Sleep is NOT for me. Biphasic sleep - 45 day update

I'm not a big fan of sleep. Nothing exciting or productive happens when you're sleeping. Nobody looks back on their life and says "I wish I got more sleep." ... There are no fond memories of "that time I was sleeping." Life happens when you're awake! I sleep 6 hours a day - and I would sleep even less than that if I could figure out a way to maintain it...

I have been on a loose biphasic schedule for about 45 days now. I'll try to run through the perceived advantages and limitations as far as I see them.


ADVANTAGES:

For me, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. I am a big fan of biphasic sleep - thus far it has been a tremendous experience.

Flexibility

As opposed to biphasic sleep, when somebody adopts a polyphasic schedule (many 15 minute naps throughout the day/night), the major no-no is to deviate from the planned sleeping periods. Also, it takes a couple of weeks of major pain for your body to adopt to the new schedule. If you don't stick to the schedule your body will revolt and make up the lost time with a marathon sleep session. And you lose all the work you did to train your body for less sleep...

My experience with a biphasic schedule shows that there is no "adaptation period". Plus, I am able to move between biphasic sleep and traditional sleep. More about this in the "drawbacks" section below.

Productivity

A biphasic schedule allows me to get 6 hours of sleep instead of the 8 hours normally required - and still feel real good.

The two fewer hours does make a difference. But the biggest difference may be the many hours of productive time I have before anyone else in America is awake for the day. This means: no phone calls, little email, no external interruptions - just productive time spent on the day's most important tasks.

Time to Excercise

I have grown extremely fond of my early morning workouts. I mean, I look forward to it eagerly.

Many mornings I'll get up, work for an hour or two and go for a workout. I'll get bundled up with a hat and gloves and a windbreaker and be on the road logging miles by 4:30 am. Two hours later I'll have run 10 miles, get back to the house, take a warm shower, and get my son out of bed. I spend a couple hours with him every single morning - all before getting to work for the day!

There is some kind of a perverse pleasure in having gotten something done and run nearly a half marathon before the rest of the world is awake.

I LOVE to watch the sun come up over the mountains. When I start my run it is pitch black out. All I can see is my breath in the cold air and the ground immediately in front of me. So the beginning of my run gives me time to ponder the greater questions of life, like what I'm going to have for breakfast later on (ha!). But once I get all the fleeting thoughts out of my mind and settle into the run, the sun starts to come up over the horizon. It bounces off the lake surface, or canyon walls, and filters through the pine trees. Amazing. Beautiful! The beauty of my life is revealed and I am suddenly appreciative of all I have.


DRAWBACKS AND LIMITATIONS:

There are a few things that will keep me from a biphasic schedule:

Scheduling Conflicts

I've come to realize that my schedule is not completely controllable - but it is predictable. I almost always know what's coming up the next day - can't always control when my event(s) will occur. But, this is perhaps the best thing about a biphasic sleeping schedule - it is quite flexible.

If I have a series of important meetings in the middle of the day, or if I am planning to spend the entire day with family, I will sleep for a whole session the night before and go without a nap.

Occasionally, something unforseen comes up and I'm forced to move my nap around. I might have to take an early or late nap. This is a difficulty - but not a showstopper. I've moved my nap forward and backward by several hours with only minor consequences (harder to sleep, more tired than usual in the evening as a result).

Hard Workouts

My long run is up to 9-10 miles per day. Or, sometimes, I actually (try to) run up the mountain behind my house. When I really exert myself and push past my current limits, my body reacts by sleeping! Makes perfect sense - it needs to repair, needs to recover. But I didn't know this in advance and tried to fight through a couple days of little sleep after a hard workout. It wasn't very successful... I now know full well that when I do a super-hard workout I need a little extra sleep to recover from it.

Illness

A bout of the head cold came and went through my house a few weeks ago and everybody was sleeping longer than normal. Same thing as above - when the body calls for more sleep there is a good reason for it - and I'm not fighting that natural reaction.

Alchohol

A couple of drinks is all I need to sleep in. If I go out for a couple of drinks with buddies, there is no way I'm getting up at my normal time. If I DO force myself to get up at my normal time, I'm much more tired than usual the next day.

Alarm Clock Issues

One annoyance that can't be ignored is the alarm clock issue. As in - and annoyance to my wife and newborn son... When the alarm clock goes off at 2:30am and the baby (who sleeps in his bassinet or in our bed with us) is awoken, he doesn't go back to sleep! That's a no good!

I now set the alarm on my cell phone in vibrate mode and put it under my pillow. I'm looking for a good vibrating alarm clock, but haven't had much luck yet.

All in all...

I've gotten a few bewildered looks and responses when somebody learns of my sleeping schedule. It's definitely not for everyone. But then again, not everyone is as driven or persistent as me. If I perceive something that helps me get to the finish line, and is not destructive - I'm going to take advantage of it.

The bottom line is this: Sleeping less at night and taking a nap in the afternoon allows me to have more productive time to do what is important to me. Spending more time on the things that ARE important to me (family, entrepreneurial ventures, running, etc...) is a very rewarding thing to do.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 8

I skipped a few days, because it was just more of the same. In fact, this is all starting to become quite routine. Which is nice.

Here is my usual day:
* I wake early, it takes a few minutes to feel alert. It's hard to hit my sleep cycle just right yet so some mornings are harder to crawl out of bed than others...
* I have an extremely productive morning, get an early workout in (on workout days)
* I get to hang with my fam for a little longer than usual
* I start to get physically tired in the early afternoon, but my mental capacity doesn't seem to fall-off
* I take an afternoon nap, and it takes a few moments to feel alert (but not as bad as the longer night sleep)
* I feel fantastic the rest of the day
* I get tired right before bedtime at night

One thing of note for Day 8. Usually during the week I can control my own schedule. But today I had an early afternoon meeting that would go right through my normal nap time. So I decided to take my nap in the late morning instead of mid-afternoon.

I usually nap from around 1:30-3pm. Or 2-3:30pm. Sometimes a little bit earlier, sometimes a little bit later - all depending on how I feel and how busy I am.

Today I took my nap at 10:45-12:15pm. I didn't have too much problem getting to sleep. But I woke frequently, wondering if it was close to time to get up (because I didn't want to be late to my meeting). I was also woken by my phone once (note to self: turn that damn thing off when you go to sleep). So the result was not a very good nap!

So between an early nap time and poor sleep, I turned into a zombie around 8pm. I usually go about 8 hours between nap and nighttime sleep - and I start to feel tired right before bed. But time, 8 hours after my nap I seriously turned into a zombie (and still had a few hours till bedtime).


Moral of the story? Couple of things:
1. Try to keep the nap time in the early afternoon if possible.
2. If not possible, don't schedule anything immediately after the nap.
3. Anytime I change the schedule or do something new, the first sleep session will be poor.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 5

Morning

I didn't get to bed until around 11:30 last night, so I didn't wake up until 4. Once again, I had a hard time sleeping. It was probably because I was trying out a new alarm and didn't trust that it was set properly. So, I kept waking up, wondering if it was time to wake up yet!

So, when the alarm finally went off at 4, it was off-time, and came from out of nowhere. It was hard to get up... In fact, I almost stayed in bed. Will power was the only thing that got me out...

But once I was out of bed everything was fine. The morning went off without a hitch. My son even woke up at 5am again. I sat in his dark room rocking him back to sleep and didn't feel the overwhelming tiredness like a couple of days ago.


Afternoon

My afternoon nap came at 12:30pm today. I find myself waking up a lot, and wondering if it's time for me to be done sleeping yet... today I woke up after a half hour and it felt like I had slept an hour and a half.

After that - no problems. Slept the rest of the way, woke up easy. Felt great the whole afternoon and evening. Good stuff!

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 4

Morning

I really slept well last night. Went to bed at 10:30pm. When the alarm went off at 3am this morning, it wasn't difficult to get out of bed at all.

I was very productive for a few hours, which feels really good on a Saturday morning. Then at about 5:45 I went to the gym.

I was running on the treadmill when somebody walking past me said "Good morning Sonny!" I looked to my right and Sonny Lubick, the former football coach for Colorado State University was on an elliptical runner next to me. Hey - if an early morning workout is what a downright legendary man like Sonny does early on a Saturday morning then I'm proud to be doing the same!

There was some tiredness later in the morning and early afternoon. To be expected, I think when you're having a lazy Saturday and you only had 4 hours of sleep the night before!

Afternoon

I got a nap at about 1pm today. Slept in my own bed, like a rock for one and a half hours. Awoke refreshed, feeling great. The rest of the afternoon was easy - no tiredness at all.

If every day could be like today, I'm sure I could keep this schedule for a long term. I slept great. I felt great.

I am beginning to realize that the quality of sleep I get is the major factor in how I feel that day. Sleep good = feel good. Sleep bad = feel bad. It just makes sense - when you're getting less sleep than you're used to, it better be good sleep!

In the past when trying to survive on 6 hours, it would catch up to me big time on about the fourth day. And since I feel pretty darn good today, this is quite a milestone. I am looking forward to the next few days to see if I can maintain.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 3

Morning


Wow - what a terrible night of sleep! Expecting 4 1/2 hours of sleep (ie, not very much), and not yet fully trusting my alarm, I woke up after two hours of sleep, feeling like it was 4. I saw that it was only 12pm, so I went back to sleep. But I proceeded to wake up about every 1/2 hour after that.


