Day 1.3

I just finished the last nap of day 1. I actually snuck out of house meeting early to take my nap; I suppose my dorm will just have to get used to my scurrying off at 10:25.

Today went very smoothly; except for those few minutes in chemistry, I was completely awake and alert throughout. 9 out of 10 for the day, I'd say, 10 being least sleepy (quantitative system for measuring fatigue borrowed from Aethelwine's journal). I expect things to go downhill from here. After all, I am used to pulling all-nighters, but not consecutive ones (I've only done that once). Biking should get more and more interesting, methinks.

Funny how the length of each post decreases as the day goes on.

Day 1.2

I just took my afternoon block nap (2:30-2:50 pm). It's taking me less and less time to fall asleep, even with people puttering about in the hallway. I was actually somewhat tired when I laid down, having just come from a rather dull chemistry lecture. I zoned out a bit towards the end of the lecture, possibly with some microsleep, but I'd guess not more than 30 seconds each, nor 5 minutes total of zoning out. I didn't expect that on the first day (I am used to pulling all-nighters without ill effect), but I think I know why it happened. I use my phone as an alarm clock, see, and I had it right next to my ear. Eight minutes into my 10:30 am nap (I checked the time), somebody called me, and the phone woke me up! Interrupted naps are a terrible thing to have happen during adaptation phase. At least it wasn't several days in.

Day 1.1

Note(s) to self:

1. Wear socks when sleeping in lounge. My feet were cold when I woke up.
2. Clock timer not nearly loud enough. I was given this cute red clock for Christmas (It's egg-shaped, and weighted on the bottom so it doesn't fall over. It wobbles!), and I didn't want to have to keep reprogramming the alarm, so I used its countdown timer instead.

I'm starting to feel it, now, though I suspect it's because I woke up five minutes ago.

EDIT: A few kicks and stretches later, I'm completely fine again. Off to shower, and then perhaps I will scrounge up some breakfast at some point during this block. 3:40 is a hefty chunk of time! (I am imagining the space-time continuum breaking down into chunks, like stew. Mmm... space-time stew. Tastes like turtle. And four elephants.)

EDIT #2: I accidentally put body wash in my hair. (Go ahead, laugh; I don't mind.) It's not the first time that's happened, but it might be significant somehow. I have observed that body wash is less goopy than shampoo, but more goopy than conditioner. (Yes, I just spent a paragraph discussing hair-care products -- someone smack me now!)

Day 1

I am one nap into my adjustment period. Quite uneventful thus far. I didn't manage to fall asleep until the 20 minutes were almost over, but I'm not feeling at all sleepy. Heck, I'm sitting in my bed with a blanket over my shoulders, and I'm fine. It's sort of strange to think that back home (Eastern Standard Time Zone), my sister is already on the school bus. I would be getting to bed right about now, if I were still in vacation mode.

Several things have occurred to me...

1. This schedule may render the pyjamas in my wardrobe obsolete.
2. I can use the college website(s) at off-peak hours, even right before assignments are due. No more waiting ten minutes for a paper to upload!
3. I will have to find somewhere else to take my 6:30am nap, since I'm sure my roommate would not appreciate the multiple alarms all going off. Maybe I'll relocate to the lounge.
4. I should have saved my unpacking for the morning block. Oh well. It's the first day; it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference.
5. I may end up turning into a morning shower person. (Showers are good for staying awake.) I used to be a very late at night shower person. Off-peak hours, see. No one else showers at 3:00am.

Short-term memory tests
Numbers: 10.75
Letters: 12
Words: 27

Day 0

Yesterday night was my last night of monophasic sleep (if I manage to make this work). I am back at college, and will have my first polyphasic nap at 2:30 am. It's rather odd, thinking in terms of midnight date changes. I used to consider 2:30 am part of the previous day; for me, even if the sun had already risen, the date did not change until I'd slept a few hours. I'm sure that once this sleep schedule gets going, there will be quite a few paradigm shifts in store for me.

Two important factors to note

1. My little support group no longer exists. Caradoc decided not to try it, in the end. The idea was to let us go first, and ascertain that there were indeed no ill effects before trying it himself. A rather wise notion, that. And so our three became two. Aethelwine, if you will recall, started during winter break. He made a great effort, but could not make it through the adaptation phase. I do have a copy of his journal, which should prove quite helpful. From his account, it seems that had it not been for some traveling he did over break, which threw him off, he would have made it. There is hope for me yet! I should have fewer such disruptions, which leads me to...
2. I am attending a funeral on Sunday, January 11th (Yes, it is tragic, and yes, I appreciate your sympathies, but no, I really don't want to talk about it.) This may throw me off several days, is all.

I found these mp3s, which are soundtracks of white noise that's supposed to facilitate falling asleep, and then after a set amount of time, plays a series of increasingly unpleasant noises to wake you up. I suspect I'll be using the 20 and 23 minute ones a lot. The problem is, my headphones are the sort with two little round plastic bits on the ends of long insulated wires -- there's no guarantee that they'll stay in. Tape, perhaps? I'll set a bunch of alarms anyways, just in case.

