June 3
I’m going to sleep for five and a half hours a day. This is called the Biphasic cycle and is the one that I will be using. I decided on this one because it takes the least amount of will power of all the sleep cycles except of course for the mono-phase, which is by far the most common sleep cycle ever.
What surprised me a few months ago is that there are many alternatives to the common eight hours of sleep a night. The only other cycle I had heard of was the Uberman; 20 or 30 minute naps six times a day. I dismissed this because like most people, it’s not realistic for me. I go to school and play football. I cannot take naps throughout the day, it’s just not accepted. Could you imagine if I said to my coach “could you just let me sit out for this set of drills; I need to catch up on my sleep.” Laughter from my teammates and disbelief from my coach would ensue. The Everyman cycle involves a three hour nap added with three half hour naps while the Dymaxion cycle is four thirty minute naps throughout the day. These have all been tried successfully before.
I decided to nix those cycles and attempt the biphasic for one main reason; schedule. I will be returning to high school in the fall for my last year. As mentioned before, I can’t depend on another cycle throughout a school year. This isn’t realistic. The Biphasic cycle allows me to sleep at night, like everyone else but gives me an extra few hours during the day by adding a one and a half hour nap shortly after lunch. I plan to achieve this be using a spare (period without a class) to catch up on my rest. Whether this nap is done by going home or by finding a place within my school, (Brantford Collegiate Institute) I’m not sure yet. I will decide when the time comes.
I have decided to structure this experiment or hopefully book by setting it up as a journal. Experts have said that it takes ten days for one’s body to accept a new sleep cycle. Throughout these days I will be writing down how my body and mind react to such a trial. I will also keep journaling during the summer months as long as there is something significant to write down. I will also examine how my school year is performed. I imagine that there will be much to read about during the first month of this experiment, not much in the middle as my body has fully adjusted and then much again to read about as I have to adapt to the school year.
I’m exciting to try this experiment as I have seen that those who try this have become more creative without any negative side effects. If this experiment is performed successfully I hope to someday set a sleep cycle revolution, if you will, in place. This is to allow people the opportunity to use a different cycle without being prejudiced against.
I’ll use my Blackberry to set off alarms to keep me on schedule. That said, you will not hear from me again for at least two or three weeks (until exams are over).
Preview For Things To Come
Tonight’s the night. I’m not too excited but I am a little hesitant. I only had three exams this semester as I had a spare during one period. My last exam was this morning, it was a geography course; resource management. I’m starting the experiment so shortly after my school year because I’m afraid of putting it off too long as teenagers are prone to do. I also don’t see the point in procrastinating when this can be started as early as possible.
At this point I have two main concerns. The first is that my phone only allows me to set one alarm at a time. That means that I will have to change the alarm twice daily. Being forgetful doubled with the fact that I will be extremely tired I am worried that I might sleep through a rest period and destroy the trial up to that point. I looked for cooking timers but we don’t have any in my house. I will attempt to use my phone’s alarm. I only see this as a threat for the first week because I hope that my body will become accustomed to the schedule and I will be able to fall asleep faster.
That leads into my second concern; falling asleep. I’m naturally not able to go to sleep quickly, whether it’s due to too much natural sugar in the evening or I haven’t trained my body well enough I’m not sure. Where it becomes real concerning is now that in southern Canada we are getting into the actual heat of summer this could create a discomfort that I won’t easily overcome and sleep. I do not like heat and much prefer winter to summer. If the heat continues (the forecast as of 5:48 p.m. is high 20’s and low 30’s for the rest of the week), I may not be able to fall asleep as fast as needed. This is the lesser concern because I feel that since I’m going to be staying up until one o’clock, my body will be so exhausted it will fall asleep quickly, (my normal bedtime is 10:30).
I’m strangely not concerned about how this experiment will effect my everyday schedule. I won’t be doing much this summer, mostly yard and house work. I will however be playing with my church’s band on Tuesday nights and performing on Sunday mornings. Hopefully I will not be musically limited by the lack of rest I will be getting.
