Day 3


Day 3 started with a TOTAL fail. I was completely prepared to take my 12-12:20 am nap, 2 alarms set and all. Then I woke up at 6 am. My phone had died and I dont know what happened to my computer alarm. SHIT! (excuse the language) but thats how I felt! A 20 minute nap had turned into the biggest don't in every Ubermans list of things not to do: oversleep. I quickly contemplated if this is something I really want to do. I was so down on myself, I had gotten so far and was on the easy street to Uberman euphoria and felt this would seriously set me back.

But, I decided to not let myself get discouraged. A lot of people have set backs during the adaptation phase so my failure doesn't mean that I cant do this, it means im just human and make mistakes.

I quickly faced a dilemma. Should I deprive myself of sleep and not sleep for the entire day and get my deprivation/adaptation "zombeh" swagger back on or should I continue with 20 min naps every four hours, despite the fact that it might lead me to feel more rested.

I elected to do the latter because it would mean that I stuck to the schedule, and even though the naps werent fantastic and I didn't really feel like I needed them, I think it was a good choice to help continue to develop my new circadian rhythm.

Out of this, I was ironically rewarded with some tiredness at the end of the day and I "think" have had my best two naps between 12-12:20 and 4-4:20 this morning (the fourth day).

Something very odd and peculiar happened on both of these naps hence the "think they were good". On both of them I set up my alarms and very clearly remember myself falling asleep. However the odd part is that it SEEMS as if I only slept for maybe 5 minutes and then woke up and got back on the computer which Is actually highly plausible BUT considering how I approach my naps (closing my eyes for 20 mins even if I don't sleep) this is rather inconsistent.

An alternative explanation makes more sense to me. Perhaps I fell asleep, and was able to activate REM sleep which ran its course. After waking up I just got on the computer naturally. This would indicate that my program is being implemented very well.

But this is where the really weird part comes into play. In both scenarios, I hadn't realized I had awaken until my alarms went off. Its as if I had woken up but was still in a dream. Surely, if I was conscious, I would have realized that I hadn't slept the full 20 minutes and would have gone back to sleep or at LEAST cancelled the alarms so they wouldn't bother my roommate. But, I can't remember!

I'm going to try to see what happens in future naps, and I will post about it