The experiment commences...

Polyphasic Sleep: A Procedure

It is often said that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Hasn't stopped anyone from making them, though.

The schedule itself is quite simple: naps at 2:30, 6:30, and 10:30 (Pacific Standard Time). For simplicity of reference, let me name each four-hour period (the nap being the first 20 minutes of the period), as follows:
2:30 - 6:30 am -- Dawn Block
6:30 - 10:30 am -- Morning Block
10:30 am - 2:30 pm -- Noon Block
2:30 - 6:30 pm -- Afternoon Block
6:30 - 10:30 pm -- Evening Block
10:30 pm - 2:30 am -- Night Block

I will have classes mostly during the noon and afternoon blocks (with a scattered few in the morning block). Most of my extracurricular activities fall during the evening block. The other three waking periods... well, for the first time in many years, I will be able to say that I have copious free time, and mean it.

I had been warned of this. Those blocks, especially the dawn one, tend to be the most difficult during the adaptation phase. That is, those are the times when most people attempting the sleep schedule will be the most tired and sleepy, and will really have to fight to stay awake. In this, I have an advantage. In my current monophasic existence, I am significantly more nocturnal than most people are. During finals week, when we had, beyond our scheduled exams, virtually absolute flexibility of schedule, I found myself naturally going to bed at around 9:00 - 10:00 am, and waking up around 3:00 - 4:00 pm. However, I am also partially adjusted to a more normal daytime schedule because the rest of the world runs that way. This means that I shouldn't have any block that is significantly more difficult than any other block. At night, I'm used to being up and about; during the day, as long as I don't fall asleep in lectures, I will have external stimuli helping to keep me awake (including biking to and from class!). I guess I'll just have to sit next to friends with strict instructions to jab me discreetly under the desk when I start nodding off.

Still, once I'm far enough into the adaptation phase I will be so sleep-deprived that I will be in constant danger of falling asleep when I'm not supposed to, regardless of time of day. The literature recommends filling my time with physical and/or stimulating tasks. Things like reading are a poor choice, unless perhaps I try reading while pacing in circles out in the cold. Likewise, I'm not confident that even working on my own creative writing will be sufficient to keep me awake (but I'll try!). (It will be necessary to do homework, of course; I will simply have to find a most uncomfortable spot in which to do it.) What seems most effective, from said literature, are things like exercising and cooking, and I am a) not particularly athletic (and therefore unlikely to kill more than half an hour exercising), and b) unable to cook (well, or without setting off the fire alarms). I plan on making a daily trip to the post office during the dawn block, on my bike, despite the extreme likelihood of not getting any mail. I will also, for the first time in ages, try to eat breakfast, during the morning block. Actually, meal times warrant a separate paragraph (see below), but I digress. My to-do list contains several knitting and sewing projects, which I can do standing up if I need to, and have the additional benefit of painful stimulus (stabbing myself with a needle) if I drift off. I've a long list of rather mundane things to do, such as cleaning my (half of the) room, cleaning up my e-mail inboxes (perhaps too boring to keep me awake), etc. If you have any suggestions on activities to try (especially if you know me in Real Life), comments are very welcome.

Now, regarding meal times... given that I will have more total waking hours, I expect my consumption to increase. Hence, I plan on eating three meals per 24 hours, rather than the two-a-day I had last quarter (as noted above, I am not accustomed to eating breakfast). I will spread them evenly, one meal towards the end of every other block, so that I'll be having breakfast during the morning block, dinner during the afternoon block, and Late Night during the night block (Late Night is a supper/midnight snack type of thing offered by some of the dining halls at our school). Yes, I am completely aware that I've left out lunch; I often skipped lunch or grabbed a bagel between classes in high school. It's probably for the best, considering that my winter quarter class schedule allows only 20-or-so minutes for lunch on some days anyhow. I have a significant stockpile of ramen in my closet, and tend to accumulate fruit in my fridge under the bed, so if I really feel I need it (or if I'm too lazy/tired to make my way over to Late Night), I can eat whenever. I hope I don't forget. I have a distressing tendency to forget to eat, especially when I'm distracted and/or engrossed in something particularly interesting.

Now, to see whether and/or how my brain is being affected by all of this, I will take a brief online short-term memory test at least once a day, trying for approximately the same time each day. I found one I like here. I created an account, which lets me track how I've been doing over time. The best part, though, is that it has different tests using numbers, letters, and words, and hence should yield more thorough results. This will probably constitute the only really scientifically rigorous part of the experiment. The rest of each status report will consist mostly of personal observations (and some whinging, I'm sure).

I go back to school tomorrow. I'm excited!

Experiment 1: Polyphasic Sleep

This is the hare-brained scheme that spawned the blog...

