means most humans are sleeping unnaturally to their body's rhythm already. The standard circadian rhythm would have us sleep a large portion through the night, and then a nap for a couple hours around 5-6 in the evening. Of course, this can and will vary greatly from person to person, but the point remains that sleeping in more than one chunk is certainly not unheard of.

However, in its usual sense, the term polyphasic sleeping pushes the limits of this. "Now wait," you're saying, "back up. Why would anyone [i]want[/i] to break up the time they sleep? It's difficult to schedule, you might miss out on dreams, or have trouble falling asleep/getting up." You might even have insomnia or some other sleeping disorder.

Well, funny thing about sleeping in phases. [i][b]The more chunks, or phases you sleep in, the less time you need to sleep per day, total[/b][/i]. This may seem odd, possibly counter-intuitive, but allow me to explain. As we sleep, the body shifts through different stages of a snoozing process. There are four stages of sleep, and then an REM stage, all which we cycle through multiple times in a normal 8 hour sleeping period. If you don't already know, REM is the stage responsible for dream sleep- it stands for Rapid Eye Movement, in accordance with just that, made as a result of the dreams we have. Oddly enough though, these phases are not all equal. REM sleep is the only phase that's actually necessary for human survival. Stages 3 and 4 actually do produce some vital hormones for our health, but we don't need to remain in those stages as long as we end up doing by default. As for Stages 1 and 2...? Useless. They're the fat of sleep.

Funny thing about how these play together though, about 80% of our sleeping time [i]is[/i] spend in these useless 1 and 2 Stages. The human body only needs about 1.5-2 hours of REM Sleep each night- most often coming in 20 minute chunks through our sleep-cycle.
But.
The human body is a marvelous thing.
We can adapt to changes in our environment- even if they are self-induced. Suppose that for a very long time, the body was unable to get to sleep for more than half an hour at a time. Normally, we would not even reach a state of REM sleep within that time. However, if these conditions persist, the body adjusts, and compresses the sleep cycle- particularly our useless stages, to fit all the REM sleep we need in.
I'll connect the dots for you. We cut out the useless sleeping time from the first four stages (there is one... odd side effect from losing phases 3 and 4, that being that people tend to develop weird cravings for grapes? I dunno, but otherwise it's fine) and keep the REM time in tact. 1.5-2 hours of REM sleep necessary per night. Meaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaning, using this method, we can reduce our sleeping time to only needing 2 hours of sleep per day.

The drawback is scheduling. I mentioned before. The less you sleep, the more phases you need to sleep in. There's sort of a mathematical art to this. It makes sense: We stay in REM for about 20 minutes at a time. Therefore, that's the shortest amount of time you can sleep. We need 2 hours, or six 20 minute-blocks. Therefore, if we sleep for 20 minutes, six times a day (that's exactly four hours apart), we can optimize our awake time.
This specific schedule of sleep is called the Uberman Schedule. If you are familiar with that term, you can probably guess why, considering the great positive effect it can have, but also the immense will-power it takes to maintain it.

Returning to the math, however, if you refigure the times for each number of phases from 1 to 6 (max) you can chart the progression:
1 Phase- 8 hours- 8 hours total.
2 Phases- 2.5 hours- 5 hours total
3 Phases 1.25 hours- 3.75 hours 8 hours between nap start times
4 Phases- 45 minutes- 3 hours total- 6 hours between nap start times
5 Phases- 30 minutes- 2.5 hours total- About 5 hours (4:48) between nap start times
6 Phases- 20 minutes- 2 hours total - 4 hours between nap start times
These are mathematical approximations, by the way, not solid statistic. Also realize that the exact numbers will vary person to person anyway- not like there's any scientific way to meassure them.
Anyway! You get the pattern.