When the alarm finally went off at 2:30am... it was a very unwelcome sound.


But I managed to drag myself out of bed anyway.


I couldn't shake the sleepiness all morning long. My sick son woke up about 5:30am and I sat in his room, rocking him back to sleep. That dark room was just too much for me! Couldn't stay awake. Once he was back down, I went upstairs and crawled back into bed for another hour and a half.


When I woke up at 7:30, I felt fine. No more sleepiness. In fact, I felt fine all the way till my afternoon nap.



Afternoon


My family was gone today, so I had the awesome luxury of napping in my own comfy bed. Fell asleep, woke up refreshed. Felt great all afternoon and evening.





Either the lack of sleep caught up with me this morning, or when I have bad sleep I'm going to follow it with a bad day.


My gut instinct tells me that this was due to bad sleep last night...


I'm not following this crazy routine to be sleepy and "adjust" for a week. I'm following it because the two sleep periods let me cut down slightly and be more productive without crashing hard. If I have a bad night of sleep, I'll probably always feel the need to make up for it with a little more quality sleep time. The hour an a half lost is way better than a whole day of being a zombie.


Tonight, when I go to bed, I'll just trust that my alarm is set and will wake me up (or not). But one thing is for sure - no longer will I wake up just to check and see how much time I have left! With this little sleep, I need to make the most of what I'm getting!


Tomorrow is Saturday. The first weekend that I will have an altered sleep schedule. This will be a real test - because my schedule is not as controlled on the weekends. Well, that's not true - it is controlled. Just, not by me - by my wife.

That means it may be hard to find a 90 minute block of time to fit a nap in. I don't know if this schedule will be possible having traditional sleep on the weekends and biphasic sleep during the week.

So, I'll do my best to maintain the biphasic schedule and find some nap time in the afternoon like usual.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 2

Morning

I awoke this morning at about 3am, after 4.5 hours of sleep, and felt pretty good. It was easy to get out of bed so I must have timed the sleep cycle right and hit the sweet spot.

Shortly after waking I felt fantastic. I love the morning - it is so productive to be hard at it when everybody else is still sleeping.

I started to get a little tired after a couple of hours but it was nothing overwhelming, just back-of-the-eyes kind of tiredness.

At around 5am I took off for the gym. I ran 3.5 miles on the treadmill, hit the showers, and headed home. --> Same adrenaline high as usual after the workout, despite the lack of sleep the last two days and the early morning workout. When I left the gym, and for a couple of hours afterward I felt pretty great.

Tiredness from about 10am-12pm. Not too bad, I can just tell I didn't sleep long last night. Looking forward to that nap!


Afternoon

My nap today came about 3pm - 4:45pm.

I got the office cot set up - pad, pillow, blanket, I'm not making the same mistake as yesterday! Believe it or not, I also got some ear plugs to completely block out household noise.

I set the alarm for 15 minutes past my 90 minute nap length to give a little time to fall asleep. Apparently I didn't need it because I woke up naturally at about 4:25. But... since I had 20 minutes left, I didn't know whether to get up or go back to sleep. Usually when I have any kind of "get up/sleep" battle in my head when I'm tired - the "sleep" option wins. So, I fell back asleep and was awoken by my vibrating alarm at 4:45 feeling quite groggy and out of it. I even considered for a brief moment going back to sleep for another cycle... (glad I didn't)

So, it took me a few minutes to get going, get the cot put away and get back online.

But now, about an hour later, I feel fantastic. Very alert and focused. I think if I can force myself to get used to jumping out of bed instead of lingering that this is going to work out very well for me.

Biphasic Sleep Log - Day 1

Morning

My first day of biphasic sleep. I didn't really pick this time to start a biphasic sleep schedule. It picked me.

My newborn son was awake last night at about 1am. I woke with him and could not find a way to get back to sleep. So, I just stayed up. It was actually nice to have a quiet house all morning and free time to just catch up on reading and do whatever I wanted without feeling the need to be productive.

I went out and bought a rudimentary cot to put into my home office. I hope to be able to use it for my afternoon naps, as my office is a lot more quiet than the rest of the house during the daytime. If I were to make a dash to the bedroom upstairs in the middle of the day my older son would be quite upset that I didn't stay and play with him - basically, no sleep that way.

Afternoon

My afternoon nap started at 11:20 am today. I set the alarm for 100 minutes of nap time - 90 minute sleep interval, plus 10 to fall asleep. It was not a fantastic nap...

I was up every 30 minutes and woken by sounds of the house a couple other times. I was uncomfortable and overly tired and way too aware of my limited rest time. My wife actually came in the office while I was sleeping and put a blanket over me and a pillow under my head!

