zondag 23 augustus 2009

Day 18 - Short review - I give up ='(


Just kidding about the giving up, although I must say I was very close to doing it today.
One would think that after the first 3 weeks of adapting to uberman, the hardest part would be over, but I don't experience it that way. Just a short history of my adaptation period so far:

- I've been following a very strict schedule, as recommended by the book Ubersleep. Napping 20 minutes at 4, 8, and
12. I always go to sleep exactly at 5 minutes before the hour, and wake up exactly at 20 past the hour. (I need 2 to 5 minutes to fall asleep)

- First week went completely flawless, no oversleeping and the tiredness was only at night and pretty easy to bear.

- From day 7 on, I started dreaming and feeling very refreshed after the nap.

- On day 8 I overslept one cycle of 4 hours, waking up to the alarm of my next nap.

- I didn't dream anymore between day
8 and 10

- On day 11 I started dreaming again.

- From day 13 or 14 on, effects from sleep deprivation have become worse, and I find myself feeling really tired and micronapping more often when I'm sitting down. (this happens only between 3 and 9 am)

- I slept an hour through a pretty loud and annoying alarm, after which my parents woke me up because it was annoying the hell out of them during the night.

- Between day 13 and day 16 were completely according to plan.

- On day 16 I fell asleep during the day for an hour while lying on the grass. Normally I didn't have trouble feeling tired or falling asleep during daytime, but this time it did happen.

- Yesterday morning, I slept through a complete cycle again, sleeping for 4 hours.

- This morning I suffered from the biggest
blow, almost making me decide to give up. What happened was this: After waking up from my midnight nap, I had been outside a bit, and around quarter before 1AM, I went inside and sat down in the sofa to meditate and listen to
an audiobook with earphones at same time. When I meditate I sit very straight, in a position tha
t's not really that comfortable that I would fall asleep in it. I normally have no trouble staying awake at all, and also I didn't feel tired at all at this particular time, but still, next thing I notice, I'm waking up from my 8AM alarm screaming in my ears, laying down in the sofa. (note: I have all my alarms scheduled on my iphone, so I don't have to set them up every time.) It's a complete riddle to me how the hell I ended up laying down. I'm very strict to myself about laying down during night hours, so nothing in my sane mind would allow me to do that. Also I'm wondering if my 4am alarms weren't enabled for some reason, or if I slept through them or just unconsciously put them off. If the alarm really went off, there would be no way that I woulnd't have woken up from it, because I had my earphones in when asleep, and the alarm was coming from the earphones at maximum volume. (not something I normally do, it scared the hell out of me when I did wake up at 8AM)

Now I realize that it just can't continue the way it is. I wanted to give up this morning, because I felt like it just didn't seem like it was working out for me. That was pretty painful for me, because I'm someone who never gives up on goals that are within my reach. I have a ton of willpower, and have achieved a lot of things for my age, but I just didn't seem to have control over this one.

Then I sat down and started looking up some information about people who actually succeeded at adapting to uberman. I could only find two people two that had kept blogs or reports that are readily available. (apart from Puredoxyk, the author of Ubersleep, but I had read about
that in detail already) On one hand there was Steve Pavlina, the famous blogger, and on the other hand Aya Hu, member of the Polyphasic sleeping google group. I noticed that both of them have a schedule that's different from the one that Puredoxyk emphasizes so much on in her book. Pavlina had an extra nap in the period where he felt most tired in the early hours, having 7 instead of 6 naps, in the first 10 days or so, and after that he completely threw away the schedule and just took a nap whenever he felt that it was appropriate. (ending up in 6 to 7 naps a day) In Aya Hu's case, I understand that she even combined her adaptation with her job, so she had no choice but to put more naps in nighttime and less naps during daytime. This looks like a logical thing to do, when I think about it, because during daytime I have no trouble at all usually to stay awake, while nighttime is when all the oversleeping etc happens. Aya Hu actually became sick after day 10 or so, went to an everyman schedule succesfully, and then went back to uberman after a week without any trouble. Reading about this made me feel rediculous for giving up on it, because she had a far less strict schedule, even fell sick, and succeeded at it anyway. There's no way that I can just give up like this.

I also noticed one common factor between most of the ubermen, and that is vegetarianism. I eat meat myself, although I'm willing to try being a vegatarian until I'm fully adapted.

So now I'm kind of wondering what's the best thing to do. I'm wavering between the method how Pavlina did it, and the method that Aya Hu did it. So I could switch to an everyman
schedule, which will probably be the easiest thing to do, and
once I feel comfortable to that in a sustainable way, go back to
uberman. I'm not 100% sure
about it, if this is a smart thing to do though. I think creating
the habit of having a core sleep of 3 hours at night, will maybe
make my adaptation period stretch out even longer again, and will get me further from
uberman instead of closer maybe. On the other hand I
could put in an extra nap between my midnight and my
4am nap, or/and my 4am nap and my 8am nap, because that are the times that I'm having
trouble. I'm pretty sure that it will be manageable with 7 or even
8 naps a day, and I would be able to adapt to that pretty
easily, and seems less like a detour. In the end I could also
maybe try switching to a system where I nap when I feel that I
need the nap, like Pavlina ended up doing.

8 opmerkingen: