Brendan: Polynapping Day 5

Ok, I got distracted by work and skipped a few days of posts. I'm writing this midway through day 5, just after my 1pm nap.

Day 3 was relatively uneventful. In what has become a trend, we were both most tired during the 4am-8am period (during which we'd usually be asleep), but the tiredness lifts by around 10am and we are more or less normal until shortly before 1am. During some of her day 3 naps Tina managed to get through to dreaming, and can now do so reliably each nap. Being able to get a full REM (dreaming) cycle during a nap is what allows you to condense the amount of sleep you need, so she's on the right track :) The main issue currently is that she's waking up from her naps groggy and feels tired for a hour or so afterwards, which might actually mean she's starting to get too far through the sleep cycle in her naps and can start to scale them back (generally you start with 30 minutes on the timer and work your way back to 20-25).

Things have been taking a bit longer for me as I've always been bad at falling asleep quickly. It usually takes me anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour to get to sleep. All of day 3 and most of day 4 I had trouble getting to sleep and either got none or a short amount during each nap and certainly no dreams (except the confused half-awake sort where you fall down and then jump in real life). My problem is that as soon as I really need to get to sleep quickly I find it impossible not to lie there trying to get to sleep, which is hopelessly counterproductive.

However, I appear to be learning. During my last 4 naps I've been able to fall asleep consistently within around 5 minutes, something which I've only ever been able to do by accident. I think it's partially due a couple of techniques I've developed to fool myself (I hesitate to mention them in case I somehow make them stop working), and partially because when you're napping so much the novelty and strangeness of it eventually wears off. During my last nap I finally managed a decent dream. Embarrassingly, it was about Command & Conquer 3, which I've been playing a lot to keep myself awake. I know, the geek is strong with this one.

Neither of us have had any oversleeps which is great. I would rate my current level of alertness around 7/10, although it was around 3/10 this morning (around 6am) and will probably be still less than 5 tomorrow morning.

I have also told my workmates and boss about my new sleep schedule. I'd been hesitant to do so not because they would think it was weird (which is OK because it is weird), but because I could imagine people being somewhat annoyed that one of their workmates was intentionally making himself tired for a whole week. In reality, I should have turned my cynicism up a level higher: I now have meetings at for 5am each morning with guys in India and the east-coast.

Also, I have found a new favourite song (or at least one I find very entertaining):