I also have a beautiful girlfriend that unfortunately lives half an hour away. This could pose a problem if we are together for the entire day or at the very least it would create awkward or uncomfortable situations. That reminds me though that I need to check with her to make sure we are on the same page with the sleep cycle. I mentioned it to her previously but she may not have thought that I was going to take it seriously (I have many side projects with few completed). She may be upset that I am starting now since her prom is on Thursday, three days from today. I may be reporting back on this situation but if I don’t everything went smoothly.
Lastly, I should mention my habits and physical shape. I am a six foot male that weighs 185 pounds who is a little concerned about the amount of fat I have put on recently. I will be attending a gym hopefully six times a week to work out in preparation for football season. I have an average diet, which is to say on the unhealthy side. I have been trying to eat less meat and more veggies lately. I think I should include what I am eating in this experiment. Today I had nothing for breakfast (I usually do have breakfast), two hotdogs for lunch and I just had a sugar filled ice tea as I was writing this. I have never taken drugs, I haven’t had alcohol in a year and I have taken a puff of a cigarette once. I don’t plan on consuming any of those within the time frame of the experiment. Now I’m a little excited.
The End Of The Transition Period
As was promised earlier, I will give a summary of the first ten days (transition period) of my sleep cycle. It goes as follows;
Before the experiment began I was nervous and excited. I had imagined that it would be difficult to stay up at first because I would be tired all the time. I had also thought that it would take longer than ten days to make the adjustment because I had been sleeping in eight hour blocks pretty much since I was born. I had many concerns going into the project; I wouldn't be able to follow through, I would be too tired, and many more. This however was not the case.
The first few mornings in I woke and got up right at 5:00 a.m. This surprised me as I thought that I would be too exhausted to wake up. I also went for runs almost immediately and I'm sure they helped prepare my body for the day. There were some other surprises for me; ones that I had just been too busy to notice. One was how cool it is in the morning. I have never gotten up this early in all my summers and due to this schedule I have discovered that mornings are awesome even just for their coolness. I normally dislike the heat and in the morning there usually isn't any. Another observation was that I had to eat more and constantly be eating. I didn't gain any weight, fortunately and I haven't been eating any better. The last thing was that I had so much time in the morning. Usually on the weekends I would sleep in to 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. and would eat and shower taking me to 10:00 or later. Then I would do some pointless things (reading, TV) and I wouldn't start doing homework or yard work until the afternoon. Now I can be lazy for a couple hours and it will still be 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning; I still have the entire day open. This was a huge revelation.
As the transition period wore on I became more lazy in the morning. I would wake up at the alarm but then sleep in to 7:00 or 8:00. This was easily fixed by using the snooze button but it's still worth noting that my body was less comfortable with the schedule as the trial wore on.
For my afternoon rest periods, I got used to them almost immediately. I didn't find working my way into these challenging at all, and if you've been keeping up with the blog, you'll remember that I was able to freely change the periods from 2:00 to 1:00 to 4:00. This is an important aspect for those of us needing a flexible schedule.
I was never able to grasp the nightly sleep periods. Once in bed I was almost at once asleep however the most challenging task of this project was to stay awake until 1:00 p.m. Now I know that this doesn't sound hard but for me it was. I had trained my body to fall asleep around 10:30 and to push this back two and a half hours was very foreign to my body. I'm not sure if I'll be able to combat late night sleepiness better in the future but this is something that I will still keep an eye on.
As far as the miscellaneous stuff goes there wasn't too much to note. It felt weird sleeping in someone else's home but everyone was understanding. It did not feel strange to sleep in the afternoon even though I had never done this before. These periods just felt like naps and I never took the risk and tried to power through a day without my afternoon nap (soon, maybe). As mentioned before, I usually always want to sleep longer in the morning when thinking about it the night before. I rarely want to sleep in once I wake up though. I also always want to go to bed earlier and it feels like nonsense when I HAVE to stay up. That's about it for there though.
My last point that I would like to make is about productivity. I had envisioned myself being more creative and more productive and able to handle more. The truth about this is that you have to be productive yourself. You have to do it. You can't depend on parents or sleep cycles or agendas to make you more productive. You get what you put in. I would like to end this post with a quote from Yoda, "Do or do not, there is no try."
This is what you can expect tomorrow; tips and advice for when you start your own cycle. I'm personally excited as the survey shows that most people are looking to do something like this. After that post I will also be explaining the next step with this blog. You'll want to read it.
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