There is also a hybrid multiphasic schedule, known as the Everyman Schedule. This involves sleeping one core period of 2-4 hours and then taking 2-4 smaller naps throughout the day. It is generally more schedule friendly, as with such a program, you have a lot more variability and control over when you sleep.
With variants on the Uberman schedule, keeping the spacing equal between each nap is very important, but with everyman, you are free to space them as you need/works best for you.
The important thing in any case,
The important thing, and only way this is going to work,
[b][i]Is that you keep the same schedule from day to day, as close as possible, and stay to it as if your life depends on it[/i][/b] (i hope my readers realize when I say "you" by now I'm actually referring to myself)
Otherwise you're just wasting your time, energy and willpower.
Will-power. Most people do not even come close to having the motivation or strength to carry out a schedule like this. Which is why it isn't more popular. There also isn't a lot of official research on the subject- One Scientist tried it under official personal experiment, but he himself lacked the will power to maintain an uberman schedule, although he did eventually settle into a biphasic one, finding that optimal for his self.

As a final note, this shift in sleeping style is also known to rid people of their insomnia/narcolepsy/sleep talking/walking/night terrors. And while you might think it would subvert dream content, it actually tends to do the opposite.

Anyway, I am well aware that this post is all over the place in terms of organization... My apologies for that. I should be totally over that by about day 10 or so. Expect it to be its worst at day 3 (isn't it [i]always[/i] worst at day 3, when it comes to making/breaking habits?)
For people shifting to the uberman schedule, hallucinations are experienced from sleep deprivation from days 3-10 as it is in this time that the body is adjusting to the sudden shift in sleep conditions. During this time, please bear with me while I become dumber than dirt- and if I don't get better by day 21, that's when you need to make me stop this business.

But, this shouldn't be necessary. Why? Because I am not starting with the uberman schedule, or going for that at all this time. I am sticking to a standard biphasic schedule, although a rather minimalistic one. We will see how it goes!

My sleeping times are planned to be from
1:30-3:30
7:30-9:30
Both AM, MST (GMT -7)
And Imma use this topic to keep track of my incoherent thoughts and dreams and yay! Making a new post though, since I've rambled here enough.

[Amethyst]

[u]Day 1- 5:02 AM[/u]
So, I started writing that huge wall of TL;DR up there right after I got up at 3:30 (I did it! I didn't think I'd be able to get up without someone yelling at me, but I did! (Nevermind the fact that the world was all sajdhbjerhfbiubefdfhbwbr3wiuefdflooooosh)). It's now five. So I'm a bit slow on the uptake. What do I need to say? Actually, the floosh part was my main descriptive adjective. That may be telling in itself. Even so! I should note I didn't exactly sleep well last night (3 hours, monophasic, yikes). So I'm already [i]fucking exhausted[/i]. I so just want to lay down and cuddle my cute little kitten and fall back asleep but NO. FIGHT THE URGE. WE GOT THIS, BROs. We got this.

[u]Dream Log-[/u]
I preface this saying that I usually don't remember my dreams [i]at all[/i] so if I remember anything, it's a vast improvement. Also, I'll use shortened versions of names to protect the innocent... Also also note this was half an hour ago now:

I was in some sort of... cobblestone pier. But it was a hotel on that pier, or some sort of lodging that I was temporarily staying at. Very nice place outside. Outside of it is all I remember. It's crowded, people everywhere, even though it's day, the atmosphere is that of a busy city street at night- not like traffic-busy street, I mean, outside nightclubs and parties-busy. Energetic atmosphere. Very much.

I come out, wander around a bit. There's this girl I know from anime conventions, Bri, she and I are friends- and she's pretty cute. Significantly younger than me, so it's not like there would be anything between us, but one can't say she's not cute. She's prancing off with her own friends though, in bright pink make up, some fancy dress, fishnets, and a veil. Vintage fashion, but it looks great. Apparently she's my roommate at this hotel in the dream though, and rather fond of me. She blows me a kiss (friendly, not flirty, if that makes any sense. :s) as she heads off.

I wander around the walkway a bit- it's pleasant despite the healthy bustle, and water drifts gently about on all sides... The walkway is a bridge; I'm not quite sure how to explain it, especially being foggy on details myself. But I take stock of the surroundings, and note that there are three potential places to eat (I was apparently hungry?) Moreover, I knew people working at each of them. My current girlfriend, Z (whom I also met at an anime con...), was at work at one of them, so saving the best for last, I went off to try another one first.

