Polyphasic Sleep (aka Craziness)

Full Disclosure: This is Stephen.  He is weird.  Jeana would never consider trying anything like this.  And, quite frankly, neither should you.  At least not at home.

4:55 a.m. – Why, why, why am I doing this?  (That sentence probably needs a few more “why’s”, actually.)  It’s nearly 5:00 a.m. and I’ve been out of bed for nearly half an hour, after having been in it for fewer than six.

You know that sentence above that started with so many “why’s”?  That was the voice of every nerve, joint, organ, and phalanx of my body crying out in sleep-deprived agony.  I think you know the feeling.

9:30 p.m. – Ever since I was very young, I have often felt that sleep was a waste of time.  That may be putting it a little too strongly, but still, don’t you think it would be cool to be doing stuff (even simply reading a book) while everyone else is sleeping?  I do.  Which is why a series of blog posts I found yesterday really got my juices flowing.  Here’s the link:

Steve Pavlina on Polyphasic Sleep

Now, since you may not have bothered to follow the link, let me tell you, in Steve Pavlina’s words, what polyphasic sleep is:

Polyphasic sleep involves taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk. A popular form of polyphasic sleep, the Uberman sleep schedule, suggests that you sleep 20-30 minutes six times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock.

Sounds pretty righteous, no?  We’re talking a grand total of 3 hours of sleep a day.  To be awake for 21 hours a day!  Think of it!  Let me spell the word that is surely coming to your mind: W-O-W-S-E-R-S-!-!-!

As you may have gathered in the “4:55 a.m.” section above, I started this regimen today.  My planned schedule is to nap at 4, 8, and 12, o’clock (a.m. and p.m.).  It wasn’t long before everyone in the office knew what I was up to (word travels fast in small towns companies).  After all, anyone who went wandering to and/or from the break room between 8:00 and 8:30, 12:00 and 12:30, or 4:00 and 4:30 would have quite plainly seen me dozing.  Most unusual behavior for the company’s greatest programmer.

I must say, and I hope this doesn’t turn out to be anomalistic, today was actually a pretty good day.  4:30 was definitely rough.  And right now is decidedly not a walk in the park (still two hours to go before my next nap—ugh!).  But I found that immediately following my naps today (especially the 12 and the 4), I was actually quite alert, refreshed, rejuvenated, completely combobulated.  I was even … cheerful!

My two primary concerns right now as pertaining to this polyphasic dealio are 1) tonight is probably going to be rougher than scruff, as is tomorrow, and probably the next week at least; and 2) my dearly beloved wife Jeana.  If this turns out to be either a) physically impossible to maintain, or b) inconvenient for Jeana, I will stop it at once.  But we’ll never know until we try.  I’m always up for a good scientific experiment!