Polyphasic Sleep - Take II: Day 1

So. Here I am once again trying to get polyphasic sleep to work for me. Luckily I'm not completely stupid and I'm not trying the Uberman schedule again.

If you're unfamiliar with how polyphasic sleep works, and missed my previous posts on the subject when I was trying it before school started, here's a basic rundown. The theory is that the only part of sleep you really need is the REM (random eye movement) sleep. It's where your brain does its resting and reprogramming thing. But the thing is that you only get about 30 minutes of REM sleep in a normal monophasic sleep schedule. The idea behind polyphasic sleep is that you train your body to drop immediately into REM sleep when you go to bed, skipping all of the other 'useless' stages of sleep and going to the one you really need.

The schedule that I'm trying this time isn't the Uberman. The Uberman schedule is you take 20-30 minute naps about every 4 hours, which is a little like jumping into the deep end without learning to swim first, it's really hard. But the schedule I'm trying this time is much more friendly to your poor, abused body. It's that you take 20 minute naps as often as you want, but you have to have at least 20 minutes between the naps. It's actually a pretty simple schedule, and infinitely more flexible than the very rigid Uberman.

I know there are many other polyphasic sleep schedules, but I read about this one somewhere and it seemed like the easiest schedule to adopt, and integrate into normal life. So we'll see how it goes.

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Now that it's morning I'll finish this up and post it. Last night went fine, I got quite a bit of sleep, but didn't oversleep at all, which is good. But the real challenge isn't the first night, it's the second and third and fourth. I didn't get past the second night last time without oversleeping. Hopefully that'll be different this time.

In case anyone was wondering what I did all night...I watched large amounts of Kyle XY, a show I am currently hooked on. Watching TV shows is a good way to stay up and pass the time, which is pretty much all I'm going to be doing for the first week or so anyway.