I'm going to make it a point tomorrow to make myself very comfortable before laying down. I want to be warm, relaxed, and sleep restfully for 90 minutes. I think that being able to get good rest in the afternoon on a consistent basis is going to be the key to making this schedule work...

Given those difficulties, I don't feel too bad right now. Tired, but functional. I have had a total of 4 hours of (broken) sleep today. I couldn't do it more than one day... am definitely looking forward to going to sleep tonight!

Self-discipline

Sorry... but for some reason I'm really into the self-help section these days!

 

This is a snippet from a very comprehensive page titled "Formula for Human Genius and Creativity".  I'm totally down with making myself do something I hate - just because I hate it.  It's like saying, 'ok, brain - I'm running this show, not you!'  ... which is very ironic if you think about it, but that's really all self-discipline is.

 

Self-discipline: Lack of self-discipline aggravated by stress and lack of sleep is the number one cause of reduced productivity worldwide. In essence, it explains why capitalism appears to be economically superior to communism today. If you develop self-discipline habits early, your life is likely to take an entirely different course. If you believe you are lacking in this fields, try the following exercise: as soon as an activity comes to your mind that you really are unwilling to do, do it. Your rational brain must be the master of your body, not the other way around. Stand over a pool of cold water. Do you hate jumping in? The more you hate it, the sooner you should jump. And in the end you will love it. Cold shower is a minor inconvenience once you experience the volitional power of the brain. You need to master the skill of a perfect execution of your own plans. The more precise your plan, the harder it is to execute, yet the most tangible the results. Learn to delay gratification. If you focus on your long-term goal, your daily inconveniences will by far be more bearable. A strenuous quest towards the goal is the best reward to a genius mind. Minor awards of laziness do not befit a true genius. Think of self-discipline daily. Even strongest minds can relax it all too easily. Remember about stress and sleep (two previous points). Stress and sleepiness are chief factors that undermine self-discipline

5 Steps to Build Self-Discipline

I attribute all the ideas, and much of the text from the post below to Steve Pavlina, and his wonderful six part series on building self-discipline.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline/

 

Also - Steve just published a pretty (current school) contrarian piece on how he built his blog to over 700,000 visitors a month ... I read this post with much interest!

 

And, on to the main course!

The first step in building self-discipline (and therefore the ability to accomplish your other goals) is to accept where you are at right now, whether you feel good about it or not.  Surrender yourself to what you have to work with - it is what it is.

The second step in building self-discipline (and therefore the ability to follow through on plans) is to harness your initial burst of willpower to set the stage for your later success.  Willpower will wane after the inital burst, so use that willpower to create an environment, processes, and tools to be able to follow through easier.  Don't use willpower to attack the problem directly.  Use willpower to attack the environmental and social obstacles that perpetuate the problem.
 - this is especially applicable for me.  I get all gung-ho, go all out for a little while and then fade quickly once the inital burst of excitement wears out.

The third step in building self-discipline (and therefore the ability to finish things others can't/won't) is to work hard.  Sounds simple, but very few people are actually willing to work hard to accomplish anything.  The greater your capacity for hard work, the more rewards fall within your grasp.

The fourth step in building self-discipline (and therefore becoming more productive with your time) is to be industrious.  There are many problems in life where the solution is largely a brainless time investment, and industry is required to comlpete them.  Industry is personal productivity at it's core.  Personal productivity creates space in your life to do all the things you want to do: eat healthy, exercise, work hard, deepen relationships, have a wonderful social life, and make a difference.  In the long run, your results will come from action, and industry is all about action.

The fifth and final step in building self-discipline (and therefore never quitting what you've started) is to be persistent.  Persistence is the ability to maintain action regardless of your feelings.  Persistence of action comes from persistence of vision.  When you're super-clear about what you want in such a way that your vision doesn't change much, you'll be consistent in your actions.  And that consistency of action will produce consistency of results.

What I learned today

to become an early riser, get up at the same time every morning
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/

• let your body determine what time to go to sleep at night
• no negotiation, no second thoughts, just throw the covers off stretch, and get out of bed the first time the alarm goes off
• if you do this for one month straight, you will condition your brain to get up at this time every time, and it will never be a problem again

there are some pretty cool alarm clocks out there…
http://www.axbo.com/infactory/1_home_en/news_list.jsp.html

• my favorite are the ones that sense your sleeping cycles via a wrist strap, and wake you up when you're sleeping the lightest
• you set a drop dead wake up time, and an amount of time before this that the alarm can go off when it senses you're ready to wake up

to avoid procrastination, find motivation, set goals, break down big goals into achievable chunks
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/overcoming-procrastination.htm

• this is the same stuff that you read over and over
• but there's a reason for that
• because it's true! if you can master this simple idea, there's a lot of reward for it…