A quick and dirty explanation of polyphasic sleep
Most people sleep monophasically (one block of six or eight hours, or however much it is that normal people sleep) or biphasically (one block at night, with a siesta sometime during daylight hours). A polyphasic sleeper would instead sleep in many smaller blocks throughout the day. Sounds inconvenient, eh? Why would anyone want to disrupt their day by taking a bunch of naps, right? The catch: your body needs less total sleep on a polyphasic schedule. On the particular schedule I'll be using, known as the Uberman Sleep Schedule (pretentious, I know), I will be taking six 20-minute naps every 24 hours. I'll only need to spend a total of two hours asleep per day; I'll get 22 waking hours, with no appreciable sleep deprivation!
Impossible, you say? O, ye of little faith! Let me explain. REM sleep is the most (and arguably only) crucial part of the sleep cycle. We know this, and most importantly, our bodies know this. When push comes to shove, our bodies will opt for getting enough REM sleep over going through all the different phases of the sleep cycle. Coincidentally, the average human being only needs two hours of REM sleep per day. The trick to sleeping polyphasically is that the body is trained to get only REM sleep, cutting out the rest of the sleep cycle.
It works (well, we'll see, won't we?), like this: Every four hours, I'll take a 20-minute nap. That is, for every four hour period, I'll spend 20 minutes asleep and 220 minutes awake. After the first few days, I will have accumulated, ironically, a significant sleep debt. In a desperate bid for survival, my body will adapt by going into REM sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, giving me 20 minutes of pure REM sleep. For the first two weeks or so, as I compensate for those few days of sleep debt, those 20-minute naps will be closer to 25 or 30 minutes long, but after the adaptation phase is over, each nap should actually last 20 minutes.

Those are the essentials of polyphasic sleep. Not quick, perhaps, but certainly dirty. I'm usually much more scientifically rigorous (many, many citations needed; *hangs head in abject shame*), but I can't be bothered to write a paper over winter break.

Polyphasic Sleep and Me (aka What you need to know about your test subject)
As you have probably guessed, I'm a college student who simply wants more time in her day. Yes, I am female, contrary to the popular assumption that no female homo sapiens would consent to a moniker with the word "pig" in it. (Other creatures may have different, or nonexistent, misconceptions of the much-maligned genus Sus -- but that is a whole other kettle of fish.) I'm omnivorous, not particularly athletic, bookish (though not myopic), right handed, semi-nocturnal (even more so than your stereotypical college student), etc. Consider this a brief and not necessarily relevant (and certainly not comprehensive) list of independent variables.
Now that introductions are out of the way (as far as one can get to know an anonymous entity on the internet), regarding the experiment itself... It would seem that the most important elements are discipline and willpower: discipline to adhere to such a strict and unorthodox schedule, and willpower to drag myself out of bed during those critical first days, when I'm racking up the sleep debt and would like nothing better than to hibernate for a week. It sounds like a tall order, no? Fortunately, I have a support group of sorts -- a small one, as I have only found two people crazy enough to attempt this with me. I shall call them Caradoc and Aethelwine (names changed to protect the innocent). (Actually, Caradoc may not end up following through.) They plan on starting about two weeks before I do, so that they will be adjusted by the time winter quarter starts. A very good idea, but one which requires parents with a good dose of forbearance, alas. I will be going through the adaptation phase while attending classes, doing my numerous extracurriculars, and attempting not to crash my bike. I'm quite serious about the last bit; studies have shown that severe sleep-deprivation behind the wheel (or handlebars, as the case may be) is akin to inebriation therein. I may end up walking.

But I digress, as I am wont to do. My apologies, by the way, for the slightly incoherent nature of this post; it was not written in one sitting, though that is no excuse.

Is there anything else you should know? I suppose that's what comments are for.

The Inaugural Post

Why a blog?

A bipartite answer:

Reasons against blogging (i.e. Necessary background information)
Years ago, I made myself a pact. I vowed never to establish a published web presence unless I had something meaningful to say. This is a large part of the reason I do not use Facebook, LiveJournal, Myspace, or any of the other online diary/social networking sites out there. I do not see the point of blathering on and on about mundane woes and happenstance; the only people who would be even remotely interested in the details of my existence are only a phone call away (and to greater effect).
Also, I freely admit that I am a tad paranoid when it comes to digital privacy. (No, my name is not actually Cavia porcellus; my parents would never stoop that low.) I am uncomfortable, perhaps more than is warranted, with the idea of personal information and photographs of me circulating, or even statically accessible, on the vast Internet. Before I am deluged with comments thereof (How I flatter myself with the assumption of a >1 readership!), let me assure you that I do understand the concept of privacy settings. (Anything can be hacked.) Regardless, seeing as I would be so reluctant to post said information and photographs, there would be no reason for me to use such sites in the first place. Hence...

What has changed (i.e. Why a blog?)
I believe I now have something meaningful to say. This blog will be a lab notebook of sorts, documenting a collection of experiments I intend to perform. (Hence the title; I have no test subject other than myself.) By making this publicly available, I hope to render some small service unto science and humanity, and to all those crazy people out there who might try what I will, just to see what would happen.
Note: This makes it sound as though I actually have plans. (Plans? What plans?) In reality, these plans are nebulous at best, subject to change, authorial whim, and spontaneous combustion.

Et voilà, a blog!