I arrive at this place... It seemed somewhat like Taco Bell, if Taco Bell wasn't called that, and was condensed into only a single counter at the side of this walk way. There was a long single-file line for service though, and only one clerk in attendance. For some reason, I knew that clerk to be my very first girlfriend, Mer (also also whom I first met at an anime con........). She and I... lost contact, to say the least. So I was curious to see her, and catch up with her. Oddly, I could not recall her face in the dream though, so when a rather poorly looking girl passed by me, I nearly mistook her for Mer, based on hair style alone (and had it been her, she would not have aged well. >.>) but I realized and refrained. For whatever reason, in the end, I was not able to talk to Mer, and moved on to the second store.

...Which was Subway. Also with a long single file line, and only one staff taking orders. This clerk I believed to be my friend, Oli-L (whom I have most recently seen at an anime convention...). I waited in line to grab a sandwhich and have a word with her... Note, this Subway was somewhat outdoors... Think of like, at the airport. The shops all have their own distinct rooms, but often times without walls, that just blend into the main terminals? It was much like that, but in this pier area rather than an airport... Anyway, my turn came, but apparently my friend's shift had ended... My order was taken by a ratty looking boy with black hair and a hoodie to match- and he was positively the least enthusiastic employee you could have possibly found. He was not in foul attitude, rather, just lacking emotion in itself, and seemed rather displeased with the whole affair of his business. So slow was he to take my order, in fact, that my alarm full went off before he allowed me to finish.

Oddness.

inb4noonereadsanyofthis. and that's fine, I guess.

[Dragonz996]

This looks like fun, I'll join in.
My sleeping times are planned to be from:
Su/M/Tu/W/Th - 10/11PM - 6:15/6:20AM
Times at based on GMT +8
Friday and Saturday are the days where I have irregular sleeping and waking times.

Oh, and that's quite an interesting dream you got there Amethyst.

[Amethyst]

Yay, sleep deprivation buddies!
Although, based on your times, it looks like that's still monophasic, in which case that's... normal? o.o
Also, the note about the weekend, like I said this schedule has to be kept every day, otherwise the body won't adjust.... That means not having irregular weekend patterns. Which I'm meh about myself, but my monophasic bed time for the past few months has been slipping later and later and it's just meh.

[u]Day 1, second waking[/u]
Failed already. I slept a bit extra... Like I said, this whole GETTING up thing is a problem for me. It's okay. I will just have to do better tomorrow. >.>;
So there's no world-fwooshiness this morning, but... cognitive report: My hand-eye coordination, memory, learned skills, etc all seem to remain undaunted. I do notice, however, that my thoughts and... sense of purpose, if you will, are much less organized. On most days, I wake up with a clear sense of what I need to do and exactly how to do it, and for what, etc. Today... I can't think of what to do. To be fair, this may not be an artifact of sleep deprivation.
Cannot remember a dream from the last nap.

[nyu]

otherNick did this when he was still in college (so, 2 years ago?), for about 2 weeks. He kept a blog/log that he would write to much like you have. I think he was doing 6 phases of 30 minutes, but I don't remember. Ultimately it ended with him failing. From what little I've read, it's not supposed to be a long-term sleep schedule, but can be done for a month or two. I dunno, I'm sure you've looked far more into it than I have.

Anyway, good luck~


Edit: Well, this post ended up sounding far too negative ... sorry, that was not my intention. Carry on.

[Dragonz996]

Dream Log 4/4/11:
It started out in my parents room(I used to sleep there before teenagehood). My maid woke me up and apparently my dad was gonna drive me to school coz I was late(in my school, 3 times = detention, and I'm already late twice last week). I decided to finish the homework that I owed my Chinese teacher a long time ago(in reality I don't really care coz she forgot all about it). Suddenly my classmate appeared out of nowhere and I asked him to help me finish it in exchange for a ride to school. We were at my study table for a while before we got teleported to the school field . Apparently my classmate was there because he was late, and no one noticed me being late, so I decided to sneak back to class without being found out by the Discipline Master. As I was walking back to class, I saw a good friend of mine. I had a nice chat and followed him and it turned out he was going to get his "latecoming slip" because he was also late. I was all, oh shit... when I saw him taking one and tried to make a break back to class. Unfortunately, the Discipline Master saw me and told me to get a latecoming slip and fill it out and I was gonna get detention...
and BAM! My alarm clock rang and dream ended

[Amethyst]

Winter...... Like I said, it has to be more than one chunk. It's great to try but if you don't split up your sleeping times, you're not going to get anywhere. ._.

[u]Day 2-3:30 AM[/u]
Just woke up... No fwooshiness. I actually had a dizzy spell earlier, but, auu. Happens. Anyway, got up easier and better than I did yesterday. Which shouldn't be the case actually... Mrowr. Aaaaaand, no dream recall earlier. So pretty uneventful here, though the dizzy thing is a bit concerning...

[u]Day 2- 11:08 AM[/u]
So tired. School. To be fair I'm always this tired when getting up in the mornings. I'm just not a morning person at all... Actually, doing this, it's been easier for me to get up, because I have a reason to, that being not to break the schedule. Before, I would fall back asleep and get up again many and many times over. No more of that! ...theoretically... But still so tired... Zzz...

[Will]

Doing this'd be SUPER helpful in my everlasting quest in being able to lucidly dream...but I just don't have the...memory, I guess you could say, to do it every morning...or the time for that matter, what with school starting at 7:30 AM for me... Meh, I'll just stick to shot-in-the-dark WILDs until Summer Vacation comes 'round...

[Amethyst]

[u]Day 3- 3:55 AM[/u]
Kay, getting up is a lot easier than it was two nights ago, which either means the times I keep falling asleep on the bus... ....or in my psych exam... ...are adding up. Which is bad and that needs to stop. It also could just mean that I've gotten used to it quickly, but that's wishful thinking and meh. That is one thing I failed to mention earlier though- that waking up is usually a much easier process for people on this schedule.
I'm also noticing it's better for my schedule if I shift both of my sleeping times back 15 minutes so I'm going to try and hope it doesn't gather momentum... Hm, what else? Still a few dizzy spells every now and then... Still can't remember any other dreams. But I'm otherwise okay.


[u]Later.[/u]
Failed. Set my alarm to PM instead of AM. Sigh. precautions have been taken that this may never happen again.

[u]Day 4- 3:52[/u]
I can get up at this earlier time almost effortlessly now, a major improvement from the first day, but the dizzy spells and such continue, and I generally tend to have less of a sense of purpose at these hours... Mror. Time to find out how badly I did on the psych exam I kept falling asleep during... I can't look... ...Okay, nevermind. The email saying grades were in lied, so, I have no idea. Wtf, email, way to mess with me. "grades are posted... PSYCH" is not okay just because it's a psych class. Sigh.
Failure imminent.

[u]11:08 AM[/u]
...Kay, well. I fell asleep on the bus again- well, as usual- only this time I didn't wake up when we reached my school. Thank god one of the other girls woke me up, but, mrrr. This is a problem. I would bring my DS or something to keep my awake on the bus, but SAYA STILL HAS MY CHARGER so no. Itthues.

[u]Dream Log-[/u]
The details are long gone because it was nearly an hour ago... I was hanging out with a friend... I can't remember who, and part of me doesn't want to, if it is who I think it is, but I also had my computer up, logged into the server, lurkin'.
Suddenly, there was a huge spam attack on the server. about 5 different users start spam whoring like you wouldn't believe. I was a bit panicked trying to stop them, stumbled as I typed their names (none of them simple- they were deliberately composed to be difficult to type) and generally failed to mute any of them. Instead, I tried turning automod on heavy to snag them all at once- but it already was on. Somehow they were bypassing it. So, I was left to go for the kill. No sooner did I select to ban one of them than my computer crashed.
FFFU-
Well, I had some difficulty re-booting the computer so I logged on with my other one- the leader computer to kill, but when I got there, the spammers were gone. Fantastic. Problem solved, right? Wrong. No sooner had I established that though than the second computer was comandeered remotely. The spammers responsible for the attack had managed to hack my computers, both of them, using the flood as a decoy. Overriding my local commands with their scripts, I was effectively powerless as they proceeded to delete everything (and somehow cause the computers to self-destruct; new function?)

Well, that was done, but they weren't satisfied. I am quite sure they moved on to
torturing me personally via various electronic otherthings. The hackers' voice echoed in my house, as all of the lights instantly bursted, leaving us in darkness. The TV was next, no surprise, but then they apparently hacked both my friend and my dog...? And about the time that I was defeated, my alarm went off.

>.> I don't usually lose in my dreams...

[u]Day 5- 3:47 AM[/u]
This is an update, but more of the same. Very tired. Somewhat dizzy. Somewhat purposeless. I don't feel like writing a whole lot right now... What to do...

[Maelstrom]

Ame, you are the undisputed master of TL;DR. I mean, I didn't get a chance to read more than the first 3 paragraphs of the original post till now.


It says something about your average state of mind and confidence level that you normally don't lose in your dreams. From my own experience, what happens in my dreams are usually a result of my own subconcious and conscious expectations. For example, I'm a pretty down to earth, realistic sort of person. And a good natural wariness of heights [s]and go figure, it's part of my job to jump out of planes now[/s]. So I don't often fly in my dreams as many others claim to. And often times when I do, I begin to question the how's and why's of things and my waking rational consciousness gathers itself. And if it doesn't make me wake up from the rising level of self-awareness, it re-imposes gravity and such things upon my dream world self. And during those times of semi-lucid to lucid dreaming (more awareness without waking up) I can assert varying degrees of control based on focusing my will to erase doubts and beliefs and force myself to have certain expectations and beliefs so that they happen. Like, continuing flying, if not so well or nearly as easily as my dream integrated self. When you see things and do things and expect them to happen in your dreams, they generally do (with certain exceptions I won't get into). Your confidence or your fear of expected events or outcomes will rule your dreams, lucid or not. And so, my dreams and nightmares reflect a great deal of my waking expectations of these situations when they do not reflect my 'inherent' knowledge of the dream world's workings- that state of mind where you absolutely are the person in your dream, capable of those feats, in the bizzare and fantastical workings of that world- that point of limited consciousness when you don't realize you are dreaming.

TL;DR with in between the lines summarizing: the more confidence in yourself and your own abilities at the time of and given non-phobia centric situations, the more you will win in your dreams. Stress and waking concerns will dig their roots into your subconsciousness and thus will determine the course of your dreams, as will confidence from real accomplishments.


And as for me... I seem to get the most physical rest and remember more and longer dreams with 4 hrs of sleep at night. And my body seems to want me to nap after lunches now, what with my daily routine being far more physically demanding than they were in school. So I think I would benefit most from a biphasic routine of 2 x 4hr sleep sessions. If I'm really tired from not enough the sleep the previous day or just a lot of work today and crash real early after work... I'll most likely wake 3.5-4hrs later... and not be able to fall asleep again till about the time I'm really supposed to get up and start doing stuff again. The army and my body's apparently preferred sleep pattern don't seem to sync together very well... but at 4 hrs of sleep I can actually physically perform with more energy than i can getting 8-10 hrs of sleep. It's easier to wake up, but harder to get up and going. Unless I relax and try to go back to sleep again right away after waking naturally after 4 hrs, it becomes very difficult to sleep again. Dunno if this helps or sheds any light on anything.

Side note: Some of my longest and more epic dreams happen during my shorter periods of sleep. And if something wakes me up during a rem cycle/dream, I remember the details from the whole thing the best. So I suppose if you really wanted to really remember experiencing your dreams and be best able to record them, you would intentially interrupt your sleep during the rem phase. Preferably near the end of it. But not so late that you slip back into unconscious, dreamless sleep and the details of the dream slip away with it. It is the easiest to wake from because you have that bit of active consciousness already going in your dream. But I sure as hell hate it when I end up getting woken up just before the climax of the dream.

[Maelstrom]

[quote name='Winter' timestamp='1303806138' post='12940']
O_O
[/quote]

If you'll forgive the pseudo-accidental pun... your expression is unreadable, Winter.